From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: WAR AT HOME: POLITICAL REPRESSION IN THE US (1/8)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 08:15:23 GMT

/** pn.publiceye: 23.0 **/
** Topic: "WAR AT HOME" by Brian Glick **
** Written  6:31 pm  Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
"WAR AT HOME"

by Brian Glick
A South End Press Booklet

Copyright 1989, Brian Glick

Posted by permission of the author
PRINTING THESE FILES IS FORBIDDEN
To order printed booklets,
see notes at end of this Reply file.
=====================================

The text of the booklet is contained
in the following numbered Reply files

1.  Introduction
2.  What We Will Learn In This Booklet
    SECTION ONE:
    A HISTORY TO LEARN FROM:
      COINTELPRO: Covert Action
        Against the Domestic Dissidents
        of the 1960s
      How We Learned About COINTELPRO
3.  How COINTELPRO Worked
4.  COINTELPRO's Main Targets
5.  How COINTELPRO Helped Destroy the Movements of the 1960s <f30>
6.  Box: Black Panther Party Program
7.  SECTION TWO:
    THE DANGER WE FACE
    Domestic Covert Action Remains a Serious Threat Today
8.  Domestic Covert Action Did Not End in the 1970s
9.      The Native American Movement
10.     The Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican,
           Women's, Gay, and Lesbian Movements
11.     The Anti-war and New Left Movements
12  Domestic Covert Action Has Persisted Throughout the 1980s
13. Domestic Covert Action Has Become a Permanent Feature of U.S. Government
14. FBI Actions Aimed at Destroying Dissent
15. The National Security State
16. SECTION THREE:
    PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE
     What We Can Do About
       Domestic Covert Action
       Learning the Methods of COINTELPRO
          and How to Protect Ourselves Against Them
17. Box: A Checklist of Essential Precautions
18. Harassment Through Infiltration
19. Guidelines for Coping with
      Harassment Through Infiltration
20. Harassment Through Psychological Warfare
21. Box: Psychological Warfare: One Story
22. Guidelines for Coping with
      Harassment Through Psychological Warfare
23. Box: FBI Fronts
24. Harassment Through the Legal System
25. Box: Say No the the FBI
26. Guidelines for Coping with
      Harassment Through the Legal System
27. Box: The Berkeley Gambit
28. Harassment Through
      Extralegal Force and Violence
29. Box: Community Self-Defense
30. Guidelines for Coping with
      Extralegal Force and Violence
31. Exposing Domestic Covert Action as
      Undemocratic and a Form of Terrorism
32. Publicly Opposing the Government's
      Continued Use of Domestic Covert Action
33. Not Letting Political Repression
     Divert Us From Building
       Strong Movements for Social Justice
34. About the Author
35. Organizations

 (NOTE: Footnotes are not included in this electronic text.
        All footnotes and copies of government
        documents and other referenced material
        are included in the paperback book.

=====================================

For a Single Copy, send $5.00 (includes postage) to:  Movement Support
Network, Center for Constitutional Rights 666 Broadway, 7th Floor New
York, N.Y., 10012.

For quantity orders of "War at Home" at a discount contact:
===
South End Press,
116 St.Botolph St.,
Boston MA 02115.
===

The Movement Support Network's HOTLINE # is (212) 614-6422.

** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **

/** pn.publiceye: 23.1 **/
** Written  6:36 pm  Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **

Introduction

In January 1988, the people of the United States learned of a secret
nationwide FBI campaign against the domestic opponents of U.S. policy in
Central America.  Government documents obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act show that from 1981 through at least 1985, the FBI
infiltrated the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
(CISPES) and disrupted its work all across the country.  The
investigation eventually reached into nearly every sector of the
anti-intervention movement, from the Maryknoll Sisters, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, and the New Jewish Agenda to the United
Auto Workers, the United Steel Workers, U.S.  Senator Christopher Dodd,
and U.S.  Representatives Pat Schroeder and Jim Wright.  <f1>

Some of the goals and methods of this campaign were revealed by a
central participant, Frank Varelli.  Varelli admitted that from 1981
through 1984, the FBI paid him to infiltrate and "break" the Dallas,
Texas chapter of CISPES.  To this end, he and his cohorts put out bogus
literature under the CISPES name, burglarized CISPES members' homes, and
paid right-wing students to start fights at CISPES rallies.  Varelli was
told to seduce an activist nun to get blackmail photos for the FBI.  It
was also suggested that he plant guns on CISPES members.  As part of his
work, he routinely exchanged information about U.S. and Central American
activists with the Salvadoran National Guard, sponsor of that country's
death squads.  <f2>

Elsewhere in the Southwest, in 1984, government informers surfaced as
the main witnesses in the federal prosecution of clergy and lay workers
providing sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala.
Salomon Graham and Jesus Cruz testified that they were paid by the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to infiltrate church
services, Bible classes, and sanctuary support networks.  They were part
of "Operation Sojourner," the U.S.  Justice Department's countrywide
crackdown on sanctuary churches and organizations.  <f3>

In the San Francisco Bay Area, in the early 1980s, the Livermore Action
Group's meetings to plan anti-nuclear civil disobedience were similarly
infiltrated by both the U.S.  Navy and the Federal Emergency Management
Administration.  <f4> The FBI has admitted such operations from 1982-84
against the Bay Area branches of Physicians for Social Responsibility
and other peace groups.  <f5> In September 1987, the Bureau fired
Special Agent John Ryan for refusing to conduct a similar "terrorism
investigation" of the Illinois peace group, Veterans Fast for Life.
<f6>

In Albany, New York in 1981, the FBI and police infiltrated and
disrupted the Capital District Coalition Against Apartheid and Racism
(CDCAAR).  At 3 a.m. on the day of the group's protest against the U.S.
tour of the South African Springbok rugby team, FBI agents and state and
local police broke into the home of CDCAAR leader Vera Michelson.
Supposedly acting on an anonymous FBI informer's false report that the
anti-apartheid activists were stockpiling weapons, the officers burst
into Michelson's bedroom, put a shotgun to her head, and forced her to
crawl to another part of the apartment where she was handcuffed to a
table.  They then ransacked the apartment, confiscating CDCAAR files
along with private papers and address books.  Michelson and two other
organizers were detained on bogus charges and kept from participating in
the demonstration.  They later learned that the same FBI infiltrator had
spread false reports of planned violence in order to discourage
participation in the demonstration.  <f7>

Other forms of government harassment hit activists who spent time in
Nicaragua or Cuba during the 1980s.  Travelers and travel agencies were
audited by the Internal Revenue Service.  Private papers were copied or
confiscated at the border.  Mail arrived late and open, or never
arrived.  Returnees' homes, jobs, churches, and communities were hounded
by the FBI.  <f8> World-renowned feminist author Margaret Randall, a
former U.S. citizen who returned home after several years in Cuba and
Nicaragua, was denied permanent residence status and ordered to leave
the United States solely on the basis of the political content of her
writings.  <f9>

Churches and organizations opposed to U.S. policy in Central America
reported more than 300 incidents of harassment from 1984 through 1988,
including nearly 100 break-ins.  Important papers, files, and computer
disks were stolen or found damaged and strewn about, while money and
valuables were left untouched.  License plates on a car seen fleeing an
attempted burglary of the Washington, D.C. office of Sojourners, a
religious group that helped form the Pledge of Resistance to U.S. war in
Central America, were traced to the U.S.  National Security Agency.
Other incidents were also attributed to government agents or to
"private" right-wing groups backed by Lt.  Col.  Oliver North at the
National Security Council.  The FBI repeatedly rejected congressional
calls for a federal probe.  <f10>

Similar break-ins were experienced throughout 1987-88 by U.S. supporters
of Palestinian self-determination.  On January 26, 1988, the FBI, INS,
and Los Angeles police arrested eight activists for deportation as
"terrorists."  The evidence against them consisted solely of photos
showing that they helped distribute magazines published by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine.  As the eight appealed the INS
ruling, their homes were burglarized and boxes of files on their case
were stolen from the cars of American Friends Service Committee staff
and others active in their defense.  Secret INS plans uncovered in
February 1988 call for thousands more U.S.  Arab-American activists to
be rounded up and deported as "alien terrorists and undesirables."
<f11>

The same terrorist label provided the pretext for recent FBI attacks on
the movement for Puerto Rico's independence from U.S. colonial rule.  On
August 30, 1985, hundreds of FBI agents, backed by military helicopters,
rounded up prominent independentistas and charged them with being
members of Los Macheteros, a clandestine independence organization.  The
raiders destroyed the editorial offices and printing presses of the
progressive journal <MI>Pensamiento Crtico<D> and ransacked the homes
and offices of 38 well-known poets, artists, trade unionists, labor
lawyers, and community organizers.  Thirteen were held incommunicado for
days and publicly branded as "terrorists."  Finally charged with
conspiracy to rob a Wells Fargo depot in Hartford, Connecticut, nine
were kept in U.S. jails for more than a year, two for nearly three
years, under new federal preventive detention laws.  One of those two,
Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who is 55 years old and has a serious heart
condition, was released under court order in May 1988 but quickly
re-jailed (for having defended himself and resisted arrest during the
1985 raid) and again held without bail.  Although the defendants are
Spanish speaking, the court acceded to the prosecution's demand that
they be tried in English, more than 1000 miles from their families and
homeland.  Pre-trial hearings implicated the FBI in falsified reports,
alteration of evidence, burglaries, illegal surveillance, and
intimidation of witnesses.  <f12>

A comparable show of paramilitary might accompanied the October 18, 1984
arrest of eight New York City Black activists.  A "Joint Anti-Terrorist
Task Force" of more than 500 FBI and police agents, wielding machine
guns and a bazooka, cordoned off entire city blocks to arrest law school
graduates, city housing managers, college students, and a union steward.
Promising community projects were disrupted while the eight were held
for weeks without bail and placed for almost a year under strict curfew,
while their co-workers were jailed for refusing to testify before a
grand jury.  Acquitted of the major charges when jurors rejected the
claims of a police infiltrator, the eight faced continued police
harassment.  One was later framed on bogus weapons charges, along with
two other leaders of a Brooklyn community group, Black Men Against
Crack.  <f13>

In Alabama, in the mid-1980s, the FBI mounted an even more massive
effort to intimidate grassroots supporters of Jesse Jackson's
presidential campaign and to crush the emerging pro-Jackson Black
leadership based in the Campaign for a New South.


Immediately after the September 1984 primaries in Alabama, as many as
two hundred FBI agents swept through the five western Alabama Black Belt
counties that had given their votes to Jesse Jackson, rousing elderly
people from their beds in the middle of the night, taking about one
thousand of them in police-escorted buses to Mobile to be
finger-printed, and suggesting that their absentee ballots may have been
tampered with by the civil rights workers who had secured their votes.
The offices of civil rights workers were also raided and some of the
documents they needed for the November elections were confiscated.


In January 1985, indictments for vote and mail fraud were handed down
against eight of the Black Belt's most experienced organizers and
political leaders.  In bringing the indictments, the federal government
used the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the very act most of these people
had marched from Selma to Montgomery to get enacted.  <f14>


Although the defendants were acquitted of all major charges and their
organization survived, the raids, interrogations, arrests, and trials
took a heavy toll.

** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **

/** pn.publiceye: 23.2 **/
** Written  6:42 pm  Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
What We Will Learn In This Booklet

Government harassment of U.S. political activists clearly exists today,
violating our fundamental democratic rights and creating a climate of
fear and distrust which undermines our efforts to challenge official
policy.  Similar attacks on social justice movements came to light
during the 1960s.  Only years later did we learn that these had been
merely the visible tip of an iceberg.  Largely hidden at the time was a
vast government program to neutralize domestic political opposition
through "covert action" (political repression carried out secretly or
under the guise of legitimate law enforcement).

The 1960s program, coordinated by the FBI under the code name
"COINTELPRO," was exposed in the 1970s and supposedly stopped.  But
covert operations against domestic dissidents did not end.  They have
persisted and become an integral part of government activity.  This book
is designed to help today's activists learn from the history of
COINTELPRO, so that future movements can better fight this war at home.

The opening section reviews what we know about COINTELPRO.  It explains
how the program was uncovered when the FBI and police were compelled to
release previously secret documents.  It outlines COINTELPRO's methods
and targets and assesses its contribution to the decline of the
movements of the 1960s.

The next section shows that domestic covert action did not end when
COINTELPRO was officially disbanded.  It remained in effect under other
names and it continues to be a serious threat today.  Persisting under
Democratic as well as Republican administrations, it has become a
permanent feature of U.S. politics.

The final section discusses what we can do about this danger.  It
analyzes the specific methods used in COINTELPRO--infiltration,
psychological warfare, harassment through the legal system, and
extralegal force and violence--and proposes steps to limit or deflect
their impact on our movements.  It shows that these methods do not
protect "national security" or combat terrorism, as claimed by the
government, but actually serve to foment violence and subvert democracy.
Various tactics are suggested for publicly exposing the reality of
domestic covert action and mobilizing broad-based protest against its
continued use.

Excerpts from key COINTELPRO documents are reproduced at the back of the
book, along with a list of resource groups and additional readings.

Domestic covert action is a powerful deterrent to democratic discussion
of public policy and effective organizing for social change.  We need to
take it seriously without being distracted from our main goals.  Please
talk with other activists about the analysis and recommendations
presented here.  Adapt the guidelines to the conditions you face.  Point
out problems and suggest other approaches.

Now is the time to begin fighting the hidden war at home.


A HISTORY TO LEARN FROM


COINTELPRO:Covert Action Against
the Domestic Dissidents of the 1960s

While much FBI and police harassment was blatant during the 1960s, and
surveillance and infiltration were suspected, talk of CIA-style covert
action against domestic dissidents was generally dismissed as
"paranoia."  It was not until the 1970s, after the damage had been done,
that the sordid history of COINTELPRO began to emerge.  This Chapter
describes how COINTELPRO was uncovered and what we now know of its
methods, targets, and impact.


How We Learned About COINTELPRO

The first concrete evidence of COINTELPRO surfaced in March 1971, when a
"Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI" removed secret files from an
FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and released them to the press.  <f15>
That same year, agents began to resign from the Bureau and to blow the
whistle on its covert operations.  <f16> These revelations came at a
time of enormous social unrest and declining public confidence in
government.  Publication of the <MI>Pentagon Papers<D> in September 1971
exposed years of systematic official lies about the Vietnam War.  Soon
it was learned that a clandestine squad of White House "plumbers" had
broken into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in an effort to
smear the former Pentagon staffer who had leaked the top-secret papers
to the press.  <f17>

The same "plumbers" were caught the following year burglarizing the
Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee.  Nationally
televised congressional hearings on Watergate revealed a full-blown
program of "dirty tricks" to subvert the anti-war movement as well as
the Democratic Party by forging letters, leaking false news items to the
press, stealing files, and roughing up demonstrators.  Lines of command
for these operations were traced to Attorney General Mitchell and the
White House, with the FBI implicated in a massive cover-up involving
President Nixon and his top staff.  By 1971, congressional hearings had
already disclosed U.S.  Army infiltration of domestic political
movements.  Similar CIA and local police activity soon came to light,
along with ghastly accounts of CIA operations abroad to destabilize
democratically elected governments and assassinate heads of state.

This crisis was eventually resolved through what historian Howard Zinn
describes as "a complex process of consolidation," based on "the need to
satisfy a disillusioned public that the system was criticizing and
correcting itself."  <f18> In this process, the U.S.  Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) was amended over President Nixon's veto to
provide some degree of genuine public access to FBI documents.  Lawsuits
under the FOIA forced the Bureau to release some COINTELPRO files to
major news media.  By 1975, both houses of Congress had launched formal
inquiries into government "intelligence activities."

The agencies under congressional investigation were allowed to withhold
most of their files and to edit the Senate Committee's reports before
publication.  <f19> The House Committee's report, including an account
of FBI and CIA obstruction of its inquiry, was suppressed altogether
after part was leaked to the press.  <f20> Still, pressure to promote
the appearance of genuine reform was so great that the FBI had to
divulge an unprecedented, detailed account of many of its domestic
covert operations.

Many important files continue to be withheld, and others have been
destroyed.  <f21> Former operatives report that the most heinous and
embarrassing actions were never committed to writing.  <f22> Officials
with broad personal knowledge of COINTELPRO have been silenced, most
notably William C. Sullivan, who created the program and ran it
throughout the 1960s.  Sullivan was killed in an uninvestigated 1977
"hunting accident" shortly after giving extensive information to a grand
jury investigating the FBI, but before he could testify publicly.  <f23>

Nevertheless, a great deal has been learned about COINTELPRO.

** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **

/** pn.publiceye: 23.3 **/
** Written  6:44 pm  Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
How COINTELPRO Worked

When congressional investigations, political trials, and other
traditional legal modes of repression failed to counter the growing
movements, and even helped to fuel them, the FBI and police moved
outside the law.  They resorted to the secret and systematic use of
fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally protected political
activity.  Their methods ranged far beyond surveillance, amounting to a
homefront version of the covert action for which the CIA has become
infamous throughout the world.

FBI Headquarters secretly instructed its field offices to propose
schemes to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise
neutralize" specific individuals and groups.  <f24> Close coordination
with local police and prosecutors was strongly encouraged.  Other
recommended collaborators included friendly news media, business and
foundation executives, and university, church, and trade union
officials, as well as such "patriotic" organizations as the American
Legion.

Final authority rested with FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Top
FBI officials pressed local field offices to step up their activity and
demanded regular progress reports.  Agents were directed to maintain
full secrecy "such that under no circumstances should the existence of
the program be made known outside the Bureau and appropriate
within-office security should be afforded to sensitive operations and
techniques."  <f25> A total of 2,370 officially approved COINTELPRO
actions were admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee, <f26> and
thousands more have since been uncovered.

Four main methods have been revealed:

1. Infiltration:  Agents and informers did not merely spy on political
activists.  Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt.  Their very
presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters.
The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as
agents.

2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside:  The FBI and police used
myriad other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements.  They
planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other
publications in the name of targeted groups.  They forged
correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone
calls.  They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up
pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or
strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others
to cause trouble for activists.

3. Harassment Through the Legal System:  The FBI and police abused the
legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals.
Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated
evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment.  They
discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and
used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand
jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their
supporters.

4. Extralegal Force and Violence:  The FBI and police threatened,
instigated, and themselves conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and
beatings.  The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their
movements.  In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and
later Native Americans), these attacks--including political
assassinations--were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can
accurately be termed a form of official "terrorism."

Each of these COINTELPRO methods is described and analyzed in detail on
pages 41-65.  Specific examples from the documentary record of the 1960s
are presented there, along with practical suggestions for coping with
similar attacks in the future. 
** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **


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