FBI 'reforms' mean more repression
By Monica Moorehead
On May 30, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller held a news conference to announce that the FBI would be turning its full attention to combating "terrorism."
In essence, this means that the FBI will no longer be legally restricted from carrying out all kinds of political surveillance, from wiretapping to Internet spying, in pursuit of forces that in its opinion pose a "terrorist" threat to the United States. This, of course, has the full blessings of the entire Bush administration.
The legislative arm of the government has accused the FBI and CIA of not doing enough to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The U.S. ruling class, government and mainstream media are using this debate to whip up fear among the public to help justify unfettered new powers for the FBI and CIA.
For instance, the cover of a recent Newsweek featured pictures of two Arab men who supposedly were involved in the airplane attack on the Pentagon. The caption under their pictures stated in bold letters: "The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA Should Have Caught."
And for added sensationalism, the words "terrorists" and "caught" were in red.
The article chronicled the movements and actions of these two men inside and outside the United States for the past several years. They are described as Al-Qaeda operatives.
What's really at stake?
The criticism over how the FBI and CIA analyzed and reacted to intelligence gathered before Sept. 11 is one thing. It amounts to an internal struggle within the U.S. government.
The larger issue is their reaction to the criticisms that are being seriously posed by sectors within the progressive political movement--a movement that is steadily growing in opposition to Bush's global war plans.
Rather than investigating how the FBI and CIA analyzed their intelligence sources before Sept. 11, this movement says, there should instead be an outcry for public disclosure of the Bush administration and Pentagon's war plans for the coming months and years.
Immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, the first reaction from Ashcroft and Bush was to racially profile Arabs, South Asian people and Muslims. This amounted to a terrible witch-hunt.
Thousands of people were rounded up and detained without the due process that is supposed to be one of the main pillars of bourgeois democracy regardless of whether one is native- or foreign-born.
As the nine-month anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, how many detainees are still languishing indefinitely in jails, especially in New York and New Jersey?
The government used this racial profiling as a weapon to deepen racial hatred, fear and suspicion within the U.S. population. Islamic charities had their assets frozen and were shut down as the government accused them of aiding and abetting "terrorists."
But as many can see after the Ashcroft/Mueller announcement, the U.S. government counterintelligence plot does not end with racial profiling. It was never the intention to stop there.
The next target has always been the U.S. political movement at home as well as those forces abroad that are challenging U.S. imperialist dominance in the Philippines, Palestine, Iraq, north Korea, Colombia and many other places.
Return of Cointelpro (see my other post about COINTELPRO http://www.siccness.net/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7345 and read about it in more depth)
Bestowing these powers on the FBI reeks of Cointelpro--or Counter-Intelligence Program--during its prime. This program was masterminded by the first FBI director, the infamous J. Edgar Hoover, who launched it in the early 1950s following the anti-communist witch hunts.
In its infancy Cointelpro's main targets were the emerging civil-rights movement, and later, more radical movements like the Black Panther Party, Young Lords, American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, anti-Vietnam war activists, the women's and gay liberation movements, and others.
Under the guise of safeguarding "U.S. national security," Hoover's operatives used every dirty trick in the book to discredit, undermine and destroy those organizations seeking racial justice and revolutionary social change. Cointelpro used surveillance on the leaders of these movements, including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Kwame Toure (then Stokeley Carmichael) and Jamil Ahmed Al-Amin (then H. Rap Brown).
These tactics included infiltration by FBI informants to foment divisions, frame-ups, imprisonment and murders.
Cointelpro was never totally dismantled, even after certain restrictions were imposed on the FBI in the 1970s in response to the devastating attacks on the political movement.
There are still victims of Cointelpro in jail today--mainly activists who have been imprisoned for 20, 30 or more years because of their political beliefs and actions. They include Mumia Abu-Jamal, Al-Amin, Sundiata Acoli, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Leonard Peltier, the MOVE 9 and hundreds more.
ANSWER: We won't be intimidated
The FBI and the Bush administration are hoping that this latest announcement of the escalation of so-called "counter-terrorism" will intimidate the political movement and stop it from achieving its goal of building a powerful anti-war, anti-racist struggle inside the United States.
The fact that Ashcroft and Mueller made their announcement following the historic march of 100,000 people in Washington, D.C., on April 20, indicates how nervous they are about this movement's full potential. This is why they feel so compelled to strengthen their repressive apparatus of harassment and finger pointing.
But this attempt to beat back the movement only strengthens the resolve of many political activists. That was evident at the June 1 anti-war conference organized by the International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition in New York. ANSWER was the main organizer of the April 20 Free Palestine demonstration.
Among the many fight-back proposals announced at the conference was a regional demonstration to be held at FBI headquarters in Washington on June 29 and simultaneous protests at federal offices in other cities.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice told the more than 600 conference participants: "Today we have launched a national fight-back movement to stop John Ashcroft and the FBI from bringing back the very worst features from J. Edgar Hoover's reign over domestic intelligence.
"Ashcroft's changes have been presented as an innocuous update of FBI procedures," said Verheyden-Hilliard. "This has become the preferred method of presentation by Ashcroft as the Justice Department shreds the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights."
"Ashcroft is facing a growing and powerful anti-war, anti-racist movement that won't be easily intimidated," said Larry Holmes, co-director of the International Action Center. "We're not going to let Ashcroft, the FBI, Bush and his right-wing gang tear up the Constitution with the complicity of the Democratic Party and Congress.
"We're not going to stand by silently and let them open up a war on political dissent, and stop the very necessary movement against his war-mongering, pro-rich madness."
