HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
----- Original Message ----- From: Karen Lee Wald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 10:58 PM Subject: Ashcroft's polie state not so new Towards a Police State ASHCROFT POISED TO UNLEASH THE FBI AGAINST U.S. POLITICAL, ELIGIOUS GROUPS ___________________________________________________________________ by Tom Burghardt Editor, Antifa Info-Bulletin SAN FRANCISCO, December 1, 2001--Three days shy of the 32nd anniversary of the FBI orchestrated assassination of Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, Attorney General John Ashcroft is planning to loosen restrictions on FBI spying on religious and political groups in the United States. With the "war against terrorism" as a flag of convenience, senior White House and Justice Department officials seek to "modify" rules governing FBI conduct, according to the New York Times. Unnamed DoJ officials allege that the Attorney General's guidelines, in place since the 1970s when disclosure of widespread abuses by the Bureau's domestic counterinsurgency program COINTELPRO shocked the country, are "outmoded and geared to obsolete investigative methods" that "at times hobbled FBI counterterrorist efforts." Leaving FBI Director Robert Mueller's mendacity aside, proposed "modifications" follow administration measures to establish secret military tribunals to try foreign terrorism suspects; the detention of more than 1,200 people, nearly all of whom are unconnected to the September 11 attacks; a government dragnet that seeks to interrogate more than 5,000 immigrants, mostly from the Middle East and license to monitor internet communications and conduct warrantless break-ins virtually at will. The latest blow to civil liberties from the illegitimate Bush regime, a government that came to power as the result of massive fraud and conspiracy, is one more step towards the imposition of a police state. Under current DoJ guidelines, the FBI is prohibited from infiltrating political groups or conducting surveillance operations at mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause that a crime is being planned or that a member may have broken the law. With the September 11 attacks as a pretext, and claiming that "some Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques," high-ranking members of the Bush Justice Department are seeking broad authority to spy on alleged terrorist suspects no matter where they are. Curiously, neither the Times nor "senior officials" have commented on the apparent double-standard used to determine which groups or churches are to be targeted. When neo-Nazi mass killer Timothy McVeigh was indicted for the 1995 Oklahoma City massacre, neither the Justice Department nor the FBI sought to infiltrate the network of white supremacist churches that nurtured McVeigh and his terrorist cohorts. And despite an on-going campaign of murder and arson by home-grown antiabortion militants, the government never used its formidable investigatory resources to smash the violent network of "holy warriors" spawned by the Christian Right. Could it be the Attorney General, a fundamentalist abortion opponent, is leery of alienating the reactionary social base of the Republican party? With more than enough circumstantial evidence to charge the administration with covering-up the massive intelligence failure--or worse--that led to the September 11 atrocity, the White House is moving with breath-taking speed to shred constitutional protections in the hope of preempting opposition from below; of real concern to political and economic elites given the serious nature of today's deepening economic and social crisis. If history is a guide for analyzing the scope of repressive policies now being implemented by this administration, we're in for a rocky ride. During the 1980s, the church-based Sanctuary movement and a score of Central American solidarity groups were targets of illegal FBI "counterterrorist" operations. Employing a former FBI employee as an infiltrator, the Bureau sought to undermine the work of individuals and organizations opposed to the Reagan administration's murderous policies. Thousands of U.S. citizens were targeted by FBI surveillance operations and "dirty tricks" by right-wing groups in cahoots with the Bureau. A similar pattern has emerged today among the ideological heirs of the John Birch Society-connected Western Goals and the alarmist Council for Inter-American Security. Just last month, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-wing pressure group founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, blasted academic opponents of Bush administration policies as "the weak link in America's response to the attacks." If an individual or a group can be demonized as a "weak link" in America's new holy war, are they not equally culpable as the criminals who obliterated the Twin Towers? As the administration fights a "war unlike any other," a nebulous conflict where "Americans need to watch what they say and what they do," aren't those who oppose the war guilty of giving "aid and comfort to the enemy"? Armed with a working definition of "terrorism" vague enough to include non-violent civil disobedience by antiglobalization demonstrators, environmentalists, or workers trying to prevent scab convoys from breaking a strike, aren't domestic dissidents therefore, terrorists in the eyes of the White House? In our brave new world "where everything has changed," it is but a short step from FBI surveillance of "terrorism suspects" to provocations by government informants and right-wing agents provocateurs to land an American citizen behind bars--or facing a firing squad after summary trial by a military tribunal. On December 4, 1969, after teaching a political education class at the Church of Epiphany, Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton returned home for a night-cap with friends. Unbeknownst to Hampton, FBI infiltrator William O'Neal, BPP Chief of Security and Hampton's personal bodyguard, drugged his drink. When the Chicago Police Department's Gang Intelligence Unit, using a floor plan provided by O'Neal, burst into the Hampton home and starting shooting, Fred Hampton offered no resistance. He couldn't because he was unconscious when Chicago police murdered him in cold blood: two shots were fired point-blank into his head. Is this what the Bush administration has in mind when they warn, "you're either with us or with the terrorists"? ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://TOPICA.COM/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
