------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 20, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
FBI VS. BERKELEY STUDENTS IN 1960'S: HOW GOV'T TRIED TO STIFLE FREE SPEECH By Monica Moorehead On June 6 President George W. Bush announced plans to establish a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security in order to combat "domestic terrorism." The estimated cost of consolidating dozens of intelligence agencies under one department is over $37 billion. This announcement came just a week after a press conference by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Executive Director Robert Mueller announcing that both the CIA and FBI would suspend any remaining limitations on surveillance and spying. Their unstated target is progressive movements and individuals, especially if they oppose war and government repression. There is a precedent for this: the FBI's counter- intelligence program known as Cointelpro. On June 9 the San Francisco Chronicle published a special report, "The Campus Files," by staff writer Seth Rosenfeld based on 200,000 pages of FBI documents the newspaper had obtained. The report was about a counter-intelligence campaign against the University of California (UC) campus movement during the 1960s and 1970s. The Chronicle first applied for these secret records back in 1985, using the Freedom of Information Act. The paper finally obtained them 17 years later after three lawsuits. A number of important sources have clearly been eliminated from these files. The report shows that while today, the excuse is fighting "terrorism," the FBI decades ago was a brutal suppressor of the right to free speech, protest and expression under the guise of fighting communism. The report can be found at www.sfgate.com. These particular FBI records date back to the 1940s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was established as the Cold War was being ushered in. The FBI was run with the iron fist of its first executive director, the fanatical anti-communist J. Edgar Hoover. The campaign against the California student movement began on Nov. 9, 1945, when FBI agents began surveillance of George Eltenton, a suspected spy for the Soviet Union who lived on the Berkeley campus. Five years later, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were arrested and tried on charges of being spies for the Soviet Union. Three years later, they were legally lynched. Besides going after trade unionists, artists and civil rights activists during the witch hunt, the FBI also targeted radical campus professors and students who were members of socialist and communist organizations or who were generally sympathetic to the plight of workers and the downtrodden. A Feb. 17, 1951, secretive directive sought to remove them from their jobs and schools, along with state and local agencies and public utilities. California State Senator Hugh M. Burns, a noisy anti- communist, issued a June 1951 report that the UC had "... aided and abetted the international communist conspiracy in this country" and that this was especially true of the Berkeley campus, which Burns accused of being a base for Soviet spies seeking U.S. atomic information. The FBI then decided to target UC Berkeley's first chancellor, Clark Kerr, who grew up in a pacifist family. Kerr could hardly be characterized a radical. In fact, he signed the loyalty oath and also upheld a university policy that teachers who believed in communist ideas were "too biased to teach." What raised the ire of the FBI was that Kerr did defend the right of professors not to sign the loyalty oath. For the next several years, the FBI did everything it could to force Kerr out of office because he might be "an undercover Communist." Besides Kerr, the FBI accused other UC faculty members of subscribing to radical publications, approving a play that supported the Chinese Revolution, and being gay. ANTI-HUAC PROTESTS LAUNCHED STUDENT MOVEMENT On May 13, 1960, hundreds of demonstrators, a large number of them from UC Berkeley, staged a protest against HUAC hearings being held at San Francisco City Hall. The police fire-hosed them as they attempted to crash the hearings. This vicious attack along with the arrests of dozens of protesters brought out 5,000 anti-HUAC demonstrators the following day, shocking the FBI and local authorities. This outpouring led to the demise of the HUAC hearings and helped to launch the powerful Free Speech movement on California campuses, especially Berkeley. Hoover sent out a memo entitled, "Communist Target--Youth: Communist Infiltration and Agitation Tactics." Coupled with the sit-in movements begun by Black college students against segregated lunch counters in the South, campuses throughout the country were emerging as important organizing centers for social change. REAGAN AND THE FBI The files confirm that former President Ronald Reagan had a very cozy relationship with the FBI dating back to 1947, when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. Reagan and his wife of that time, Jane Wyman, testified before HUAC, providing names of fellow actors they thought were communist sympathizers. Reagan went out of his way to prove how virulently anti-communist he was. He even tried to directly contact Hoover on more than one occasion. Once he became California's governor in 1966, Reagan became a target of the campus movement, which organized massive protests against the Vietnam War and in support of Black, Latino, women and lesbian and gay liberation movements. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
