Remembering Why We Are Americans
Nat Hentoff
Who’s That Next to Us at the Meeting?
Remembering Why We Are Americans
A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed. ?Sam Adams of the Sons of Liberty and Committees of Correspondence, Boston, Massachusetts, 1771
Right after John Ashcroft revived the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover (its headquarters, after all, is named after him), The Bill of Rights defense committee of Northampton, Massachusetts (Voice, July 2), reacted by recalling Hoover’s disgraced COINTELPRO program, which serially abused the Bill of Rights:
“In the 1970s, the Senate banned COINTELPRO because of its unconstitutional character. The FBI had invaded privacy in order to disrupt lawful political activity. . . . By banning COINTELPRO, Congress declared illegal what was obviously unconstitutional. It was a major step forward for democracy in this country.
“Now Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Bush . . . have unilaterally placed in jeopardy the right to organize peacefully and legally, [putting] our communities at risk. Who is sitting next to us at city council, church, peace, or ACLU meetings? And what will that mean to the outcome of that meeting or to our individual security?”
These citizens of Northampton are well aware of what constitutional lawyer David Cole wrote in the valuable June 3 “Striking Back” issue of The Nation:
“National-security types often assure us that wartime diminutions of civil liberties are only temporary. But this is likely to be a permanent war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the war will not be over?and the prisoners on Guantanamo will not be released?until there are no terrorist organizations of potentially global reach left in the world.
“Given that modern technology gives practically everyone ‘global reach,’ that day will never come. . . . The only certainty is that we will see further erosions of our privacy, our freedoms, and our principles.”
Also in that June 3 issue of The Nation is an ominous and revealing piece by Robert Dreyfuss (”The Cops Are Watching You”), which details the increasing interconnections among the FBI, state and local intelligence units, and anti-terrorism squads. For one example, there is veteran FBI agent Mike Clemens, now stationed in Baltimore, who assembles and directs Maryland’s FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). To determine which groups under surveillance might be involved in violent activity, Clemens told Dreyfuss, a wide spectrum of organizations has to be monitored….The Village Voice
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