Repeal FISA II

can be initiated upon an information made by a private individual. The opportunity thus present for the indulgence of personal spite and hatred or for furthering some selfish advantage or ambition need only be mentioned to be appreciated. Defense of the Nation by law, no less than by arms, should be a public, and not a private, undertaking. It is important that punitive sanctions for sedition against the United States be such as have been promulgated by the central governmental authority and administered under the supervision and review of that authority's judiciary (Page 350 U. S. 508).

  If that be done, sedition will be detected and punished no less, wherever it may be found, and the right of the individual to speak freely and without fear, even in criticism of the government, will, at the same time, be protected. " 18.

This is a contradictive statement.  If one who voices support methods, of helping the poor gets one on a surveillance list, this has a chilling effect on free speech.

In his brief, the Solicitor General states that forty-two States plus Alaska and Hawaii have statutes which, in some form, prohibit advocacy of the violent overthrow of established government. These statutes are entitled anti-sedition statutes, criminal anarchy laws, criminal syndicalist laws, etc. Although all of them are primarily directed against the overthrow of the United States Government, they are in no sense uniform. And our attention has not been called to any case where the prosecution has been successfully directed against an attempt to destroy state or local government. Some of these Acts are studiously drawn, and purport to protect fundamental rights by appropriate definitions, standards of proof, and orderly procedures in keeping with the avowed congressional purpose "to protect freedom from those who would destroy it, without infringing upon the freedom of all our people." Others are vague, and are almost wholly without such safeguards. Some even purport to punish mere membership in subversive organizations, which the federal statutes do not punish where federal registration requirements have been fulfilled. (Page 350 U. S. 509)

 The law that was passed in 1974, FISA, did not meet the standard expressed here, and of concern, of protecting Constitutionally protected rights, especially the right to due process and to Fourth Amendment protections.

 providing the general authority for a covert campaign against the U.S. Communist party. Officially, the law stripped the party of "the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States." Hoover saw the party as a peril to national security and ordered a large-scale effort to infiltrate and destabilize it.

One noteworthy victim of Cointelpro activities was the actress Jean Seberg and her subsequent suicide.  13.   Because of her support for the Black Panther Party, actress Jean Seberg was targeted for 'neutralization' by the FBI's COINTELPRO effort. SAC Richard W. Held, the author of the request, went on to become SAC San Francisco at the time of the bombing of Earth First activist Judi Bari. He subsequently retired from the Bureau to become Head of Security for Visa International. 19.

All of these documents and many, many more can be found in The Cointelpro Papers by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall (South End Press, 1990) ISBN 0-89608-359-4.

See Attachment for the FBI’s redacted memos. 

Concerning Jean Seberg, The Guardian states (April 25 2002): “More details are emerging of the FBI's breathtaking smear campaign against actress Jean Seberg, a campaign which probably drove her to suicide. Duncan Campbell reports.  20.

More than 30 years ago, a small item appeared in a gossip column in the Los Angeles Times which suggested that a prominent American actress, who was married to a well-known European, was expecting the child of a leading Black Panther. The story was taken up by Newsweek, which identified the actress as Jean Seberg and her husband as Romain Gary, the French writer and diplomat. The Black Panther was Ray "Masai" Hewitt, the party's minister of information.

Seberg was deeply upset by the story, gave birth prematurely and the child died after two days. The actress never fully recovered, say her friends, and she committed suicide. Now, the truth of how a malicious lie was planted by the FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover is emerging.

Seberg, an actress known for her work in the play “The Mouse That Roared’, married Romain Gary, and became increasingly involved in radical American politics, most notably as a supporter of the Black Panther party, which Hoover was then describing as the greatest threat to internal security in the US. The FBI labelled Seberg as a radical for her involvement.” 21.

 The FBI was deeply involved in covert operations against "radicals", whether they were leading protagonists such as Martin Luther King or minor players such as Seberg, who had given $US10,500 to the Panthers. Seberg's phone was tapped. When, in 1970, the FBI discovered she was pregnant, it decided to see if it could spread a story through gossip columns that the father was Hewitt.
 

An FBI memo, later disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act under the heading Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Groups, Racial Intelligence - Black Panther Party, was sent to Hoover himself. "Bureau permission is requested to publicize the pregnancy of Jean Seberg, well-known movie actress, by [deleted] Black Panther party [deleted] by advising Hollywood gossip columnists in the Los Angeles area of the situation," it read. "It is felt that the possible publication of Seberg's plight could cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the general public."

The memo suggested that a letter from a fictitious person would plant the rumour with gossip columnists. Hoover approved the tactic, though he advised waiting until Seberg was visibly pregnant so she would not suspect her phone had been tapped. The first paper to bite was the LA Times whose gossip columnist, Joyce Haber, ran the story under the headline of Miss A Rates as Expectant Mother. Although the story did not name Seberg, it gave enough clues for people to identify her: "a handsome European picked her for his wife ... the outgoing Miss A was pursuing a number of free-spirited causes, among them the black revolution . . . According [to] all those really 'in' international sources, topic A is the babe Miss A is expecting and its father. Papa's said to be a rather prominent Black Panther."

Haber's column was syndicated across the US in more than 100 newspapers. It was not long before Newsweek picked it up and printed Seberg's name. She was devastated.  22.

Seberg lost the baby. In 1979, she was found dead in a car in Paris having taken an overdose of barbiturates. She was 40, and by then married for a fourth time.

Cointelpro and Law (SWP v. Attorney General, et al.)

 (Page 350 U. S. 507)   Employing classic espionage techniques, FBI agents joined the party and recruited informants. They spread dissension at party meetings by raising embarrassing questions about the recent Soviet invasion of Hungary, for instance, or about Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who had been a hero to U.S. Communists. Agents also engaged in whispering campaigns identifying party members to employers and neighbors. The FBI intensified its harassment by enlisting the internal revenue service (IRS) to conduct selective tax audits of party members. And it spread rumors within the party itself—employing a practice known as snitch jacketing—that painted loyal members as FBI informants. In all, the government executed 1,388 separate documented efforts, and they worked: whereas party membership was an estimated twenty-two thousand in the early 1950s, it fell to some three thousand by the end of 1957. 23.

After his initial success, Hoover did not rest. From the late 1950s through the end of the 1960s, he unleashed his agents against a wide range of political groups. Some were civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Others were radical, such as the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the Socialist Workers party (SWP).

 In their scope and tactics, these FBI operations occasionally went much further than the original anti-Communist COINTELPRO effort. They involved at least twenty documented burglaries of the offices of the SCLC, an organization headed by Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover detested King, whom he called "one of the most reprehensible … individuals on the American scene today," and urged his agents to use "imaginative and aggressive tactics" against King and the SCLC. To this end, agents bugged King's hotel rooms; tape-recorded his infidelities; and mailed a recording, along with a note urging King to commit suicide, to the civil rights leader's wife. The COINTELPRO operation against the radical Black Panther party, which Hoover considered a black nationalist hate group, tried to pit the party's leaders against each other while also fomenting violence between the Panthers and an urban gang. In at least one instance, FBI activities did lead to violence. In 1969, an FBI informant's tip culminated in a police raid that killed Illinois Panther chairman Fred Hampton and others; more than a decade later, the federal government agreed to pay restitution to the victims' survivors, and a federal judge sanctioned the bureau for covering up the facts in the case.