We need to know if abuses committed in the past (targets of the abuse - already know this) are also being committed in the execution of the War on Terror.
From: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans 1976 US Senate Report on Illegal Wiretaps and Domestic Spying by the FBI, CIA and NSA by the Church Committee (US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities Within the United States)
1. “targets of intelligence activity have ranged far beyond persons who could properly be characterized as enemies of freedom and have extended to a wide array of citizens engaging in lawful activity.” P. 7
2. “The government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.” P.10
3. “Government officials – including those whose principla duty is to enforce the law – have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.” P. 11
4. “Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.” P. 11
5. “Intelligence agencies have collected vast amounts of information about the intimate details of citizens’ lives and about their participation in legal and peaceful political activites.” P. 12
6. “The overwhelming number of excesses continuing over a prolonged period of time were due in large measure to the fact that the system of checks and balances – created in our Constitution to limit abuse of Government power – was seldom applied to the intelligence community. “P. 17
7. “But in the most basic harm was to the values of privacy and freedom which our Constitution seeks to protect and which intelligence activity infringed on a borad scale.” P. 18
8. “In light of the record of abuse revealed by our inquiry, the Committee is not satisfied with the position that mere exposure of what has occurred in the past will prevent its recurrence. Clear legal standards and effective oversight and controls are necessary to ensure that domestic intelligence activity does not itself undermine the democratic system it is intended to protect.” P. 22
9. “Since the re-establishment of federal domestic intelligence programs in 1936, there has been a steady increase in the government’s capability and willingness to pry into, and even disrupt, the political activities and personal lives of the people. The last forty years have witnessed a relentless expansion of domestic intelligence activity beyond investigation of criminal conduct toward the collection of polticial intelligence and the launching of secret offensive actions against Americans.” P. 22
10. “Viewed separately, each finding demonstates a serious problem in the conduct and control of domestic intelligence operations.” P. 97
11. “A distressing number of programs and techniques developed by the intelligence community involved transgressions against human decency that were no less serious than any technical violations of the law.” P. 100
12. “At times knowledge of illegal programs and techniques has been concealed from Congress as well as executive branch officials.” P. 108
13. “The central problem posed by domestic intelligence activity has been it departure from the standards of law.” P. 117
14. Some of the things done:
1. exaggerated the threat of Communism – p. 41
2. investigated the NAACP for 25 years p. 40
3. “conducted covert programs in violation of laws protecting the rights of Americans” p. 44
4. kept information from Congress and the Attorney General P. 44
5. targeted domestic dissenters P. 50
6. developed covert programs to disrupt and discredit domestic political groups p. 53
7. “As domestic intelligence activity increasingly broadened to cover domestic dissenters under many different programs, the government intensified the use of covert techniques which intruded upon individual privacy.”
8. “The targets for FBI intelligence collection have included:
the Women’s Liberation Movement
the conservative Christian Front and Christian Mobilizers of Father Coughlin
the conservative American Christian Action Council of Rev. Carl McIntyre
a wide variety of university, church and political groups opposed to the Vietnam War
those in the non-violent civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council, the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Council on Racial Equality (CORE).
“The Army’s nationwide intelligence surveillance program created files on some 100,000 Americans and an equally large number of domestic organizations encompassing virtually every group seeking peaceful change in the United States” P. 118
|
|