FBI Has Tawdry History Of Political Chicanery, But Not At Mar-a-Lago
This is another of those “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” moments.
Trump made the outrageous comments in January 2016, after he had won the presidential election over Hilary Clinton with more than a little help from the Russians. So far, he seems to have been right, having survived the equivalent of murder by stepping over two impeachments and multitudes of lawsuits.
Now, we have the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, described as FBI agents gone “rogue” by the esteemed House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who is the second most powerful Republican in the House.
“Frankly, we’re very strong supporters of law enforcement,” Scalise said in a Fox New interview, “and it concerns everybody if you see some agents go rogue and if you see an agency that doesn’t have the right checks and balances at the top. This is coming from the top.”
As they say, hey Scalise, show me the money or in this case, show me the proof of “rogue” agents. You can’t because there is none because the FBI got permission from a federal judge to search Mar-a-Lago for highly sensitive, top secret documents that mysteriously made their way from the White House to the southern castle, shortly before the clown ruler’s reign had ended.
To claim that the FBI has targeted individuals and groups is historical fact; to claim that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was politically targeted is pure Republican fantasy crafted to show that their dear leader is squeaky clean and was victim of, yet, another political witchhunt.
The irony escapes Republicans that the FBI was in fact weaponized and used for political purposes back in the heady days of the 1960s when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was hell bent on destroying reputations of civil rights leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, while federal agents wiretapped, trailed, infiltrated, discredited and assassinated radical members of the Black Panthers and other domestic political organizations.
The secret effort, known as COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program, was active from 1956–1971 and was created to “increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections” inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).” Through the years, the effort grew to attack individuals and groups who posed a threat to the U.S., according to Hoover.
The program was secret until 1971, when the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pa., took several dossiers and exposed the program by passing material to news agencies. When COINTELPRO became publicly known, there was not a murmur of opposition from Republicans while Democrats held hearings that led to a series of new laws protecting the civil rights of Americans. A Senate report on COINTELPRO said the FBI’s motivation was ostensibly “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.”
FBI records show that COINTELPRO targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement including King, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), independence movements including Puerto Rican independence groups such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and far-right groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States’ Rights Party.
Hoover ordered agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of movements that he deemed a threat to the U.S. and their leaders. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs, giving written approval for limited wiretapping of King’s phones “on a trial basis.” Hoover extended the clearance so agents were “unshackled” to look for evidence in any areas of King’s life they deemed worthy.
In 1973, King led the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” leading Hoover to single out King for COINTELPRO action. Bill Sullivan, a high ranking aid to Hoover later wrote that, “In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech. … We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.”
The FBI began bugging King’s home and hotel rooms. When King said the FBI did not pay enough attention to stopping terrorism by white supremacists, Hoover responded by calling King the most “notorious liar” in the country. The FBI later sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide because of his alleged sexual indiscretions secretly recorded by the FBI.
On Dec. 4, 1969, as part of COINTELPLRO, police, working with the FBI, raided a Chicago home, killing Mark Clark, a member of the Black Panther Party and Fred Hampton, state chairman of the Black Panthers. A coroner’s inquest ruled the deaths to be justifiable homicide. Survivors and relatives of Clark and Hampton sued the City of Chicago and the FBI and settled with each defendant, paying $616,333 to a group of nine plaintiffs.
In 1971, the FBI allegedly financed, armed and controlled a group called the Secret Army Organization, an extreme right-wing collection of former members of the Minutemen anti-communist paramilitary organization. The organization based in San Diego, Calif., targeted groups, activists and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts. The ACLU has claimed that the organization had FBI support, though the FBI denied it.
The Minutemen was formed in the early 1960s by Robert DePugh, a biochemist from Norborne, Mo. The group worked against the rise of Communism and organized into small cells and stockpiled weapons for an anticipated counter-revolution. In 1966, DePugh was arrested on federal weapons charges, which were later dismissed. Minutemen offices were bombed in 1967 and in February 1968, DePugh was indicted by a federal grand jury in Seattle, Wash., for conspiracy to commit bank robbery and for violation of federal firearms laws. He was convicted in 1970 and released after serving three years in prison.
The Secret Army Organization was created by Howard B. Godfrey and Jerry Lynn Davis, former members of the Minutemen. In 1971 and 1972, the Secret Army Organization engaged in a variety of criminal and provocative behavior as they fire-bombed cars, burglarized the homes of antiwar protestors and ransacked protesters’ places of work.
In April 1972, the FBI recruited a member of the San Diego Police Department’s anti-subversive “Red Squad” unit, Gil Romero, because he had experience as an FBI informant, and J.M. Lopez, an undercover San Diego police officer. The ACLU claimed that the new unit planned to lure Lincoln Bueno, a member of the left-wing Chicano organization Brown Berets, over the border into Tijuana, Mexico, where he would be murdered by Mexican Federal police over a contrived cache of smuggled firearms. The conspiracy was abandoned when the Republican convention was transferred to Miami Beach, Fla.
Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by COINTELPRO and were assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes. Targets included Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marshall Conway. Common tactics used by COINTELPRO were perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation, and withholding of exculpatory evidence.
One COINTELPRO plan proposed embarrassing and tarnishing the image of actress Jean Seberg, a financial supporter of the Black Panthers, by exposing the fact that she was pregnant. Many others similarly targeted for harassment ranged from Muhammad Ali, because of his links with the Nation of Islam; writer James Baldwin, a leading opponent of racism; Ernest Hemingway and anti war provocateur Abbie Hoffman.
In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the “Church Committee” after its chairman, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. The committee found that that “COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government’s power to proceed overtly against dissident groups.” Congress and court cases concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.
Within the year, Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled case by case.
COINTELPRO was the most extensive government spy program but presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Richard M. Nixon had their own surveillance schemes, both legal and illegal.
President Roosevelt asked the FBI to record the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his “national defense” policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide’s efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.
President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
The Kennedy administration had the FBI wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist and a Washington law firm.
President Johnson had the FBI conduct “name checks” of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
President Nixon (1969–1974) authorized a program of wiretaps, which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court Justice.
So, yes, the nation has a long history of using its government agencies for political reasons. But don’t be misled; the raid at Mar-a-Lago had everything to do with a former president breaking the federal law involving top secret information and nothing to do with politics.