FBI Knocking at Your Door

By Nat Hentoff, Village Voice. Posted February 13, 2002.

In the April 1, 1971, Village Voice ("Investigating the FBI"), I wrote of having received copies of files on private citizens that had been stolen from the Media, Pennsylvania, office of the FBI. So far as I know, the identities of those who "liberated" these documents have never been discovered by the FBI. There were no names or other clues on the papers I received.

There was, however, a statement of purpose by the people who, earlier that year, had broken into the FBI office. They called themselves "The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI" and said: "We believe that citizens have the right to scrutinize and control their own government...The FBI has betrayed its democratic trust, and we wish to present evidence for this claim to the open and public judgment of our fellow citizens."

I was not the only recipient of these files in 1971. Although Attorney General John Mitchell, on March 23, urgently asked the press not to publish any of these purloined documents, the next day the Washington Post printed a front-page story on the Media, Pennsylvania, operation.

The Washington Post said it was running the substance of the stolen files "in the public interest...We believe the American public...needs to think long and hard about whether internal security rests essentially upon official surveillance and the suppression of dissent or upon the traditional freedom of every citizen to speak his mind on any subject, whether others consider what he says wise or foolish, patriotic or subversive."

Having read all the files, and there were many, I wrote in the Voice that "none of these people are under surveillance because they have broken any laws."

For example, an FBI memorandum said of a college senior under surveillance that she "is known to be an inverterate [sic] Marxist revolutionist, and a type of person that should be watched, as she will probably be very active in revolutionary activities."

However, the files also revealed that an FBI informer had talked to this probably dangerous young woman "and received no indication that she was anything other than the average liberal-minded student that is common" among those being watched by the FBI. Nonetheless, she was to be kept under surveillance to see whether, in time, she might qualify for insertion into the FBI's Security Index.

The FBI was also very interested in a professor who, along with his wife and children, lived in a "house that numerous college students visit frequently"; the same professor had been inviting "controversial speakers" to his prestigious liberal arts college before "clearing with others." That tip came from the college's chief switchboard operator ("conceal identity due to position at the school").

More than 30 years later, after September 11, 2001, the FBI once again encouraged the citizenry to be watchful -- to join the war on terrorism through the Web site of the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC). As reported in the November 15 Washington Post, the hypertext link near the top of the IFCC's home page (www.ifccfbi.gov) reads: "If you have any information regarding the terrorist attack on September 11, please click here." The tips have been streaming in.

On January 8, the front page of the Christian Science Monitor featured a story by Kris Axtman of its Houston bureau: "Political Dissent Can Bring Federal Agents to Door." Her report showed that even though J. Edgar Hoover -- whose name graces the FBI building -- has departed for the great beyond, the FBI has not lost its zeal.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »