Fifty years ago, legislators began to lift the cover to the shocking abuse of the most famous predecessor of the new bureau. The trouble is that very little has changed.
If the patel is confirmed by the FBI director this week, he will go to work in a building that bears the name of J. Edgar Hoover, headed by the agency and his predecessor under eight presidents. Everyone who grew up on Mars – as Elon Musk hopes that people will be in the coming years – it may seem unusual. In the end, in the Senate Investigation of the US Special Services – established on January 27, 1975 – that Hoover for decades organized an offense on an industrial scale, causing people to lose work, freedom and, in some cases, their lives.
On this occasion President Trump gave a fry a brief In order for the FBI to “arrange political opponents.” But do not expect that “political opponents” will mean progressive movements. Trump has already made it clear his intention to squeeze Palestine’s solidarity Executive order Giving each department and the Federal Government Agency 60 days to “identify all civil and criminal bodies and actions … that can be used to stop or combat anti -Semitism.”
Hoover would like the tasks, judging by the fact that Senator Frank Church and his committee discovered when they raised the cover on the FBI’s activities in 1975. Their report, published next year, was a blockbuster running on 2679 pages. It was made in front of the hard resistance from the successor of Guver Clarence Kelly who had refused to cooperate For six months, causing “great difficulties” for the main lawyer of Frederic Schwartz’s request. When an agreement was reached on the provision of the Church Committee to the FBI files, Schwartz found that “a significant number of relevant, very relevant and sensitive documents” was destroyed after Guver’s death in 1972.
Nevertheless, the church was exhibited. The final report shows that the FBI was engaged not only in very intrusive surveillance, but also in illegal hacks -on companies and secret operations known as Cintelpro to break the “sabotage” groups. Among his conclusions were:
- The FBI only developed more than 500,000 internal exploration files from 1939 to 1975, more than many in their field offices.
- A total of 130,000 private letters were opened and photographed in eight exemplary cities from 1940 to 1966.
- The FBI carried out hundreds of hacking, known as “jobs in a black bag” for plant microphones and theft of items such as membership and mailing lists.
- At least 26,000 people were at one point catalogized by the FBI as “be rounded in the case of a” national emergency “using the criteria that went beyond the law.
- The FBI regularly planted information about political activists in the press, in many cases in order to incite their violence.
- The FBI had thousands of informants for earnings whose espionage did not need warrants, and which was often given a bonus for the results, for example, $ 300 paid by William O’Nela, who provided a plan of the apartment where police shot Black Panther Fred Hampon in his bed .
- The FBI spent twice as much on the operations on “internal security” than in organized crime.
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However, the FBI failed to find out what was actually illegal. From the sample of 675 cases, the Schwartz team found that only seven persecutions were initiated – which only four led to a conviction.
However, the abuse of the Hoover had a huge impact on the other channels. As shown in the following academic studies, the intelligence used by the FBI, both officially and illegally, in several other ways with devastating consequences for tens of thousands of people.
According to David, the reason in Great fearThe FBI investigation has led to 2,700 civil dismissal and 12,000 resignation from public jobs within the federal loyalty program and refusal for 5312 people under the industrial staff security program. Set Rosenfeld, author SabotageHe says the secret “FBI duty program” has planted humiliating information anonymously at least 908 people, more than half of whom were fired or forced from the work of academic and local authorities.
Regarding the Committee on Nee -American Activities (Huac), a study at the University of Chicago find The fact that the exploration presented by the FBI was used as ammunition in 172 hearings, at which 3 079 witnesses were included in the public record of 16 700 names of “wrong behavior”, most of which were somehow blacklisted.
Witnesses who refused to cooperate with Huac will often be convicted of contempt for Congress and imprisoned. By -high, oriented propaganda The violent overthrow of the government, under which 145 people were charged, of whom were convicted and sentenced to 418 years in prison.
These developments were reflected locally in the United States. In almost every state there were mini-hauks, Smith’s replicas, oath of allegiance and black lists. For example, the California’s non -American activity committee, such as publish 15 reports and they have about 20,000 people and organizations during its 30-year existence. In New York, he says that the sustainable cleaning of schools and colleges during the 1950s ended with the displacement of 379 teachers from their work.
The central question faced by the church was whether the FBI should be banned to investigate “ideas or associations”. At the hearing on December 11, 1975, member of the Walter Mondail Committee times argued That such investigations should only take place by exception and “under the most stringent and most clear standards”, adding: “If we do not, I am convinced that this committee has failed and that in 50 years there will be hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings, just hearings , Just hearings, just hearings, just hearings will be listeners, just hearings like this, in which the excess we have revealed is repeated. “
How properly he was. Almost all 96 Church’s recommendations were either thrown away, diluted or not lengthen. Smith’s law was not abolished. New guidelines that require the FBI to have “specific and articulated facts” concerning possible violence before focusing on the political group replaced Already in 1983, only the “reasonable instructions” of such a threat and since then were further withdrawn.
The recommendation that court warrants should be obtained for observation, which led to the adoption of the Congress of Law on Foreign Intelligence (Fisa) in 1978, mutated in a secret court nod Almost every request, including volume permits since the office in 2008. Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee – established in response to the church’s call for “reinforced” Congress supervision – turned out to be hopelessly ineffective in life.
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While the impact of the Church of the Committee of Past Abuse was historical, the harsh reality is that it failed to lead to major changes in the mode of US intelligence services. The FBI did not even make cosmetic changes. Not only is his Kokwater headquarters are still named after Hover; His web -resite has a tribute to his third team Map de Loah, who continued to work at the agency as a consultant after the church request and was Saying hello When he died in 2013, the then director of FBI Robert Mueller as a person who supported the “highest ideals of the agency”.
The problem is based on the question of whom they consider the “undermining” interests they serve. In a decade after the church, the FBI target Group campaigning against US military intervention in Central America. The American Union of Civil Liberties detected In 2008, the FBI aimed anti -war groups such as Thomas Merton Center and united for peace and justice. In recent years it is installed supervision and ready Operations against racial justice activists. Now Pro-Palestine stock participants appear at the top of the list.
Worse, the FBI now has 38,000 employees, compared to 4602 witches hunting in 1950 – and access to technology outside the most amazing Guver dreams. While Washington’s policies are worried that this force is armed against each other, a true question for progressives is whether it is used for dissent repression.
A Guver Era Lesson is a classic saying that we don’t have to stand as long as they come for people whose views are not completely and even partially divided. Hoover may have started with the Communists, but the Social Democrats and Liberals soon ended up on their network. And just in the last stages of witches hunting opposed them with a mass character, as it happened with protests against Huac hearings San -huan In 1959 and San Francisco In 1960. These events were the beginning of the end for Huac, though also needed burglary In 1971, seven brave civilian rights defenders exposed the way how Goover turned to hidden actions, because another weapon in his war was denied him by progress.
Today, we must expect Trump and the fry to act quickly and fiercely to hack political dissent. Unfortunately, the liberal inability to fight for the implementation of the church report gave them to the FBI, which was still rooted in the Hoover culture.
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