Targeting Dissent

Thursday 15 September 2011

by: Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts | Special Feature

Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland" [4]is a collaborative project with Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts.

How little - yet how much - has changed in the last 40 years. The COINTELPRO papers sound distinctly 21st century as they detail the monitoring of perceived threats to "national security" by the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), Secret Service, and the military, as well as the intelligence bureaucracy's war on First Amendment protest activity.

The Church Committee investigation concluded [5] in 1976 that the "unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order."