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COINTELPRO
- md224 13y agoI actually thought about posting this as well... definitely required reading for anyone who believes the government would never abuse their powers to stifle dissent. Really sad chapter in American history.
- mindcrime 13y agoIn addition to COINTELPRO, it's interesting to read up on MK ULTRA, another US govt. program which engaged in illegal and unethical behavior, including conducting illegal experiments on unknowing / unwilling subjects who were US citizens. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5886782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5886782 I know some people will argue that this stuff is off-topic, and maybe it is in a certain sense. But there are a lot of younger readers on HN who probably aren't familiar with a lot of this history, and it helps explain why some people are so quick to distrust the US government. In light of the recent news about the NSA, IRS, etc., I think this is worthy of discussion.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- revelation 13y agoThere are more things we are still just learning about. See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
- coldtea 13y agoHa, that has been public knowledge in Europe since the early seventies...
- ihsw 13y agoI'm about as paranoid and distrustful of the USG as most people here but as the news unfolds it seems some senators and congressional representatives genuinely care about who they represent. The CSPAN meeting on Wednesday started out unpleasantly devoted to public-private cooperation and other back-patting but it very quickly took a sharp turn into a grilling and -- dare I say -- public flogging of General Alexander. Here is a short excerpt of the first shot across the bow of the NSA surveillance programs: http://pastebin.com/pqMxP0s6 http://pastebin.com/pqMxP0s6 I recommend reading the transcript along with the video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220078 http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220078 It starts at 49 minutes. After reading it now it looks very dry and uninteresting but the tonality and the volume of their verbal exchange was certainly reassuring.
- ics 13y agoI can't the video at the moment, who is the senator speaking?
- ihsw 13y agoThe Senator speaking at 49 minutes is Senator Leahy. Senator Leahy (D, Vermont): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leahy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leahy Other senators also ask some pointed questions, notably: Senator Johanns (R, Nebraska): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Johanns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Johanns Senator Merkley (D, Oregon): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Merkley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Merkley Senator Tom Udall (D, New Mexico): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Udall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Udall Also, Senator Feinstein -- despite being a bit of a wind-bag and despite her enthusiastic support for gun-control -- directed Wednesday's NSA/cyber-security hearing pretty well. The video offers some very interesting contrast between assumptions that all of congress is bought and paid for, and that voter apathy has translated directly to congressional apathy, but it's simply not true. Senators that look beyond the next election cycle (or their retirement) may be few and far between, but they're out there.
- aedocw 13y ago
- asveikau 13y agoI think COINTELPRO is pretty much reducible to a single man's nuttiness, that of J. Edgar Hoover. MKULTRA was CIA as I recall. Worth pointing out that these are different. CIA also has a lot of messy history overseas, in places like Latin America. But I have to say: > recent news about the NSA, IRS, etc. To paint recent stories about IRS with the same brush as the recent news about NSA, or to put IRS on the same level as COINTELPRO/MKULTRA... They're not nearly in the same ballpark. There's this trend on HN right now to say that anything government related (I hear they're putting floride in the water! Don't get me started about the post office!) must be in on the crazy conspiracy, and I find that attitude disappointing. It's not all the same.
- jdc 13y ago> reducible to a single man's nuttiness, that of J. Edgar Hoover ...which demonstrates that the executive branch wields a disproportionate amount of power, does it not?
- asveikau 13y agoI guess FBI is the executive branch, but one of the sneaky things about Hoover was his ability to transcend and defy presidents. A bit different from recent events with Bush and Obama in that sense. In this most recent iteration of the NSA story it seems like all three branches failed, with congress not giving enough of a crap and the courts rubber stamping everything.
- philwelch 13y ago> but one of the sneaky things about Hoover was his ability to transcend and defy presidents That's one of the reasons he's a suspect in the JFK assassination. The best part of this theory is the implication that discreetly disclosing each new president on exactly how JFK was assassinated tends to get them in line.
- mindcrime 13y agoI'm certainly not suggesting that there's one big, centralized, massive "crazy conspiracy". I'm just saying that there has been a lot of recent news, which hints that our government is not to be trusted, and that meme "the government is not to be trusted" is also supported by historical evidence as well, such as COINTELPRO, MK ULTRA, etc. For the record, I don't intend to posit any connection between, say, the IRS and MK ULTRA beyond what I just said.
- molmalo 13y agowho were US citizens It doesn't matter if they were us citizens or not. Take for example the Tuskegee syphilis experiment [1]. I don't know if you wrote that in order to make those experiments look even worse, but it shouldn't matter the nationality of those people. The fact that they were experimenting with them without their consent, it's just terrible... And they were doing it for 40 years! It looks like something taken from Josef Mengele's research book (and I can't think of a better case than this to appeal to Godwin's law[2]). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
- jholman 13y ago> "It doesn't matter if they were us citizens or not." Yyyyes and no. It depends on what you're discussing, and in what context. Medical experiments like Tuskegee and MK Ultra, I agree with you entirely. Wiretapping, it's a little different. I mean, non-Americans who're being spied on the by US government should be offended, maybe, but not quite the same level of outrage. It seems reasonable to demand that your own country follow its own law. If/when they break that law, there's an extra type of outrage that's appropriate. And American elected representatives purport to be agents of the citizens of the US (and they do not purport to be agents of humanity at large.. well, not as literally, anyway). If/when they act against the interests of the US citizenry, there's an extra type of outrage that's appropriate. Further, the harm that the NSA can do to a random citizen of, say, Germany, by spying on them, is modest. The harm that can be done to Americans, by being spied upon by hypothetical corrupt agents of their own government, is much steeper, I think.
- josephlord 13y agoSo you would only be offended but not outraged if the Chinese, Russian or the British government spying on you? The only thing that makes it worse that the NSA is spying on Americans is it seems completely contrary to any ordinary reading of the US law (and some reasonable readings of the constitution) and the NSA's remit. If the law (and constitution) was properly amended to allow it it would be less bad than spying on foreigners.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoCOINTELPRO / MK ULTRA despite not being directly related is a good example of the fact that both the FBI and the CIA have failed to restrain themselves properly.
- coldtea 13y agoAmericans knew all that in the sixties/seventies. Nobody would have doubted surveillance then, in the way that some young sophisticated people nowadays believe BS like official statements. The government, police etc was "the Man", etc, and they were tied with big corporate etc interests. And those "pigs" where against the blacks, the Vietnam war protesters, leftist students, workers etc etc. Those views might have been naive (in the utopian, free love and dope aspect), but were also very pragmatic (in the those in power are not using it in our favor) aspect. Then the Reagan eighties happened, and all those "hippy" stuff were scorned in favour of greed and careerism. Now, with Wall Street getting a trillion for their services in fucking up the economy, the middle class in worst prospects than ever, and the country in more abused mode than even during Nixon's reign, this "greed" didn't seem to have served the people well.
- dfc 13y agoIll be honest I'm glad you chose not to submit it. But you are correct it is required reading, and it was required reading in HS civics class and any 101 Intro to US History class. Its also tinfoil hat 101 so anyone who would find this interesting would have already stumbled across it if they were not previously exposed to it in a school setting. I'm all for cypherpunk/tinfoil hat stories on HN. I just expected the stories to be of a higher caliber and more interesting/nuanced than something as rudimentary as wikipedia's coverage of COINTELPRO.
- agf 13y agoI would bet not 1 in 100 high school students ever hear about COINTELPRO in school. If it was ever part of a standard civics curriculum it was briefly in the mid to late 70s.
- dfc 13y agoWe covered it in my american history class in high school (97ish).
- agf 13y agoI took both AP American History and AP Government at about the same time, at a very good school with a pretty liberal teaching staff. I never heard about COINTELPRO in either one. My only exposure to it before college was from my father who was a '70s activist. Even in university, most people in the progressive groups I was a part of hadn't heard of it. You had a very special teacher if you learned about it in High School.
- wpietri 13y agoYou said it. The number of people saying, "Well, if it isn't abused..." is mindboggling. Any system like this will be abused. The question is by whom, how often, and how the citizenry can hold them accountable. Because the program is so secret, I have zero faith that there are sufficient safeguards. America was founded on a distrust of unchecked power, and I think we should keep it that way.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago>Any system like this will be abused. Exactly, it happens every time.
- readme 13y agoTo be fair, some of the groups that COINTELPRO targeted were subversive. For example, the weather underground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground#Major_activities_and_suspected_activities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground#Major_activ... Ctrl+F "Bomb" ^^
- cyrus_ 13y agomany of them were "subversive", but very few were violently so.
- jlgreco 13y ago"To be fair, some of the people Stalin executed really were out to get him." What the fuck kind of justification is "some were accurately targeted"?
- scarmig 13y agoTo be fair, you've stepped into a giant pile of irony. Indeed, the Weathermen were a violent terrorist group that needed to be shut down. But very key point in the story: its members originally were an extremely radical but small faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Until its fracturing, the Weathermen had committed no crimes, and SDS was undoubtedly a legitimate organization to exist in a democratic society. And the irony? Well, the FBI played no small part in the fracturing of SDS. COINTELPRO planted agents who acted as infiltrators, agitators, disruptors, and agents provocateur, with the explicit goal of destroying SDS. So those bombs put more than a smidgeon of blood on the FBI's hands as well, and the FBI were every bit as much a malign anti-American, subversive influence as the Weathermen.
- ck2 13y agoNote that something similar was done to groups that protested the Iraq War. Some people who were known demonstrators ended up on the no-fly list.
- dxm 13y agoWith friends like these... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pen3isZj4cM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pen3isZj4cM
- e12e 13y agoFor anyone that's interested in the US history with dissidents, I recommend watching the documentary "The Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975)": http://blackpowermixtape.com/ (alt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5_qnnqyxQk )
- TempleOS 13y agoPersecution is the only way to Heaven. God will win.
- TempleOS 13y agoGod always wins. The World is perfectly just. God says... DISCLAIMER on_occassion beatings rage sovereignly exchanged opening business inferior needeth reproof don't_worry melody gloweth concupiscence imperfections hark encompasseth Defect Rome boundary begged class Fire God_smack render magnify lying sounded review
- namank 13y agoFBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order. So the only way to progress is...how again? I wonder how they view innovation, startups, and Silicon Valley.