US Spying Isn't New

Published on Thursday, January 19, 2006 by the Boston Globe

by Sanford Gottlieb

Government Spying on Americans didn't start with President George W. Bush and the National Security Agency. I was spied on in the 1960s and 1970s. While working in 1961 for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, or SANE, a citizens group organized to halt nuclear testing, I spoke to a small gathering of people at a private home in Skokie, Ill. One of them was an undercover FBI agent. He wrote a report about the meeting, which I received years later with my extensive FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act. His muddled report managed to convey that I spoke about nuclear testing and the Kennedy administration's tentative plans for a civil defense program. Had I been a teacher grading the agent's sloppy paper, I would have given him an F. My CIA file, also courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that the CIA had opened my domestic mail. The target of the agency's mail snoopers was a letter I had sent to Rennie Davis, a radical leader in the anti-Vietnam War movement. By the mid-'60s, SANE had become the anchor of the movement's moderate wing, and I was urging Davis to drop his radical tactics. I have no idea what the snoopers made of this correspondence, but I know that domestic spying by the CIA was illegal then and remains illegal today. One day in 1971, the SANE office in Washington received a phone call from someone who had recently been discharged from Army Intelligence. He suggested that we check our mailing list for the name of R. Allen Lee Associates of Alexandria, Va., a cover for Army Intelligence. Sure enough, the name was there. In response we conducted a bit of guerrilla theater at the Bethesda home of then-Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. With cameras, notepads, and our ''SANE spy scope," we placed his home under our surveillance. The old Washington Star published photos of the caper with the headline, ''When turnabout is fair play." Spying on civilians, however, is not fun and games. It's a violation of our freedoms whose origin dates back over half a century. Anxiety about aggressive communism in the early Cold War years led to a host of government measures presumably designed to prevent espionage and sabotage. These measures soon spilled over into assaults on free speech and association. President Truman's loyalty program to purge communists from government designated the files of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, filled with hearsay, as an official source of evidence on federal employees' political ties. The Attorney General's List, a checklist of organizations accused of communist, fascist, or subversive views, was used to deny public employment to anyone associated with these groups. Right-wing groups then used the list to deny private employment to these individuals. The Smith Act made it a crime to advocate or teach the violent overthrow of the US government. Under the act, 11 leaders of the Communist Party were convicted of conspiracy to teach the violent overthrow of the government. Guilty they were of abject obedience to the Kremlin, but conspiracy to teach? Truman directed the FBI in 1950 to ''take charge of investigative work in matters relating to espionage, sabotage, subversive activities and related matters." Subversive activities remained ill-defined. But J. Edgar Hoover revealed what he had in mind: ''(Communists) utilize cleverly camouflaged movements, such as some peace groups and civil rights organizations, to achieve their sinister purposes." Within 10 years the FBI, whose director was feared by successive presidents, was infiltrating and disrupting some of these groups. The FBI went on to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. Now we learn that such groups as the ACLU, Greenpeace, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been under FBI surveillance. If this is the danger we face, it's our intelligence agencies that need scrutiny. Sanford Gottlieb was executive director of SANE and is author of ''Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit?" He was on President Richard Nixon's ''Enemies List."  © 2006 The Boston Globe