ACLU: Wake\r\nUp and Pay Attention\r\n<\/p>
Author: Stephen DeVoy<\/b><\/p>\r\n
The ACLU has been investigating FBI abuses of the PATRIOT Act with regard\r\nto the harassment of peaceful protesters and their organizations. I\r\nsupport this investigation. It is necessary and I believe it will bear\r\nfruit. However, by limiting its investigation to the FBI, the ACLU is\r\nmissing the lion's share of the new COINTELPRO. The new COINTELPRO is not\r\nan FBI project. The real force behind the new COINTELPRO is the Department\r\nof Defense. The FBI is just one of many actors doing the DoD's bidding.<\/b><\/p>\r\n
The new COINTELPRO relies heavily on electronic communications to do its\r\ndirty-work. This has served it well as most of their targets are not\r\ncomputer scientists and have been mystified as to the origins of the harassment\r\nthey have been receiving. In choosing me as a target, the new COINTELPRO\r\nmade a serious error in judgment. I am a computer scientist, I did work\r\nfor the Information Awareness Office, I am an activist, and I have spent three\r\nyears of my life investigating and documenting the harassment. The\r\nevidence overwhelming points to a COINTELPRO operation coordinated not by the\r\nFBI but by the Department of Defense. Yes, the FBI is a player in the new\r\nCOINTELPRO, but there are many other players as well, including but not limited\r\nto, defense contractors, local police departments and private volunteers. \r\nThis combination of players has allowed the new COINTELPRO to engage in acts\r\nthat are well beyond the scope of the old COINTELPRO in terms of their abuse of\r\nprivate information and their blatant interference in the lives of targets.<\/b><\/p>\r\n
The new COINTELPRO hides behind quasi-private covers. It shows\r\nitself to the world in multiple faces, each of which appears to be directed at a\r\nsmall number of targets. This creates the illusion that there is no\r\ncentralized COINTELPRO operation. The new COINTELPRO hosts its harassment\r\nand recruitment websites on private servers. These websites are owned by\r\ndefense contractors and registered anonymously. They include classic bully\r\nsites, spoofed IndyMedia websites, and online forums ostensibly providing open\r\nspace for political discussion but actually used to mine IP addresses and supply\r\ninput for the creation of profiles on the political beliefs of their users.<\/b><\/p>\r\n
In my own case, one private corporation, a defense contractor working for\r\nthe DIA, provides the COINTELPRO operation with illegal telephone\r\nmonitoring. It has obtained this access under a program to develop a\r\nsystem for the Information Awareness Office that would look for telephone\r\ncalling patterns of suspected terrorists. This is not conjecture. I\r\ncan provide the ACLU with compelling evidence that they work for the DoD, that \r\nthe telephone monitoring project was allocated to them by DARPA (\"his researchers had already built a system to identify phone-calling patterns\"<\/i>),\r\nthat they have\r\nmonitored my telephone conversations and that they have refused to deny having\r\nsuch access. Another private corporation, a contractor for Homeland\r\nSecurity involved in the new CAPS system is the source of the claims of this\r\nCOINTELPRO operation that I am on the no fly list. This private contractor\r\nalso received information from airlines containing personal details of\r\npassengers as documented in the press. The two corporations mentioned in\r\nthis paragraph share direct personal connections.<\/b><\/p>\r\n
I can provide statements by the new COINTELPRO operation that they are\r\n\"COINTELPRO with a military twist\" and that they employ U.S. military\r\nPsyOps personnel. I can provide the transcripts of an email dialog\r\ninitiated by an individual at U.S. Army Central Command. In this dialog he\r\nattempts to prompt me to express support for al-Qaeda. I have documented\r\nthe illegal revision of my websites by the U.S. Government. In these\r\nrevisions, statements critical of Donald Rumsfeld were repeatedly deleted by\r\nCOINTELPRO. I can provide the ACLU with information on where they can\r\nobtain the identity of officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency that\r\nvisited my former employer in order to have me removed from my job.<\/b><\/p>\r\n
The important point to this article is that the ACLU needs to expand its\r\ninvestigation of COINTELPRO. The FBI is a small part of this\r\nprogram. Most of the blatantly illegal activities of the new COINTELPRO\r\nare being executed by the Department of Defense and its contractors, not by the\r\nFBI.<\/b><\/p>\r\n\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"If the ACLU is to expose COINTELPRO, they need to expand their project to include the Defense Intelligence Agency and military contractors.","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2005\/01\/120741.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}