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   Vol.66/No.8            February 25, 2002 
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
February 25, 1977
Did the agents watch from parked cars or shaded doorways? Or did they just wait for a police dispatch?

The FBI documents don't tell.

The September 6, 1969, teletype from the New York FBI reports only the results of the stake-out: "four girls" departed in a Volkswagen for the women's protest outside the Miss America pageant.

In the following years the agents stop calling women girls. But the 1,377 pages of FBI files on the women's movement released this month under a Freedom of Information Act request show that the government did not give up its contempt for women or its crusade against women's rights.

The files show that every woman who wanted equal rights, who went to consciousness-raising "rap" groups, public meetings, picket lines, speakouts, conferences, demonstrations, or women's art fairs--all these women were targets of FBI surveillance and action.

When women's liberation swept the country in the late 1960s, the FBI didn't know what to make of it.

J. Edgar Hoover sent out the order: find who is behind this conspiracy. Find the group called "Women's Liberation Movement" (WLM in the FBI files) and its officers. Around the country agents scurried to find the WLM headquarters. The Chicago FBI office sent back a bewildered reply: "[blank space] had no information concerning a group or organization called 'Women's Liberation Movement.'"

The report added, "It would seem that an abortive attempt may have been made to organize or affiliate all women into an organization but it never materialized."

February 25, 1952
New testimony on the frightful cost of U.S. "liberation" to Korea and the Koreans is given by Reginald Thompson, formerly Korean war correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, conservative paper.

Thompson points out that the U.S. was able to bring to bear on Korea a tremendous force of air and sea power, as well as tanks and heavy artillery, that was able to operate almost at will and without interference. "Never could modern weapons and 'total interdiction' have a better chance to prove themselves," says Thompson.

Thompson personally observed the results of the U.S. policy. "On each and every occasion, advance was preceded by air and artillery attack on a very heavy scale, quite out of proportion to the resistance, real or imaginary. It became apparent from the outset that the purpose was to win by these methods alone; to obliterate the enemy."

But the "enemy"--that is the north Korean troops--were not obliterated and continued to fight. "In short, little had been achieved beyond the destruction of civilians lives and property."

From this observation of the unspeakable atrocities committed in Korea by U.S. imperialism, Thompson draws a general observation:

"Thus in Korea we see the new trend and pattern of warfare for the first time. In the 1914–18 war civilians were included. In the 1939–45 war civilians became equal targets with soldiers. Today civilians have become the main target. That is the meaning of 'total interdiction' and the atom bomb carries it to its conclusion."  
 
 
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