BY MARK FRIEDMAN
LOS ANGELES - Responding to federal government attempts
to expand FBI spying and harassment, the Militant Labor
Forum sponsored a discussion here in June that drew a full
house. A broad panel of speakers reviewed past spy agency
disruption of the antiwar, civil rights, socialist, and
labor movements and called for public action to stop the
passage of the bipartisan "anti-terrorism" measures,
approved by the Senate shortly after the meeting took
place. These are now under debate in the House.
Tony Russo, a defendant with Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers trial in the early l970s, told how he spent 47 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with government investigators. Russo said that after the Vietnam War "the government brought the whole Saigon terror apparatus here- and set them down in Orange County. They worked with the U.S. government against other liberation movements, against antiwar activists, and those seeking normalization of relations with Vietnam. Some were even shot and physically attacked."
Frank Wilkinson, head of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, also spoke. He fought in the 1950s against the House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkinson pointed out that "there is little difference between the Republican [`counterterrorism'] bill and the pre-Oklahoma City bill introduced by Clinton, which allows the government to wiretap without a court order and denies organizations the right to appeal if they are named a terrorist organization."
"Who is it who defines terrorism?" asked Omar Ricci of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Center of Southern California. Ricci reported that in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing his group received threatening calls as did other Islamic groups and numerous individuals.
FBI harassment and infiltration of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) began in 1981 and continued for four years. Don White, a spokesperson for CISPES, said the organization's goals included trying to prevent the deportation of Salvadoran refugees, raising humanitarian aid, and stopping U.S. intervention. "It turned out that the INS was sending the names of deportees back ahead of time, so the refugees never got through the airport in San Salvador. The military knew the political history of who was coming back and picked them up," he said.
Nelson Blackstock, author of Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom, published by Pathfinder, reviewed the historic lawsuit by the Socialist Workers Party against the FBI and other government agencies, which revealed a 50year spying and disruption operation against the party.
Now, said Blackstock, "they say they need to loosen the reins of the FBI: the bogeyman is no longer communism but terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. The real target is neither Arabs nor right-wing patriots but the working class and its ability to link up and solidarize with workers around the world facing an economic crisis."