Laura Donohoe Quotes
This was a process of infiltrating left-leaning organizations and spreading information about the members so that they would lose their jobs…. They caused anti-war activists to be evicted from their homes, disabled their cars, intercepted their mail. Wiretapped and bugged their conversations, prevented them from renting facilities, incited others to harass them, and disrupted peaceful organizations
Laura Donohoe, Historian, Attorney & National Security / Intelligence Expert, Director of The Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law, Description of the Illegal FBI Mode of Operating in the 1960’s Contelpro Program as revealed by the Church Committee Hearings, C-SPAN, “Congressional Oversight of Intelligence Activities”, June 9, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Senator Church was the chairman of the committee. It’s reports (14 in all) are the most extensive documentation of U. S. intelligence ever compiled.
The FBI was accused of tapping congressional phones and infiltrating college campuses:
Kennedy was not being literal, but was sarcastically joking about the overemphasis that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI leadership was placing on investigating civil rights leaders and communists instead of investigating the hundreds of Southern murders and assaults on civil rights workers and organized crime. The FBI leadership was itself quite racist at the time, and Hoover never wanted to take on organized crime. He did not regard organized crime as an existential threat to the United States (the way he did about civil rights demonstrations) and he feared that with the big money available to organized crime, many of his agents would be corrupted.
The NRA has not only become extremely right wing organization from its early non-partisan posture, but a few of the officers have demonstrated an anti-government paranoia that most extremists would think extreme such as this quotation. Here he is on political company with the Black Panthers, the KKK, the Aryan Nation and the most extreme of the “lunatic fringe”
Hirsh had uncovered CIA illegal surveillance of anti Vietnam war protesters in the late 1960s. They broke two sets of laws. First, the CIA had no authority to investigate and track American Citizens anywhere but particularly American citizens. Second, the FBI which did have the authority to investigate Americans, were not allowed to use the methods that the CIA did. They violated not only Federal Law and Rules, but also violated the 4th Amendment Rights of thousands of citizens.
Dr. Minton was one of the few physicians in Texas who performed abortions. He gets constant death threats by people who claim to be devout Christians. He carries and sleeps with a handgun, and knows how to use it.
This incredible quotation exposed the illegal COINTELPRO program whereby FBI Director Hoover not only ordered the FBI to illegally spy on African American organizations, but actually interfere with their operations and by leaking personal sexual information and trying to ruin the reputations of numerous Black leaders including Rev. Martin Luther King. This memo actually specifically named and targeted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. Hoover ordered that the program be kept secret {584582}. However, in what is a humorous historical twist, a civil rights organization organized a “black bag” burglary—the same kind of illegal break in that the FBI had been practicing against Black groups and others—broke into an FBI field office and stole this and other documents which they then made public. Otherwise the contents of this program might never have come to light.
This instruction referred to the illegal COINTELPRO program whereby FBI Director Hoover not only ordered the FBI to illegally spy on African American organizations, but actually interfere with their operations and by leaking personal sexual information and trying to ruin the reputations of numerous Black leaders including Rev. Martin Luther King. See {584581}. This illegal program actually specifically named and targeted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. Hoover ordered that the program be kept secret. However, in what is a humorous historical twist, a civil rights organization organized a “black bag” burglary—the same kind of illegal break in that the FBI had been practicing against Black groups and others—broke into an FBI field office and stole this and other documents which they then made public. Otherwise the contents of this program might never have come to light.
Senator Church was the chairman of the committee. It’s reports (14 in all) are the most extensive documentation of U. S. intelligence ever compiled.
The FBI asked the Attorney General's permission to plant bugs under certain circumstances:
The FBI director had become so powerful and unchecked by Congress or the President he used the FBI to assemble files on those whom he wanted including political figures. On many occasions he used these for various forms of blackmail, never for money, but to solicit compliance or support or obtain silence or cessation of opposition to positions he favored—especially the prerogatives of the FBI.
This was a critical shortcoming in that the NSA had the personnel for electronic intelligence. It was the major job of the CIA to place human agents—abroad—who could act as spies and/or recruit or manage spies.
Jones constantly told King and other associates that the FBI was tapping their telephone conversations. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a right wing paranoid who imagined communists throughout the government. Jones turned out to be right. During that period, the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the FBI was listening, recording, and transcribing, every single phone call to or from King including the conference calls and calls with his attorney. FBI Director received frequent briefings on what King and his associates were doing. Although he ordered the wiretaps, it was Robert F. Kennedy, then the Attorney General, who had to approve them.
