David R. Hoffman: Ignoring history’s lessons as government surveillance returns en force

EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Living in an increasingly authoritarian America where, as of this writing, ICE agents have committed 43 shootings, resulting in 11 deaths, and with several more detainees dying in ICE custody, it is clear that Santayana’s harbinger is chillingly accurate.

Beginning during the McCarthy “Red Scare” era of the 1950s (although some claim earlier), then-director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, began his COINTELPRO operation in earnest, directing it primarily against the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).

Although many of its tactics were illegal and intentionally endangered others (such as falsely labeling William Albertson an informant, as exposed by his widow in a 1984 lawsuit), the Bureau contended its methods had been highly successful.

Yet during this time, the potential for abuses under COINTELPRO became known through the revelations of Harvey Matusow, an FBI informant who admitted that, while allegedly under orders from Joseph McCarthy and his associate Roy Cohn, he had lied about numerous people being Communists in order to receive a paycheck.

But Matusow’s antics did not dissuade Hoover. Instead, “Communist” became his go-to term of opprobrium for anyone who did not subscribe to his racist, reactionary political ideology, and COINTELPRO was expanded to target these people as well. The result was illegal wiretaps and break-ins, framing and falsely imprisoning political activists, FBI-instigated violence between rival groups, and even murder.

The list of crimes committed under COINTELPRO has filled books, and it later became clear that even national fame could not protect a person from being targeted. 

For example, under the auspices of COINTELPRO, the bureau sent an anonymous letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. encouraging him to commit suicide; disseminated false rumors about the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, which many believe ultimately led to her suicide; framed, according to former FBI agent M. Wesley Swearingen, Black Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who subsequently spent 27 years in prison; and, after attempts to induce members of the Blackstone Rangers to murder Chicago Black Panthers failed, instigated a police raid that killed Illinois Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

Initially trumpeted by officials as a dramatic shootout, it was later revealed that out of the almost one hundred shots fired, the Panthers had fired only one, much like today’s tactic where several ICE shooting victims were hastily labeled “domestic terrorists” before all the facts became known.

In 1971, a group of activists known as the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a Bureau office in Pennsylvania and stole numerous documents, some of which exposed the COINTELPRO operation.

This, in turn, led to the Congressional Church Committee Hearings that investigated not only the FBI, but the NSA and CIA as well. This led to well-intended reforms that, as we are witnessing on an almost daily basis today, have been largely discarded.

But this might not have been the case if the nation, at its founding, had listened to George Mason. Mason has often been overlooked in history discussions because he refused to endorse the Constitution. His refusal was based on several grievances — one of the primary ones being that the presidential pardon powers essentially permitted corrupt presidents to order, instigate, or allow their minions to commit crimes on their behalf and then pardon them for doing so.

Today’s “COINTELPRO With Immunity” now exists, thanks to a myopic, politicized, and groveling Supreme Court, meaning Trump can now potentially claim that many of the same tactics committed illegally under COINTELPRO can now be labeled “official” presidential acts and thus immune from prosecution, and because, unlike the courageous members of the Church Committee, the sycophants in Congress today routinely rubber-stamp Trump’s nominees into positions where they hold power over life and death, even when they have dubious qualifications, and even more dubious temperaments, to exercise it.

The result is what America is witnessing on a daily basis: A weaponized FBI and DOJ that will target, “investigate,” and even prosecute alleged “crimes” committed by those who do not support their agendas, while conveniently ignoring, covering up, minimizing, or pardoning the criminality of those who support them.

They say it gets worse before it gets better. The fallacy in this statement is that one can only hold their breath so long before drowning. In today’s America, there is no doubt that, especially with the technology the government possesses and its willingness to abuse it for corrupt political and financial ends, things are definitely going to get worse, but hope is rapidly fading that they will ever get better.

— David R. Hoffman is a retired civil rights and constitutional law attorney.

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