COINTELPRO 2008: New Justice Department Policy Will Authorize Racial Profiling
Jul 4th, 2008 by admin
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is considering allowing the FBI to investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
Law enforcement officials say the proposed policy would help them do exactly what Congress demanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Root out terrorists before they strike.
Although President Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on race or ethnicity, the new rules would allow the FBI to consider those factors among a number of traits that could trigger a national security investigation.
Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.
Factors that could make someone the subject of an investigation include travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training and the person’s race or ethnicity.
More than half a dozen senior FBI, Justice Department and other U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the new policy agreed to discuss it only on condition of anonymity either because they were not allowed to speak publicly or because the change is not final.
The change, which is expected later this summer, is part of an update of Justice Department policies known as the Attorney General Guidelines. They are being overhauled amid the FBI’s transition from a traditional crime-fighting agency to one whose top mission is to protect America from terrorist attacks.
…If adopted, the guidelines would take effect in the final months of an administration that has been dogged by criticism that its counter-terrorism programs trample privacy rights and civil liberties…
The guidelines do not require congressional approval.
The video above describes the tactic of “snitch jacketing” to disrupt and destroy radical groups. This is what was done to Anna May Pictou-Aquash, whom I blogged about here . It also includes information about the bombing and attacks on the late environmentalist Judy Bari, whom I blogged about here.
For those unfamiliar with COINTELPRO, it is an acronym for the FBI’s notorious Counter Intelligence Program of the 50s, 60s and early 70s which targeted, infiltrated and destroyed individuals and groups it considered a “threat” — ”communists” (communism was illegal in the U.S. in the 50s), labor unions, leftists, Civil Rights movement leaders, including Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the American Indian Movement, radical feminist groups, the women’s liberation movement, Angela Davis and many others, including Viola Liuzzo, a Civil Rights worker who marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 and who was shot by a COINTELPRO informant who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. COINTELPRO operatives engaged in campaigns to destroy people’s reputations, to discredit and smear them, infiltrated groups and turned members against one another, blackmailed people, and at times murdered or assassinated people, particularly visible leaders. Founding documents of COINTELPRO instructed FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of these movements and their leaders.”
Ultimately leftists broke into COINTELPRO offices and stole documents in an attempt to get enough evidence to prove their claims about COINTELPRO activities. The result was a Congressional investigation.
Theoretical, the investigation ended COINTELPRO as it had existed until that time; in reality, the FBI has continued to use tactics and operatives as it did during COINTELPRO days. This new plan is incredible in that it is unapologetic and in our faces in its disregard for human or civil rights.
Heart
So being a male white Christian would factor against you in this new calculation, huh? I know, that’s unlikely (and gender isn’t mentioned), but still: the stats seem to bear that out.
Of course, we tend to blame the actions of those terrorists on their membership in a fringe organization. So, being in the KKK or a mlitia or a cult would be a red flag in a way that being a plain old white dude wouldn’t.
Until now!
(yeah, right)
The only heartening statistic is that cops themselves have found that profiling done along general lines like race produces a lot of work and hardly any results. It wastes manpower. Far better, is to target certain behaviors that to the experienced cop bespeak need for questioning an individual.
Do you remember the thousands of Muslim men ordered to show up at immigration centers directly after Sept. 2001 and then the hundreds who were imprisoned without access to lawyers or their families for immigration status matters? A travesty of justice, and for what? No terrorist cells were uncovered. For reasons of inefficiency and lack of labor power, then, we may be spared this latest profiling lunacy.
That said, it is a shame that we keep having to fight for recognition of basic Constitutional rights for all persons when it comes to dealing with our (or at least, our government’s) worst fears at any given point in history — Chinese immigrants, bolsheviks, communists, black panthers, anti-Nixon activists, ecologists, feminists, Central American watchers, domestic and foreign-born terrorists.
I suggest writing our Congresspersons and joining the ACLU, and that’s just for starters.
Ehhhh, profiling wastes manpower if the goal is to catch criminals or terrorists.
It very efficient for pursuing other goals, though.
Like:
a) LOOKING like one is being tough on crime
b) Issuing lots of small citations (inflating crimebusting statistics, collecting revenue) under the guise of fighting large crimes
c) Projecting a strong police presence in a certain area
d) “Redlining” and otherwise persuading people matching a certain profile to move along because this is not a place they belong
e) Reducing gratuitous complaints from residents who don’t want certain people spending time in their neighborhood
Cops are motivated by these, too, not just efficacy of results for catching major criminals.