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Kerry shadowed by FBI

LA Times:

As a high-profile activist who crossed the country criticizing the Nixon administration's role in the Vietnam War, John F. Kerry was closely monitored by FBI agents for more than a year, according to intelligence documents reviewed by The Times.

In 1971, in the months after the Navy veteran and decorated war hero argued before Congress against continued U.S. involvement in the conflict, the FBI stepped up its infiltration of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the protest group Kerry helped direct, the files show.

The FBI documents indicate that wherever Kerry went, agents and informants were following — including appearances at VVAW-sponsored antiwar events in Washington; Kansas City, Mo.; Oklahoma City; and Urbana, Ill. The FBI recorded the content of his speeches and took photographs of him and fellow activists, and the dispatches were filed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Nixon.

The files contain no information or suggestion that Kerry broke any laws. And a 1972 memorandum on the FBI's decision to end its surveillance of him said the agency had discovered "nothing whatsoever to link the subject with any violent activity."

Kerry, now the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, has long known he was a target of FBI surveillance, but only last week learned the extent of the scrutiny, he told The Times. The information was provided by Gerald Nicosia, a Bay Area author who obtained thousands of pages of FBI intelligence files and who gave copies of some documents to The Times.

The FBI files shed new light on an early chapter in Kerry's public life and are another example of the extent to which the U.S. intelligence apparatus monitored and investigated groups opposed to government policies during the Vietnam era, especially the Hoover-run FBI.

FBI harassment of some activists and leaders in the antiwar and civil rights movements — including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — was exposed after Hoover's death in 1972, and reforms were mandated in the bureau to prevent such abuses and restore public confidence.

Reforms were mandated all right, but many of them were rolled back with the passage of the PATRIOT Act right after 911. It is very sloppy of The Times not to mention the fact that FBI and CIA infiltration of peaceful groups as well as the sharing of information between the two agencies is again being allowed with very few, if any, safeguards.

Until the mid-1970's, both the CIA and the National Security Agency ("NSA") illegally investigated Americans. Despite the statutory provision in its charter prohibiting the CIA from engaging in law enforcement or internal security functions (50 U.S.C. 403-3(d)(1)), the CIA spied on as many as seven thousand Americans in Operation CHAOS. This operation in the 1960's and early 1970's involved spying on people who opposed the war in Vietnam, or who were student activists or were so-called black nationalists. Operation CHAOS involved an extensive program of information sharing from the FBI and other agencies to the CIA. The CIA received all of the FBI's reports on the American peace movement, which numbered over 1,000/month by June of 1970, according to a Senate report issued by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities ("Church Committee Report"). The Church Committee Report revealed how simple passive information sharing from other agencies to the CIA became authorized spying and data collection on lawful American political activity protected by the First Amendment. Once CIA officials expressed interest in particular types of information on American individuals and groups, other federal and local agencies were persuaded to covertly spy on citizens at the CIA's behest. The Church Committee reported:

The mechanics of the CHAOS operation, both in performing the mission undertaken by the CIA and in servicing the FBI's needs, involved the establishment of files and retention of information on thousands of Americans.

To the extent that [the] information related to domestic activity, its maintenance by the CIA, although perhaps not itself the performance of an internal security function, is a step toward the dangers of a domestic secret police against which the prohibition of the charter sought to guard.

After these abuses were exposed, the CIA's domestic surveillance activities and collection of information about Americas were greatly curtailed. For example, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act made it clear that the Department of Justice would have the leading role in gathering foreign intelligence in the United States. The USA PATRIOT Act would tear down these safeguards and once again permit the CIA to create dossiers on constitutionally protected activities of Americans and eliminate judicial review of such practices.