Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans
As we approach the
upcoming hearing, I believe that all TI's should become familiar with the Church Committee Reports - a series
of 14 reports on the formation, operation and abuses of the US intelligence agencies publshed in 1975-6
by the Church Committee. Google Church Committee Reports to read these. You'll find that many of
the exact same protocols that the investigation found are in place today and of
course much, much more! Here are some excerpts:
The intelligence community has employed surreptitious collection techniques -- mail opening, surreptitious entries, informants, and "traditional'' and highly sophisticated forms of electronic surveillance -- to achieve its overly broad intelligence targeting and collection objectives. Although there are circumstances where these techniques, if properly controlled, are legal and appropriate, the Committee finds that their very nature makes them a threat to the personal privacy and Constitutionally protected activities of both the targets and of persons who communicate with or associate with the targets. The dangers inherent in the use of these techniques have been compounded by the lack of adequate standards limiting their use and by the absence of review by neutral authorities outside the intelligence agencies. As a consequence, these techniques have collected enormous amounts of personal and political information serving no legitimate governmental interest.
Subfindings
(a) Given the highly intrusive nature of these techniques, the legal standards and procedures regulating their use have been insufficient. There have been no statutory controls on the use of informants; there have been gaps and exceptions in the law of electronic surveillance; and the legal prohibitions against warrantless mail opening and surreptitious entries have been ignored.
(b) In addition to providing the means by which the Government can collect too much information about too many people, certain techniques have their own peculiar dangers:
(i) Informants have provoked and participated in violence and other illegal activities in order to maintain their cover, and they have obtained membership lists and other private documents.
(ii) Scientific and technological advances have rendered traditional controls on electronic surveillance obsolete and have made it more difficult to limit intrusions. Because of the nature of wiretaps, microphones and other sophisticated electronic techniques, it has not always been possible to restrict the monitoring of communications to the persons being investigated.
(c) The imprecision and manipulation of labels such as "national security," "domestic security," "subversive activities," and "foreign intelligence" have led to unjustified use of these techniques.
The Committee finds that domestic intelligence activity has been overbroad in that (1) many Americans and domestic groups have been subjected to investigation who were not suspected of criminal activity and (2) the intelligence agencies have regularly collected information about personal and political activities irrelevant to any legitimate governmental interest.
Subfindings
(a) Large numbers of law-abiding Americans and lawful domestic groups have been subjected to extensive intelligence investigation and surveillance.
(b) The absence of precise standards for intelligence, investigations of Americans contributed to overbreadth. Congress did not enact statutes precisely delineating the authority of the intelligence agencies or defining the purpose and scope of domestic intelligence activity. The executive branch abandoned the standard set by Attorney General Stone -- that the government's concern was not with political opinions but with "such conduct as is forbidden by the laws of the United States." Intelligence agencies' superiors issued over-inclusive directives to investigate "subversion" (a term that was never defined in presidential directives) and "potential" rather than actual or likely criminal conduct, as well as to collect general intelligence on lawful political and social dissent.
(c) The intelligence agencies themselves used imprecise and overinclusive criteria in their conduct of intelligence investigations. Intelligence investigations extended beyond "subversive" or violent targets to additional groups and individuals subject to minimal "subversive influence" or having little or no "potential" for violence.
(d) Intelligence agencies pursued a "vacuum cleaner" approach to intelligence collection -- drawing in all available information about groups and individuals, including their lawful political activity and details of their personal lives.
(e) Intelligence investigations in many cases continued for excessively long periods of time, resulting in sustained governmental monitoring of political activity in the absence of any indication of criminal conduct or "subversion."
Investigations of Wholly Non-Violent Political Expression. -- Domestic intelligence investigations have extended from those who commit or are likely to commit violent acts to those thought to have a "potential" for violence, and then to those engaged in purely peaceful political expression. This characteristic was graphically described by the White House official who coordinated the intelligence agencies' recommendations for "expanded" (and illegal) coverage in 1970. He testified that intelligence investigations risked moving
from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line. 53
Without precise standards to restrict their scope, intelligence investigations did move beyond those who committed or were likely to commit criminal or violent acts. For example:
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was targeted for the FBI's COINTELPRO operations against "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" on the theory, without factual justification, that Dr. King might "abandon" his adherence to nonviolence. 59
--The intensive FBI investigation of the Women's Liberation Movement was similarly predicated on the theory that the activities of women in that Movement might lead to demonstrations and violence. 60
--The FBI investigations of Black Student Unions proceeded from the concern of the FBI and its superiors over violence in the cities. Yet, the FBI opened intelligence investigations on "every Black Student Union and similar group regardless of their past or present involvement in disorders." 61 [Emphasis added.]
--The nationwide Army Intelligence surveillance of civilians was conducted in connection with civil disorders. However, the Army collection plan focused not merely on those likely to commit violence but was "so comprehensive . . . that any category of information related even remotely to people or organizations active in a community in which the potential for violence was present would fall within their scope." 62
The Committee finds that such intelligence surveillance of groups and individuals has greatly exceeded the legitimate interest of the government in law enforcement and the prevention of violence. Where unsupported determinations as to "potential" behavior are the basis for surveillance of groups and individuals, no one is safe from the inquisitive eye of the intelligence agency.
Subfinding (e)
Intelligence investigations in many cases continued for excessively long periods of time, resulting in sustained governmental monitoring of political activity in the absence of any indication of criminal conduct or "subversion."
One of the most disturbing aspects of domestic intelligence investigations found by the Committee was their excessive length. Intelligence investigations often continued, despite the absence of facts indicating an individual or group is violating or is likely to violate the law, resulting in long-term government monitoring of lawful political activity. The following are examples:
(i) The FBI Intelligence Investigation of the NAACP (1941-1966). -- The investigation of the NAACP began in 1941 and continued for at least 25 years. Initiated according to one FBI report as an investigation of protests by 15 black mess attendants about racial discrimination in the Navy, 70 the investigation expanded to encompass NAACP chapters in cities across the nation. Although the ostensible purpose of this investigation was to determine if there was "Communist infiltration" of the NAACP, the investigation constituted a long-term monitoring of the NAACP's wholly lawful political activity by FBI informants. Thus:
--The FBI New York Field Office submitted a 137-page report to FBI headquarters describing the national office of the NAACP, its national convention, its growth and membership, its officers and directors, and its stand against Communism. 71
--An FBI informant in Seattle obtained a list of NAACP branch officers and reported on a meeting where signatures were gathered on a "petition directed to President Eisenhower" and plans for two members to go to Washington, D.C., for a "Prayer Pilgrimage." 72
--In 1966, the New York Field Office reported the names of all NAACP national officers and board members, and summarized their political associations as far back as the 1940s. 73
--As late as 1966, the FBI was obtaining NAACP chapter membership figures by "pretext telephone call ... utilizing the pretext of being interested in joining that branch of the NAACP." 74
--Based on the reports of FBI informants, the FBI submitted a detailed report of a 1956 NAACP-sponsored Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and described plans for a Conference delegation to visit Senators Paul Douglas, Herbert Lehman, Wayne Morse, Hubert Humphrey, and John Bricker. 75 Later reports covered what transpired at several of these meetings with Senators. 76 Most significantly, all these reports were sent to the White House. 77
(ii) The FBI Intelligence Investigation of the Socialist Workers Party (1940 to date). -- The FBI has investigated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to the present day on the basis of that Party's revolutionary rhetoric and alleged international links. Nevertheless, FBI officials testified that the SWP has not been responsible for any violent acts nor has it urged actions constituting an indictable incitement to violence. 77a
FBI informants have been reporting the political positions taken by the SWP with respect to such issues as the "Vietnam War," "racial matters," "U.S. involvement in Angola," "food prices," and any SWP efforts to support a non-SWP candidate for political office. 78
Moreover, to enable the FBI to develop "background information" on SWP leaders, informants have been reporting certain personal aspects of their lives, such as marital status. 79 The informants also have been reporting on SWP cooperation with other groups who are not the subject of separate intelligence investigations. 80
(iii) The Effort to Prove Negatives. -- Intelligence investigations and programs have also continued for excessively long periods in efforts to prove negatives. CIA's Operation CHAOS began in 1967. From that year until the program's termination in 1974, 81 the CIA repeatedly reached formal conclusions that there was negligible foreign influence on domestic protest activity. In 1967, the CIA concluded that Communist front groups did not control student organizations and that there were no significant links with foreign radicals; 82 in 1968, the CIA concluded that U.S. student protest was essentially homegrown and not stimulated by an international conspiracy; 83 and in 1971 the CIA found "there is no evidence that foreign governments, organizations, or intelligence services now control U.S. New Left Movements ... the U.S. New Left is basically self-sufficient and moves under its own impetus." 84
The result of these repeated findings was not the termination of CHAOS's surveillance of Americans, but its redoubling. Presidents Johnson and Nixon pressured the CIA to intensify its intelligence effort, to find evidence of foreign direction of the U.S. peace movement. As Director Helms testified:
When a President keeps asking if there is any information, "how are you getting along with your examination," "have you picked up any more information on this subject," it isn't a direct order to do something, but it seems to me it behooves the Director of Central Intelligence to find some way to im prove his performance, or improve his Agency's performance. 85
In an effort to prove its negative finding to a skeptical White House -- and to test its validity each succeeding year -- CIA expanded its program, increasing its coverage of Americans overseas and building an ever larger "data base" on domestic political activity. Intelligence was exchanged with the FBI, NSA, and other agencies and eventually CIA agents who had infiltrated domestic organizations for other purposes supplied general information on the groups' activities. 86 Thus, the intelligence mission became one of continued surveillance to prove a negative, with no thought to terminating the program in the face of the negative findings.
As in the CHAOS operation, FBI intelligence investigations have often continued even in the absence of any evidence of "subversive" activities merely because the subjects of the investigation have not demonstrated their innocence to the FBI's satisfaction. The long term investigations of the NAACP and the Socialist Workers Party described above are typical examples.
A striking illustration of FBI practice is provided by the intelligence investigation of an advisor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The advisor was investigated on the theory that he might be a communist "sympathizer." The Bureau's New York office concluded he was not. 87 Using a theory of "guilty until proven innocent," FBI headquarters directed that the investigation continue:
The Bureau does not agree with the expressed belief of the New York office that [ ] 88 is not sympathetic to the Party cause. While there may not be any evidence that [ ] is a Communist neither is there any substantial evidence that he is anti-Communist. 89
Where citizens must demonstrate not simply that they have no connection with an intelligence target, but must exhibit "substantial evidence" that they are in opposition to the target, intelligence investigations are indeed open ended.
CIA's Operation CHAOS. -- In seeking to fulfill White House requests for evidence of foreign influence on domestic dissent, the CIA gave broad instructions to its overseas stations. These directives called for reporting on the "Radical Left" which included, according to the CIA, "radical students, antiwar activists, draft resisters and deserters, black nationalists, anarchists, and assorted 'New Leftists'." 43 CIA built its huge CHAOS data base on the assumption that to know whether there was significant foreign involvement in a domestic group "one has to know whether each and every one of these persons has any connection to foreigners." 44 CIA instructed its stations that even "casual contacts based merely on mutual interest" between Americans opposed to the Vietnam war and "foreign elements" were deemed to "casual contacts based merely on mutual interest" between Americans opposed to the Vietnam war and "foreign elements" were deemed to constitute "subversive connections." 45 Similarly, CIA's request to NSA for materials on persons targeted by the NSA Watch List called for all information regardless of how innocuous it may seem." 46
The Committee finds that covert action programs have been used to disrupt the lawful political activities of individual Americans and groups and to discredit them, using dangerous and degrading tactics which are abhorrent in a free and decent society.
Subfindings
(a) Although the claimed purposes of these action programs were to protect the national security and to prevent violence, many of the victims were concededly nonviolent, were not controlled by a foreign power, and posed no threat to the national security.
(b) The acts taken interfered with the First Amendment rights of citizens. They were explicitly intended to deter citizens from joining groups, "neutralize" those who were already members, and prevent or inhibit the expression of ideas.
(c) The tactics used against Americans often risked and sometimes caused serious emotional, economic, or physical damage. Actions were taken which were designed to break up marriages, terminate funding or employment, and encourage gang warfare between violent rival groups. Due process of law forbids the use of such covert tactics, whether the victims are innocent law-abiding citizens or members of groups suspected of involvement in violence.
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The sustained use of such tactics by the FBI in an attempt to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., violated the law and fundamental human decency.
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The Committee finds that the product of intelligence investigations has been disseminated without adequate controls. Reports on lawful political activity and law-abiding citizens have been disseminated to agencies having no proper reason to receive them. Information that should have been discarded, purged, or sealed, including the product of illegal techniques and overbroad investigations, has been retained and is available for future use.
Subfindings
(a) Agencies have volunteered massive amounts of irrelevant information to other officials and agencies and have responded unquestioningly in some instances to requests for data without assuring that the information would be used for a Iawful purpose.
(b) Excessive dissemination has sometimes contributed to the inefficiency of the intelligence process itself.
(c) Under the federal employee security program, unnecessary information about, the political beliefs and associations of prospective government employees has been disseminated.
(d) The FBI, which has been the ''clearinghouse'' for all domestic intelligence data, maintains in readily accessible files sensitive and derogatory personal information not relevant to any investigation, as well as information which was improperly or illegally obtained.
Elaboration of Findings
The adverse effects on privacy of the Overbreadth of domestic intelligence collection and of the use of Intrusive Techniques have been magnified many times over by the dissemination practices of the collecting agencies. Information which should not have been gathered in the first place has gone beyond the initial agency to numerous other agencies and officials, thus compounding the original intrusion. The amount disseminated within the Executive branch has often been so voluminous as to make it difficult to separate useful data from worthless detail.
The Committee's finding on Political Abuse describes dissemination of intelligence for the political advantage of high officials or the self-interest of an agency. The problems of excessive dissemination, however, include more than political use. Dissemination has not been confined to what is appropriate for law enforcement or other proper government purposes. Rather, any information which could have been conceived to be useful was passed on, and doubts were generally resolved in favor of dissemination. Until recently, none of the standards for the exchange of data among agencies has taken privacy interests into account. The same failure to consider privacy interests has characterized the retention of data by the original collecting agency.
INTERNATIONAL TI SURVEY