The US Central Intelligence Agency will shortly declassify hundreds of documents detailing illegal activities from the 1950s to 1970s. OK, that makes the revelations anything from three to five decades after the events. But even disclosures on this delayed time scale may prove rather more frank than anything we would conceivably be allowed to know in Britain:
The papers, to be released next week, will detail assassination plots, domestic spying and wiretapping, kidnapping and human experiments …
Among the incidents that were said to "present legal questions" were:
* the confinement of a Soviet defector in the mid-1960s
* assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro
* wiretapping and surveillance of journalists
* behaviour modification experiments on "unwitting" US citizens
* surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971
* opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union; from 1969 to 1972 of mail to and from China
Personally I will be more interested in seeing the FBI open up about its COINTELPRO operation against the American left, most notably the Communist Party of the USA and the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party.
One writer on this topic notes:
In 1973, the SWP and its youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance, filed a lawsuit against the federal government (Socialist Workers Party v Attorney General) demanding compensation for years of disruption, harassment, and surveillance of the organization.
Throughout the course of the discovery, trial, and other proceedings -which took place over thirteen years - detailed information about how and why the government violated the rights of lawful individuals exercising their free speech and right to organize unfolded.
In a historic rebuke to the federal government's trampling on constitutionally protected dissent, Judge Griesa awarded the SW $264,000 in damages in 1986.
COINTELPRO operations began against the SW in 1961, when court records show they had around 600 members -10 percent were FBI informants who were paid in excess of $1.6 million over the years for their efforts.
Infiltration began in response to the SW's electoral campaigns and desegregation activities - perfectly legal undertakings. Over the years, member informants supplied the government with membership lists, financial records, budgets, minutes of meetings, mailing lists, and correspondence.
From 1961-1976, fifty-five informants held offices or committee positions and fifty-one served on executive committees of the party.
There is plenty of evidence that as late as the 1980s, the British state took a similar interest in the CPGB, the far left, and even campaigns such as CND.
The Tory right-aligned Economic League and the US embassy also maintained more than a watching brief, and quietly intervened in a number of trade unions.
I did extensive research on all this more than a decade ago, which was published at the time in Lobster magazine, although the material is not online. I really must get round to getting it scanned and making it freely accessible.
But the official line is that, these days, the focus of UK efforts to counter domestic subversion has switched to radical Islamism. I don’t doubt that is the case.
I presume there will still be a handful of strategically-placed operatives in the main left groups. But in all honesty, very little the left does these days seems particularly worth keeping an eye on.
Comments (14)
But, but, but, Gerry Healey told me they were all in Soviet military intelligence.
The COINTELPRO programe was run by the FBI not the CIA., though it may be interesting to see how much CIA did stuff internally in the United States which it was not supposed to.
The point about COINTELPRO was that it was not just gathering intelligence but using agents to manipulate left-wing and black groups and promote internecine warfare. The British intelligence services probably did something similar in the IRSP/INLA.
I will be interested to see if anything new comes out on CIA "mindbending" efforts and drug experiments on unwitting subjects.
Concerning infiltration of US left, some people think the disproportionate infiltration of some organisations may have been a way of giving agents sufficient "left" cover before despatching them abroad.
I'm sure there is much to come out in Britain about what went on in the Left, and elsewhere. I think besides planting agents the services also used some individuals on whom they had something, so were able not only to get information but give things a tweak now and then.
Regarding Islamicists, the intelligence services probably know more than they let on, although MI6 and MI5 may have got in each others way now and then. Today's "terrorist" yesterday's asset.
And then there's the safehousing Italian fascists and the fact that we're supposed to believe this was the only West European country not to have a Gladio network.
MI5 and MI6 may be upfront and in your face about recruiting and spending taxpayers' dosh these days, but we still don't get the kind of information the US agencies give out. So we have to use our intelligence,and make some guesses.
Gerry Healy could tell a good tale (some of them true) and a few tales could be told about Gerry Healy, but I doubt if he told our friend anything otherwise he'd have spelled his name right
For a lot of us lefty-types of a certain age the topics in the family jewels are old news. I'm interested to see if they reveal specific operations we don't know about, but the experiments, the spying, kidnappings, in general that stuff has been long revealed.
What I can't figure out is "why now"? What I've read is that Hayden is trying to show that a "bright line" divides today's CIA from the bad ol' days, but I ain't buying. I know for a fact, because I've been an audience member, that the CIA has been running a pr campaign to convince the general public that tying it's hands is precisely what allowed 9/11 to happen. Hayden pulled all sorts of shit at NSA and I'm sure this is more of the same by different means.
An American comrade who was in the US SWP at this time visits me every year. He says that after September 11 things started getting really heavy for him every time he went through an airport. He would routinely be whisked out of the queue by security staff, taken to a small room searched and questioned for a couple of hours. It seems that in the 1970s some senator had declared in the Senate that one of the SWP currents was a terrorist group. Nothing happened at the time but with the post 9.11 panic all these old lists were dug out and all these Trots and ex-Trots started finding flying even less pleasant than normal.
Congratulations to Charlie for spotting the deliberate error. Doh.
If I had to guess, I'd think that the intelligence services probably used electronic monitoring more than informants - cheaper and more reliable, but I also think that there may be more active than people think.
If there's one set of people who have an exaggerated impression of the importance of left groups, aprt from the left itself, it's the cops/MI5 etc.
Information that we have on their activities is slender but, what I take to be true, snippets have been seen such as MI5 agents in caravans in Skegness monitoring the adjoining SWP summer event and cops under the stage recording proceedings at a Militant confernce.
The former WRP and groups like the Spartacists take one wrong approach to this - they were/are paraniod and have both taken mad actions because of thier perception of the threat and have smeared rivals as touts.
The SWP take the other wrong approach, they laugh at the threat and malign any suggesting basic security as being toytown politicos playing at being counter-spies.
I think there is also a danger from the social gnomes who do things like become special constables and are not a million miles from the 'corbeaux' who wrote many, many letter of denuncia tion to the authorities in wartime France denouncing their neighbours as Jews and the like.
A modern day incarnation of these people who like to suck up to authority are people like the organisation 'Vigil' that got a lot of glowing media coverage a little while ago. Their method was interesting - they infiltarted Islamist web baords and both acted as agent provactuers and tried to entrap Islamists.
I think it only sensible to conclude that such lowlifes operate on Left boards as well. I think comrades should exercise more self restraint. It may be hard not to respond to someone who is trying to paint you as being not left at all but you need to think that the 'militant' questioning your commiment may in gact be a sad indivaidual looking to ingratiat themsleves with the authorities by seeking to set you up.
There's a correct third route. Use basic security that may thwart some of the more amateur attempts of the state but also will help if things do ever turn left and what today seems just a a lifestykle becoems a matter of life and death
I recommend a couple of article about security - http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/security.html
and http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/security.html
I admit it. I've never met Gerry Healy. I have met Sean Matgamna and Ted Grant though.
Yes, but have you ever met either of the above in the company of anyone who might remember you? The Left's a small pond and getting smaller - you probably know someone who knows someone who knows Southpawpunch, did either of you but know it.
Since you're neither a toytown revolutionary nor a troll, and in particular since you're clearly someone who's been around on the Left - or at least lurked on the fringes of the Left - I find your insistence on anonymity surprising. If you are known to people here (or known to people who are known to people here), why would you want to conceal your identity? If you aren't, why would you bother to conceal your identity?
Phil,
Because that's the way I like it. i don't know who you are either (at least I don't think I do). In my experience reveleaing identity leads to complications in these matters with employers and the like. Yes, I too am a plain wage slave.
Well we know that they use ECHELON as the main form of surveillance, and to be honest they are pretty busy with islamists at the moment.
Charlie makes a good point that the best reason for the secret state to infiltrate people into the left is to give them a legend for later work elsewhere, at the dame time they may pick mup some gossip that will be useful later.
To be honest we are so ineffectual I really don't think they are that bothered.
agree with Andy on this, security services in Britain use primarily electronic surveillance and probably some of the fancy imported US technology which allows them to listen to phone conversations, pick out key words, then transcribe the conversation
in terms of the Web, they would simply employ google like technology and spiders to crawl over blogs, open message boards for information, etc
basic technology, having said that, something like two thirds of government computing projects are either over budget or timescale, so maybe it won't work, you never know!
but in truth, as most of Left couldn't organise a piss up in the brewery or find sand on a beach I doubt that the security services terribly bothered, which is probably bad news to paranoid fantasists like Southpawpunch
and if they did, I bet the British security services could even tell you your shoe size, so worry or don't worry, I can't see it making much difference
I'll always remember being out on the institute balconey at Marxism when the sun hit the windows at a particular angle. You could see all the camera's in the building pointing our way. It was quite wierd actually. Strangely enough I've never really bothered to find out what those buildings are or otherwise ask around. Whether around the Miners strike or indeed the anti-war movement, you just took it for granted they were up to this sort of thing.
"But in all honesty, very little the left does these days seems particularly worth keeping an eye on."
I would imagine that the secret state took the anti-war movement rather more seriously then some people on the left do.
I would imagine that the secret state took the anti-war movement rather more seriously then some people on the left do.
Self-proving (or -disproving) statement. ("I am on the Left, I think the anti-war movement is/is not worth taking seriously, therefore I imagine that the secret state does/does not take it seriously.")
I would imagine they were very worried indeed when it first looked as if the EVIL TROTS were going to link up with the EVIL MOSLEMS, and have been progressively less worried ever since. Unless their intelligence isn't very good, in which case they may still be very worried indeed. (But, of course, I'm saying all this as someone who doesn't think the a.-w. m. is worth taking seriously.)