51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sometimes Desert Is Better Than the Meal, May 6, 2003
Ward Churchil and Jim Vander Wall have done an outstanding and meticulous job in assembling and explaining the FBI's secret war on dissent in America, no wonder America is plagued with criminals, the supposed "good guys" are all out on black bag jobs committing their own crimes!!
Since it is a well known historical fact that J. Edgar Hoover, America's semen stained supercop, was blackmailed by the mafia into silence, it stands to reason that he would need a new enemy to focus the attention of the American people. What better enemy than home grown political dissenters who would destroy the genteel American order--white men first.
The book focuses upon the FBI's most notorious episodes--the COINTELPRO efforts against the Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers Party, the New Left, the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers as demonstrative proof of the Bureau's efforts to undermine and destroy the constitutional rights of all Americans.
It is, for me, the concluding chapter that ties everything together and offers some real life solutions to the peristent cancer that is the FBI. From 1956 to the "offical end" of COINTELPRO in 1971, the FBI committed:
* 2,218 separate actions.
*2,305 admitted warrantless telephone taps.
*697 "bugs against domestic political targets."
*57,486 CIA mail intercepts.
"During the various Congressional committee investigations, the Bureau carefully hid the facts of its involvement in the 1969 Hampton-Clark assassinations. Simultaneously, it was covering up its criminal witholding of exculpatory evidence in the murder trial of LA Panther leader Geronimo Pratt." page 303.
At the end, the authors offer the inescapable conclusion that priority number one is for the left to develop a strategy to come to grips with the FBI and the escalating power of "law enforcement" as well as the implications and consequences of the merging of the U.S. military and the domestic law enforcement appartus.
Churchill and Vander Wall have written an excellent book which recounts history and warns us of the impending scenario we face by ignoring the increased power of the FBI, the US military and law enforcement in general.
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48 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If history repeats itself we are all in trouble, December 13, 2002
This review is from: The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series) (Paperback)
For readers who may have forgoten what can happen when government intelligence agencies are given free rein, legally or not, to investigate and harass American citizens who question governmental policies, this is the primary source for a reminder.Tracing the long history of political repression in this country from the 1950s through the Vietnam era and the Civil Rights movement and examining recent FBI activities, this book belongs on any reader's shelf that values political freedom.
It is not a question of which political party you belong to or whether you are considered left or right on the political spectrum. If you are anxious about the future of civil liberties given the unprecedented power given to the government as the result of the Patriot Act and other recent legislation, this book should be required reading. It is indeed a fine balance between civil liberties and national security and this book will give the reader an idea of what is at stake and what unrestrained government is capable of doing.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Essential Chapter in American History, July 26, 2010
This review is from: The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series) (Paperback)
The Cointelpro Papers should be required reading for high school graduation. It is more important than ever for people to understand the long history of GOVERNMENT spying on American dissidents. The problem of wire tapping, stalking, infiltration of community and political groups and clandestine murders did not start when all this stuff became legal with the Patriot Act in 2002. In fact it is well documented that it was going on in the mid-twenties and possibly earlier.
The part of the book I found most illuminating was the death squad activity that occurred on the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation during the 1970s - murders that were never even investigated, much less prosecuted. Americans tend to assume this type of extrajudicial murder only occurs in third world countries. Learning of scores of documented instances on US soil is really quite scary. The book also details the FBI ambush and murder of the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and the attempted murder (in a similar ambush) of Geronimo Pratt. As well as the scores of Black Panther and American Indian Movement leaders (with Leonard Peltier being the most prominent) who remain in prison on trumped up charges.
Relying on letters and memos obtained under the Freedom of Information act (and a few obtained when activists turned the tables and broke into an FBI office), the authors make it clear that Hoover's FBI infiltrated and did their best to sabotage every left of center group that ever held public meetings in the US.
The saddest part was the sadistic campaign of personal harassment Hoover undertook against actress Jean Seberg, a white actress who provided the Black Panthers with financial support. As a result of rumor campaigns and vicious gossip columns planted by the FBI, Seberg and her partner ultimately committed suicide.
By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, author of THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE
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