I ordinarily write about everyday life, about yellow cats and early mornings, flowers and friends and family. But every once in a while, the wider world intrudes and cannot go unremarked. A report in the Washington Post brought the latest intrusion and these reflections:
Do you think there is even the remotest chance of Al Qaeda – or the Taliban or Hezbollah or any other extremist Islamic group – taking over this country?
There is no more likelihood of that than there was of the Irish Republican Army taking over Great Britain.
If we realize one day that the freedoms we have taken for granted – the ones we’re taught about in school – are gone, we will see that the people who have taken over look just like us. And they will not have wrested control in one convulsive coup. In exchange for promises of security, we will have willingly surrendered our freedoms step by step.
We have been confronted with the false choice between freedom and security since the early days of the republic – think of the Alien and Sedition Acts – and we have periodically lurched into spasms of fear ever since.
All of this is brought to mind by a recent Washington Post story reporting that the Justice Department wants to make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the data with federal agencies and keep it for at least 10 years.
Of course, the supporters say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.
The Post quoted White House spokesman Tony Fratto as saying the administration agrees that it needs to do everything possible to prevent unwarranted encroachments on civil liberties, adding that it succeeds the overwhelming majority of the time.
The Post article quoted Jim McMahon, deputy executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as saying, "It moves what the rules were from 1993 to the new world we live in, but it maintains civil liberties."
Have you ever heard anyone in a position of authority say, “What we are doing encroaches on your civil liberties.”
This latest move is just one more effort to break down a wall erected in the mid-1970s after extended Senate hearings into widespread abuses of citizens’ rights.
The committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church found that “Intelligence agencies have collected vast amounts of information about the intimate details of citizens’ lives and about their participation in legal and peaceful activities. The targets of intelligence activities have included political adherents of the right and the left, ranging from activists to casual supporters.”
Among committee’s findings:
The FBI had kept files on a million Americans and investigated a half a million “subversives” between 1960 and 1974 without a single court conviction.
The CIA – with cooperation from the Post Office – illegally opened mail for over 20 years, collecting information on more than a million Americans.
The National Security Agency intercepted every overseas telegram sent or received by an American citizen between 1947 and 1975.
The IRS gave tax returns of 11,000 groups and individuals to the FBI and conducted audits as a form of political harassment.
Army intelligence investigated 100,000 American citizens during the Vietnam War.
The FBI’s COINTELPRO counterintelligence program was designed to “disrupt” groups and “neutralize” individuals that the FBI deemed to be threats to domestic security.
And that’s just a sampler.
All kind of Americans were targeted. Suspected subversives were under every bed.
The FBI’s well-publicized war against Martin Luther King was perhaps the most egregious example of government run amuck. But it wasn’t just J. Edgar Hoover striking out on his own
The Church Committee found that every president from Roosevelt to Nixon had pressed the intelligence agencies to go beyond the law.
Even with the laws that grew out of the Church Committee investigation in place, in the past half dozen years undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention, California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered.
And of course the Bush Administration claims that it is unhindered by constitutional safeguards as long as it invokes the magic phrase “national security.”
Our founders had a first-hand acquaintance with unchecked power, and they established a constitutional form of government to protect the citizens against the government. Read that again if you like. The citizens need to be protected against the government, regardless of whether that government is controlled by Republicans or Democrats.
The founders were willing to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to seek freedom. We’re not willing to risk much of anything to preserve it.
The excuse for abridging freedom in the 1970s – as it was with the Palmer raids in 1919 and 1920, which swept up the innocent along with the guilty, and the McCarthy madness in the 1950s – was the Communist menace.
The excuse now is the threat of Islamic terrorism.
We have been afraid since Sept. 11, 2001, and there have been those who played our fears like a violin.
Former FBI Director Clarence Kelly said in a speech some years ago that “we must be willing to surrender a small measure of our liberties to preserve the great bulk of them.”
That pretty much falls into the same category as “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
When I read the recent Post story, I recalled that Michigan Sen. Phil Hart had been heartbroken by what the Church Committee had found.
I found Hart’s reaction in the conclusion of a speech former Sen. Walter Mondale, who also served on the Church Committee, delivered not long:
Hart said that his family had been right all along. They had told him repeatedly that the FBI was trying to thwart dissent against the Vietnam War.
“As a result of my superior wisdom in high office, I assured them that they were on pot – it just wasn’t true. [The FBI] wouldn’t do it.”
Turning to the witness before the committee, Hart said softly and sadly “what you have described is a series of illegal actions, intended to deny certain citizens their first amendment rights – just like my children said.”
In the McCarthy era, journalist Edward R. Murrow took the occasion of a See It Now broadcast to remind us of some truths that are relevant today:
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. …We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. …We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Or, as Benjamin Franklin, observed, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security.”
Bill Brown can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
