Surveillance: Who's Watching?

The following program is from M-E-T. The first amendment are the Bill of Rights. The first amendment are the Bill of Rights. Congress shall make no law respected in an establishment of religion. All prohibit in the free exercise thereof. All bridging the freedom of speech, all the press, all the right of the people peacefully to assemble. And to petition government for redress of grievances. But when the people do, peaceably assemble, we are often watched. In this case, an anti-war demonstration in Chicago recorded on film by the Chicago police department. The United States Senator Sam Irvin, Democrat North Carolina. Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights.

The right, most spattered by the civilized man, is the right to be let alone. I think it's well expressed in the Old Testament, the way it says in writings of Michael, that every person should have a right to live well on his own vine and on his own fig tree with none to molest him or make him afraid. Thomas Foreign, now in private law practice, former United States Attorney, Northern District of Illinois. In that capacity, he led the prosecution of the so-called Chicago Seven, on conspiracy charges. I think that this idea of political repression in the United States is the absolute paranoia. We're really free people, and all you got to do to see it is know how all of us get our chance to have our say. You know, a lot of times what we're saying is bunk, but we all get our chance to say it.

My name is Crive Wallace. I operate the spy shop in Washington, D.C. It's quite obviously an ordinary telephone here in this motel room downstairs. Downstairs, they could be using this telephone, coupled to an amplifier, and which is common in most motel rooms. And in case there's a fight or something like that, they want to be able to listen to each room to find out where the fight's going on without having to create any problems. When I drop this loop over here, the phone itself starts to sing. It's impossible for anyone to make any intelligence out of any conversation on the other end of that line. All you have to do when you go into your motel room is bring one of our black boxes and loop it right over the telephone and you're perfectly safe. My initial reaction was that I did not want to be filmed because I am a federal employee.

And I have been subject to surveillance in the past by both the FBI and internally within the department, which I work. And Harbor, I have agreed to appear on TV because I feel that the problems raised by the threat of the threat through surveillance of trying to get an American citizen not to do what their conscience feels is right to take part in activities. It is very harmful to our country and is in violation of our constitution.

Joseph Powers, United States government employee, he speaks out of his own experience of the implied threat of government surveillance. Others feel, however, that this threat is more explicit than implied. Senator Irvin has warned that files already in existence are leading this country toward what he warns will be a police state. In this report, we will examine the use of political surveillance by governmental agencies. One of those agencies was the United States Army. Before it was ordered to end surveillance of civilians in this country a year ago, it had compiled dossiers on an estimated 25 million people, including prominent public figures, both the House Internal Security Committee, formerly the House on American Activities Committee, and the Senate Internal Security Committee. Continue to gather and publish names of suspected subversives. The practices of both groups are under increasing scrutiny and criticism.

And some of the sharpest attacks come from within the Congress itself. And then of course, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has long been in the area of political surveillance. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution says we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects. Those were Chicago police officers taking pictures at an anti-war demonstration of citizens exercising their right, peaceably to assemble. This form of political surveillance on the local level is probably the most widespread. It has been estimated that more than 500 municipalities maintain political intelligence divisions, commonly known as red squads, of widely varying size and sophistication.

These so-called red squads had their genesis at the turn of the century with the anarchy scare. They exist under many official designations, anti-subversive unit, human relations unit, civil disobedience unit. Whatever their name, their mission is essentially the same, the gathering of political intelligence. In a report by the International Association of Police Chiefs, the functions of the covert unit of the subversive section of the Chicago Police Department is described as, and I quote, the development of information regarding individuals, groups, and organizations who advocate the disruption of the democratic process and government through the use of violence and criminal activity. According to the same report, the overt unit is to, and again, I quote, openly attend meetings and functions in order to identify the leadership and membership involved, as well as to attempt to determine the constantly changing philosophies and ideologies.

Philosophy and ideology in action, an anti-war demonstration in Chicago. Our cameras were there, as was NET reporter Mark Weiss, and the Chicago Police. That's right. That's an educational television. We're a camera crew from National Educational Television. I wonder if we could have an interview with you. Is your name, is your name, Tom Strombard? Oh, I thought you, I had, I thought we'd tell me last time your name was Tom Strombard, I saw you taking pictures of me. Can I ask you why you're taking notes of the demonstration? Can I ask you why you're asking him? Yes, I'm, I'm trying to conduct an interview with you. I'm a photojournalist in National Educational Television, but I was just wondering why you come to all the demonstrations and take pictures of those. My habit. Why do you come? Are you a police officer? Why do you come to the demonstration? I come to see what's happening and see what kind of police coverage there is. That's where I come. Are you a police officer? Why?

Well, I just wanted to know if it was legal for you to be taking pictures or not. I'm not taking pictures. What are you going to do with the notes that you took today? What notes? Was that the demonstration breaking the wall? Now what is the wall? I saw a note in your hat. I like the read of it. What do you, what do you, you tend to do with the pictures that you took at the... You're not a man on a wall and a trolled pirate channel. National Organization Women? Everybody. Do you deny being a police officer? You don't admit being a police officer here. Do you come here? Do you know this gentleman? He's a red squad man. Because he is. Because he takes down people's names and he watches people and violates our privacy. At every demonstration. He stands around watching to see who's with whom. He writes down the names of everybody that's here. Everybody that's at the demonstrations. Usually sometimes.

No, for a fact that he's Truman Stromberg. Yes, he's Truman Stromberg with the red squad of Chicago. One of the worst forms of overt surveillance has been the use of cameras to take pictures of people that attend in public rallies. If this stopped there, it would not be as bad as it actually is because what happens is after the government takes the photographs of these people. It takes and identifies the people who are shown in these photographs and it starts to establish a dossier on them in which it stores all information. It can find about them. United States Assistant Attorney General Robert Martin, in charge of the Internal Security Division Justice Department. I think that it's incumbent upon local law enforcement officials to obtain as much information as they can about a planned demonstration.

Again, so that they can determine for themselves whether there is a need for any, the presence of any law enforcement people at the demonstration. There are a lot of bully police. Anybody who doesn't know that has never had an experience. I was a pretty good revolutionary myself when I was a kid. I remember getting bullied by policemen, and I've seen bully policemen, but I've seen bully everything. But I have never seen any attempt made to identify each person in a crowd. If you just stop and think about it, take a picture of 500 people, and think about how and God's name would you go about trying to identify anybody in there. There's no way to do it. But given the motive, it can be done. Official film of the Chicago Police Department, taken from this window during a demonstration.

We have frozen the film here, and now we can close in and isolate faces in the crowd. We did this for demonstration purposes. It could be done much easier and quicker with a magnifying glass. Mr. Foreign says he knows of no such effort, but obviously it is possible. The problem with the concern about surveillance is unlike of understanding of the different types of the different levels of it and the different necessities of it. A citizens group in Chicago made up of people of varying political persuasions, the task force on surveillance. Ordinary community groups and citizen organizations in Chicago decided to do something about the problem with the question.

It exists all over, but one place where it exists very clearly is in the violations of the vote. Fourth amendment to the Constitution and the invasion of privacy. And just a little bit of preliminary research indicated that from their own figures the police department of this city has in record. For in excess of 400,000 source documents and it is impossible either by letter or by telephone call or by going to public meetings to find out how those things are passed or who has access to them. And a lot of people are worried about that kind of thing. We know for a fact, for instance, that our own committee meeting, our sufferers, for instance, were held at Chicago Theological Seminary with half of the celebrities of the city there. The red squad took lists of everybody there. This came out accidentally in the Chicago crime commission's operation when they were going into the ISDS weatherman thing. And the attorney that represented them for bail on crime commission, the attorney that was confronted with the fact that she had attended two years prior to that, a sufferer at Chicago Theological Seminary that our committee had put on.

But she heard about first, who was a red squad undercover guy who joined the organization by belonged to. The matter is for peace. Pushed himself up got on the executive board, became a delegate to the Peace Council went to national council meetings, then testified before the House of the American Activities Committee. And all of his testimony was not his private stuff, it was stuff of the city of Chicago Red Squad. Is it acceptable standards that the red squad agent, the guy that goes out and buys the explosives that rents the apartment where the explosives are put together and so on, and then has the police come in at the right time to arrest him? You know, this isn't an abstract question. Two years ago, there was this case involving just exactly that, if we're a red squad agent for the name Morty's Daily, testified in court that he had bought the explosives. And the judge recognized that the people who were ultimately convicted were in a sense the victims of the provocation of the red squad man himself, and so instead of sending him to jail, he gave them probation.

Chicago policeman, Morty's Daily, still dressed in hippie garb being taken into custody as part of his police undercover role. These are excerpts from his report, made available to the defense, and I quote, he said, we will pick up the cotton and empty bottles, but I don't have any money. So I, in this case, meaning daily, gave them $10. From the following day's entry, again quoting Morty's Daily, I picked up two pints of nitric acid and two pints of sulfuric acid and about 40 or 50 model stoppers, closed quote, from the same day, quote, as they were walking out of the building, they were arrested. The officers then placed me in custody with them, closed quote. There are police officers who speak out against such elements of their job. Among them were Nalt Robinson, president of the Chicago Afro-American Patrolman's League.

I think people, everybody should feel that they're being spied on by somebody. This is one of the most political jobs in the world, the local police. For instance, at certain meetings, the only guy who said, let's go burn something down, happened to be later, a policeman, you know, who was trying to gain the confidence of the group to show how he was really with it. You know, when he goes back, he says, everybody said, yeah, at the suggestion. Well, he made the suggestion, and if he leaves it out of his report, then it looks as if the group is fermenting that type of activity. And this happens more than it doesn't happen when it gets into the classroom in schools, certain instructors, which I was in a class where two individuals from the subversives unit had to attend the class, just because a professor had made certain statements and was teaching certain courses in a so-called liberal college. And he was even aware that there was a guy in his class monitoring it.

Professor Richard Rubenstein, it was his class that Donald Robinson attended. Last spring, I taught a course, Seminar, Roosevelt University, called Law and Order in the City. It was an urban study seminar. I knew that I had several policemen in the class, and most of them I knew personally. And they were very straightforward about talking about their experiences in the police department and letting it be known that they were police. About the third or fourth lecture, one of the policemen who I knew came to me and said, do you know that there is a red squad guy in this course, who may be reporting on you, and he's keeping it quiet. So the first opportunity I took this fellow aside and asked him what he did for a living. He told me that he worked for the city. So I pressed him further, said, what do you do for the city? And he said, well, I'm with the first.

He said, I have a legal job. And then he said, I work for the police force. And after about five minutes of this interrogation, he revealed that he was a member of the red squad. And it's funny, although you might think that the effect of this kind of thing on me and on people like me would be to intimidate us or to get us to be careful and quiet, actually it has quite the opposite effect. And sometimes I think it's intended to have the opposite effect. That is to say, when you know that an agent is in your class, just as when you know that there are agents in a crowded at a demonstration or a rally or in a meeting, you're very often tempted to be even more belligerent than you would normally be to socket to them, if you know what I mean. And I think that this is part of the psychology of surveillance, the psychology of intimidation, intimidation isn't just meant to prevent people from acting.

It's meant to entice them into acting unwisely. I think that it's the personal opinion. They purposely want the agents to be kind of sloppy in their attitudes and their ways of doing things. Because if they had a highly trained elite unit, it would tend to turn up a lot of things on both sides of defense, right? You would find out something that you didn't want to find out about politicians, let's say, as well as the local campus militant and et cetera. Dave Anderson, a reporter for the Learner News paper chain in suburban Chicago, his special interest, military and police intelligence gathering in high schools. Students tell me that they can go to a peace rally. Meet officers of the Red Squad. They're always on a first-name basis. They say each other is so much. And the Red Squad officers will tell them what their grades were last quarter. In one case, a boy was notified first by the Red Squad that he'd been suspended, went back to the school or in the afternoon. The final that was true that yes, he had been suspended that morning.

About two years ago from this upcoming February, I was attending a national conference in Chicago. It was the founding convention of the Young Workers Liberation League. And it began on a Saturday and was to last three days. And on the Sunday of the convention, during the early afternoon, I went downstairs to the snack shop to grab quick sandwich. And there was a vacancy on each side of me. And after I had ordered to guys come in, two of the guys who make a habit of walking around demonstrations with cameras. And they sat down in the first and say anything and they said hello and introduced themselves. Yeah, in fact, they even gave me a card, which they later took back with their name on it, their rank, their badge number. And identifying themselves is subversive activities, intelligence division of the Chicago Police Department. After a while, they said, by the way, Mort, I had never told them my name. How you doing in school? And when they started asking questions like this, I started not answering.

And they looked at each other and they looked at me and then one of them said, say here you've been getting into some trouble, something to do with home room and then they mentioned something else. And again, I paid no attention. They said, Mort and Monday, you're going to be suspended for four days. And then after a while, they came down with a specific reason for why I was going to be suspended and what teachers had sent in referrals on me for behavior. There were two referrals and two different teachers sent them and they told me their names and what the referrals were about. And again, said that I'm Monday, I'd be suspended for four days. And Monday, I was still at the convention, but I returned to school on Tuesday when I went to the hall office to sign in and get an admit for classes. I was called into the hall principal's office and I was in fact suspended for four days for the reasons they had given the referrals that they had said had been written by two teachers were in fact written by those two teachers.

And for the reasons they had said, virtually all the guidance counselors I talked to admitted that they gave out information of this type on students to insurance companies, prospective employers and things like that. Oftentimes, even over the phone when they didn't know who it was, when I asked them, well, for all you know, it could have been the Army or the FBI or local police forces, I guess so I didn't think they were doing something like that. To film the Chicago segment of this report, we sent a four-man film crew to Chicago for three weeks under the direction of Mark Weiss. This in their own words is what happened on the last night of that assignment. We lived here for almost a month. On four successive nights, we saw an unmarked car drive by our house. In it was a police officer who had previously been identified to us as Marie Staley, a member of the Red Squad. Each night, we attempted to photograph his car. On Friday, October 1st, he came again. Two of the crew members took our camera, put on a radio microphone, and went out to film.

After daily had driven by three times, a second unmarked car came down the street, a plane closed detective got out of this car. The officers walked up to me and he said, hello, howe, and he immediately started to frisk me. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm trying to protect myself. Now, we immediately identified ourselves as members of NET press, showed him our press credentials. And at that point, he asked Joe and I to step into the police car. At about this time, I came home. And I went up to one of the police cars and I saw how he and Joe were sitting in the back seat. And one of the police officers there said, what do you have in that bag? And I was carrying an abstract with me. And I said, nothing. And he said, is there a weapon? And he pulled out a gun and he pointed it at me. And he said, let's see what's in there. And I said, no, it's not a weapon. He grabbed at it and pulled out the tape recorder, which I had in there. I asked the one of the officers several times, whether I was under arrest. And he said, no. And I said, why don't you let me go home? I just live across the street. And finally, somebody came over to me and he grabbed me by the arm. And I said, where are you taking me? And he said, you're under arrest now. I said, what are the charges? And he said, well, disorderly conduct.

As we were being led to the patty wagon, I said, again, are we under arrest? And he said, yes. And I said, what charge? And he said, don't worry about it. By the time we get to the station, we'll have a charge. When I was inside the patty wagon, I stood by the door. I saw my friend Andy. And I was very, very scared. We all were that, as soon as we were going to be taken away, all these detectives were barging toward apartments. So I yelled out. I said, Andy, Andy. Andy, you got to stay here. Don't move. Stay here. Sit on the stack. Get in there. And as soon as I said that, a detective grabbed Andy and said, get in. They took us all on the patty wagon, brought us to the local precinct house and put all four of us in a cell together. And we were sitting there for about two hours. And we thought they were going to try and keep us there all weekend without letting us call a lawyer or without charging us with anything.

And then finally, one of the detectives who had arrested us and opened up the cell and took how he enjoyed. They brought us up to the desk and they started filling out forms. And I again asked, what's the charge? And he looked at me and he said, suspicion of burglary. And I just looked at him and I didn't say anything. And after about a pause of 30 seconds, I said, suspicion of what? And he said, we saw you walking that up an apartment carrying a camera. Therefore, we're charging you with burglarizing that apartment. And I said, you got to be kidding. We identified ourselves as NET employees. We told you why we were out there. And he just looked at me and he really didn't know what to say. He put down the forms and just led me and how he back to the cell. Soon afterwards, all of us were released. We rushed back to the apartment. As we went up the steps, leading back to our apartment, the last of the detectives we'd been inside came rushing out. We went in and a lot of friends of ours from across the street, the lawyers were there. And we said, I'll even rate it like they expected and we expected. And so we walked upstairs and marched up looking real tough. And I said, hello, I represent these folks in the gut. They go, sure lady.

One, we don't know you're their lawyer and to this house has been secured for a burglary. And I said, no, I really represent these people. I have to get in here. They said, well lady, we don't know who you are. In fact, we don't even know who lives here. And I said, okay, I'll go get them and they can tell you that they live here. And then you'll let me in, right? They said. And so little did I know that they, the cops had captured the film crew. They had them down at the police station while I'm running around looking for them. So we conducted this search and they didn't show up. In the meantime, they had the house, you know, like with these very big cops, totally secure. They're bowing all the doors. Nobody can get in. And you can hear them scuffling around on the inside. Things are being lifted, pushed around with cops. They're going in and out. There's about six of them. And, you know, the law is somewhere in between. We probably had a right to be in there and they weren't securing any house for any burglary. Nothing was touched. None of the equipment, none of the film was touched. But when we, on closer examination, we went to our notebooks, which had phone numbers of people we were going to contact in Chicago. Things we were going to do, plans for the future. We found that they had been looked through, that little pieces of paper that had phone numbers that had been in my notebook, Mark found in his notebook, and vice versa.

Matter of fact, there was a piece of paper that obviously had been written by one of the detectives with names that he had gotten from various receipts we had in the house and he had left it on the kitchen table. The Fourth Amendment provides the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. And no one shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and persons all things to be seized. Well, I work in a camera store that rents movie equipment and sound equipment and everything. And a crew camera crew came in from NET in New York. This was maybe about a month or so ago. They rented cameras and sound equipment and lighting equipment. They kept the equipment out for about a week or a week and a half or so.

And they returned this stuff on a Tuesday. And from what I understand, they were leaving back for New York that Tuesday night. Now, Wednesday morning, I'm sitting in the back room in the camera room where I work. And one of the fellows from up front comes into the back. And he's saying that there's a guy up in front who's asking to manage your questions about the NET rental. So I'm kind of interested in this and I go up front and try to overhear what's happening. And it seems that this man who at this point had been unidentified to me was asking to manage your questions about what exactly what equipment did NET rent? And what is all this equipment used for? How is it used? What is it capable of doing? He wanted to know more specifically about whether NET we have counters on our cameras, whether we could tell him exactly how much film they had shot while they were in Chicago. And which we said, of course, there are no counters that tell that. And we didn't know exactly how much film. He did, however, get copies of all of the rental invoices and he sales invoices.

He also wanted to know about a certain lens called a Questar, which we rented out for the Clare movie camera. It's about a 60-power telephoto lens. Wanted to know if the camera crew could shoot through a glass window and read some papers on a desk behind that window. He later identified himself as a man named Erwin Bach. Or I later heard that his name was Erwin Bach. And he had left a card with just his name and a telephone number with the instructions that if we should hear from the NET crew again, if they were going to come to Chicago to do some more filming, that we should call this number. And they would not answer that it's the police department, but it is. And to tell them, you know, when the crew is coming in and what equipment that they were going to get, but not to let the crew know that the Chicago police department had been checking up on them.

Repeated efforts were made to get the Chicago police department to participate in this program. From Frank Sullivan, the department's director of news affairs, we requested interviews with members of the Chicago Red Squad and with police commissioner James Cunliske, or any member of that department, he would delegate to speak for him. The department said Mr. Sullivan would not take part in the program. We did not single out Chicago for this report because the techniques or aims of its police intelligence division is that much different than any other. It is simply much bigger. In his book on Chicago's mayor and daily titled boss columnist Mike Royco says that Chicago's Red Squad is one of the biggest political intelligence units outside of the FBI. And the information gathered in Chicago is exchanged with other such units, with, for example, New York City's special investigative section.

This constant exchange and flow of intelligence information among local and federal agencies was illustrated last year in suburban Neurochelle, New York. There the Red Squad consisted of one man, the least Lieutenant John McCormick. He has testified before the Senate Internal Security Committee that he conducted surveillance of an anti-war demonstration in nearby Yonkers, New York. His surveillance was made known only after the committee published his testimony and these pictures. The subjects of that surveillance then sued the City of Neurochelle to prohibit future surveillance. The court ruled in their behalf permanently restraining the City from engaging in any act of surveillance of any person not suspected of or engaged in criminal activity and not having a criminal record. More than 20 other such suits are still pending throughout the nation.

Three of the citizens who initiated the Neurochelle suit, Mrs. Barbara Kaiser, and Philip Sipser, attorneys, and Mrs. Iris Fried, Housewife. In the case which we brought New Rochelle, when inquiry was made of the mayor, who authorized this surveillance, he said, I don't know, and when we asked the City Manager, who authorized the surveillance, and he said, I did know, and when you asked each of the City Councilmen, who authorized this, I did know, and everybody put it into the lap of the commissioner of police. It's like the way you don't expect to drop dead tomorrow, and you know it's going on, and it's terrifying when you think about it. But you don't, unless you have had some experience with it, unless you have actually felt the hot breath down your neck, you don't expect to feel it. You can watch your friends, and you can watch other people, but you don't think it's going to happen to you, the anonymity of the watcher, and if he weren't anonymous, why he wouldn't be anything like so dangerous, because you don't know really whom you're watching, or who's watching you.

The fact that the cops take an interest, the FBI, the CIA, or whoever takes an interest, or maybe just a police lieutenant from Neurochelle. Makes it wrong. He watches you, and as he watches you, you start to squirm. You didn't think there was anything wrong with it at all, and then maybe because he watches, you get to feeling that this is going to accumulate with other things that you did, and make something discreditable in your record. I think that most people, strike that. I really don't think that I have any right to say anything about most people, but quite a lot of people, I think it's fair to say, assume that the police are doing what they ought to be doing most of the time. And if they are following you, you are probably doing something wrong, or something that they wouldn't approve of.

I think if they found themselves being watched, they might take a somewhat different attitude, but as long as it's someone that they don't know who has dubious connections in their mind, or who may have dubious connections in their mind, they are inclined to think that the fact that the police are in some way pursuing the question with respect to them indicates that something has been a little bit phony, there are a little bit wrong. We are going to appear in every shop in Hawthorne, and every best place, every place where workers are still having jobs, to sell up a lot of life earners, to earn a lot of food food, to prepare this for the China struggle. Now we know that law and order means that the law constricts limits what the government may do to you, as well as what you may do to your neighbor or to or against the government or against anyone else. Murray first, now the city manager of Neurochelle, and acting police commissioner. Surveillance by police department, and especially the Neurocell Police Department, can be divided into two categories, surveillance of known criminals, and surveillance of those whom it is suspected are about to commit a criminal act.

I regard as inappropriate surveillance of any person other than a known criminal, or one suspected of being about to commit a criminal act. A subpoena was served on Lieutenant McCormick by the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. He was advised that any testimony that he would give would be secret and confidential and was not going to be made public. Subsequently, the Senate Committee for reasons of its own decided to make the testimony public. Now, while it is not in my province to pass upon the actions of the United States Senate subcommittee, as to the manner in which it received and disclosed the testimony, I hardly think that the procedure followed in the instant case

befits the dignity and decorum of the Senate of the United States, nor do I think that it adds anything to the protection of our liberties, nor does it add to the general welfare and security of the country. The counterpart of the Senate Committee is the House Internal Security Committee, formerly the House on American Activities Committee. Among the most vocal members of the House Group is Congressman Father Drainin of Massachusetts, a member of the Committee who joined it with the avowed purpose of disbanding it. I have seen them investigate the peace movement, the media demonstrators. I have read the staff report that has come out on the black Panthers and on the students for a democratic society. And all in all, I would say that the House Internal Security Committee has a chilling effect upon dissent in this country because by clear implication, the majority of the members of this Committee identify dissent with disloyalty to the country.

In the files of this Congressional Committee, there are 752,000 three by five cards with the names of organizations and individuals who are allegedly subversive. They can take all of this material and they can deny federal employment to a person or they can begin an investigation of that particular individual. One of the great harms that is done that goes on day after day as a direct result of the House Internal Security Committee is this. The United States Civil Service Commission alleges that they have the right to come into the files of a Congressional Committee, House Internal Security Committee, and investigate there the information collated by nameless individuals over many years from allegedly subversive activities about hearsay evidence concerning the activities of this individual. And we must assume that since the U.S. Civil Service Commission comes there every single day and takes this information that they use this information and I am certain that they will use it more.

Some time ago when I was first a member of the House Internal Security Committee, I went with the staff of this particular Committee and saw some of the files of the three-fourths of a million persons on whom there is a ledger or a card file kept by the House Internal Security Committee. It's a very frightening experience actually to see the nature of the information that they have. It's hearsay upon hearsay. The second ranking Republican on the House Committee, Indiana Congressman Roger Zion. Well, we don't really think it's hearsay. If someone just gives an opinion, it's noted as an opinion. When we have FBI people, for example, trained investigators, they come and they say on such and such a date, I saw such and such an individual who was the head of the steering committee to perform such and such a function. I was there, I saw them, I identified them. I wouldn't think that's hearsay under the method that we operate in committee.

Anyone who is named in the record as being subversive is entitled to come and we would welcome them and we would be more than pleased to hear their side of the story. To date, though we have identified substantial numbers of people and have identified them as being active, participating members of subversive or revolutionary groups as outlined by the Attorney General. They have an opportunity to come and refute it if they like and we'd welcome them. We'd be pleased to see them and hear their side of the story. By talking as we have with Communist Party members who were also employed by the FBI by talking with Socialist Party worker members who have been very active in the revolutionary movement as sort of a sideline where they've been working for local police departments and so forth. By having our own staff people infiltrate these movements, we get a pretty good idea of what their activities are, how they're financed and what they plan to do.

Local law enforcement officers often testify before the House and Senate Internal Security committees as do members of military intelligence. Information gathered in any one given area may quickly find its way to other agencies, local, state and federal. And given the current lack of control over such sensitive information, however accurate, there is no way of knowing where it goes or how it is used. Again, Chicago. How did the pictures come out at the Attica demonstration? You got any good ones you got? Yeah. The one that was here about two weeks ago on a Saturday. I don't remember if I was there. Well, that's the one where I have you on film. I don't remember if I was there. Oh, you were there because I was there and I got your picture. I have it up in my wall. Doesn't really matter.

Oh, no. I thought I thought my mother told me not to talk to strangers. Well, you just came over to me before. Yep. That's Truman Stromba. Should I introduce you? Military. No, I don't think the military is doing any surveillance anymore. No, you're not military. Sure.

I don't remember the military. But the military isn't doing surveillance anymore. That was outlawed. You know that guy? No. According to the Army, there is no reason to doubt that it has stopped civilian surveillance. It did not do so on its own volition, however, but because of the revelations of former agents, including this man, John O'Brien, who cites the cross exchange of information. One of the first in-processing briefings that I received concerned liaison that was maintained by the Special Operations Section of Region 1 here with various agencies. And placed among the top agencies was the Red Squad, also the subversive section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The subversive section of the Illinois Bureau of Investigation, which had its headquarters for this particular area in Elgin. Also, we maintain liaison.

Normal routine police liaison with virtually every police department in the northern and northwest suburbs of the city of Chicago. We also maintain liaison on a regular basis with Secret Service, with the Naval Intelligence Service here in Chicago, with the Air Force Intelligence Service. And occasionally had contact with the Central Intelligence Agency, however, this contact did not concern any anti-war and new left activities. That headline appeared in Chicago on December 17, 1970. The man who told the Senate of Army Surveillance was John O'Brien. Attached to the military intelligence unit at Evanston, Illinois, he left the service and then wrote to Senator Irvin detailing what he knew. Less than a week after O'Brien's charges, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird took action. As O'Brien recalls here, much information has already been gathered and passed on to other agencies. Well, there was a very prominent social figure, a woman, and we were completely knowledgeable of her sexual habits, which were, as far as society's concerned, a little bit out of the norm for women her age.

This information could be extremely embarrassing to her. She was not a public figure. She had had her name in the newspapers and several locations and was known as a very prominent social figure in the city of Chicago. A red squad undercover agent had penetrated an organization with which this woman was associated on a somewhat direct basis. She contributed money to the organization. However, that was her official association. She was associated with certain members of this organization in more intimate ways. And this individual became involved with her intimately. And as a result, he reported this information to his contact in the Chicago Police Department, who subsequently made the information available to not only Army but made it available to the FBI. As an example, we were knowledgeable in the hierarchy of the student mobilization committee of a promiscuous relationship existing between two members of that organization.

The male was married, the female was single, and the female became pregnant. And through the use of one of our agents, we informed the man's wife that he was involved in this relationship, which created considerable domestic havoc in his life. And at the same time, it took him away from some of his SMC duties. And then we, in a rumor-mongering type of way, spread quite a bit of rumors concerning this relationship among the members of SMC. One of the more interesting aspects is that SMC has some Trotskyites in very high positions within its organization. And this was far beyond their moral comprehension that this was happening within their organization. In the spring of 1971, records were stolen from the FBI office in Medea, Pennsylvania. Those documents never challenged, as official FBI files, revealed much about that agency's widespread use of political informers. Immediately after that theft, the FBI moved on the Powellton section of Philadelphia, presumably looking for leads. These residents of Powellton recalled their reactions.

They really freaked out with that time they came around, you know, about the beginning of the summer. It was almost a year, I guess, people. And that was a new attack. I feel pretty safe in my home. And I'm also considerably right, I guess, of most of you. I feel like, you know, under Democratic committee men on the block, you know, what the hell am I doing? You have a guy coming to visit. And they came and they did pictures. And they kept taking pictures. And they kept taking these, they had these great big long lenses. I looked at what the hell was. At the windows, they would get as close as they could and shoot through the window. And I really freaked me out. My wife looked at me and she said, this is ridiculous. We gotta do something about these people. This is, you know, so we went out and I said, you know, what are you guys doing? I know another house is in for sale. And I was really at first, I was playing it kind of straight. And I said, you know, honestly, I really like to know, could you tell me if you're the police? Because if you're setting me up for a burglary, we don't have a hole in it. But, you know, just tell me what, you know, what are you the police? And the guy said, no problem.

For you, no problem for me. That was the first time I was really ruffled, you know. I was for a couple of minutes. I thought, well, this is ridiculous, you know. Like there was the feeling of being somehow caught up in something that I felt I had very relatively little to do with, you know, really. I mean, friends, yes. As for being a vocal member of a movement or anything or politically active in resistance or any other democratic machine. I think that was a part of Frank. I feel very much the same way you do in a way. And like I haven't been active in resistance politics or anything. And my work is much more along a journalistic kind of line with the American Friends Service Committee. And yet, you know, 12-armed agents broke into my house. It was just a Sunday evening. And I was upstairs at the time. And all of a sudden, the building started to shake and rattle. And I leaned over the balcony. And there were these bugs at my door with a sledgehammer bashing into my apartment.

And I yelled down. And they yelled back up that it was FBI. But by the time I got back down to the course where all in the apartment. And I later learned that the apartment house was completely surrounded, that there were FBI all over the block. If there were city police down about four or five blocks, apparently to take care of any community response became my support. And they held me in my apartment for about an hour and a half while 12 of them searched the entire apartment, wouldn't let me into the back room to see what they were doing. And I tried to question me about things. Wouldn't let my lawyer in the apartment, wouldn't let my lawyer and I have a confidential conversation out my home, so forth. But in thinking back on why me, I mean, I feel very much like you do, Frank. You know, I wasn't vocal in politics and wasn't vocal in any kind of politics. And I look upon it now as a kind of irresponsibility. But I think that their attack on us was precisely because we weren't active. And that if we were harassed, then no one in the community was safe.

Wasn't there some reaction when your house was raided, weren't there people who in the community who came out? I was later told there were about a hundred people. Was anybody here? I was. I can tell you something about that story too. Another person in our commune was jogging around the block that night for exercise. And he spotted the 926 license plate on a car, which is the FBI series. And he came back and called to the rest of us in the house. And I did the telephone calling while Russ went off and finished his jogging. And within about 15 minutes, we had 50 to 60 people there and people kept coming. And all this was unknown, I think, to Anne initially. But the FBI in their first major raid was unsuccessful because they couldn't even keep it secret. They couldn't snatch Anne away in secrecy.

But we were back there and watching them as they were grumbling around in her garbage cans. Well, even they didn't let you make a phone call, right? Right, they wouldn't let me answer the phone call. Right, and even before they left, our other lawyer who doesn't live in Palton was there. But we couldn't find out if Anne was in the building or not. I was going to supper and we just saw the FBI mob drowner, so we stopped. Yeah, I didn't know what was happening and then he called and he couldn't find out if you were in the building. And we didn't know if she'd already been taken or what. But we watched everything they did and they kept telling us to leave. Well, I see the line that happened was the street fare, the sort of climax to all of this, was the street fare. Which I thought was one of the best efforts yet, frankly. I mean, it was a food and drink affair, it was an amusement affair, and it was also a very good information affair. Palton struck back with the one weapon it believed the FBI most vulnerable to, ridicule. Here are excerpts from a videotape made for showing at Palton's FBI street fare.

You better not drown, you better not smile, you better not steal a media file. The FBI is coming to town. They know if you are freaky. They know if you are straight. They know if you are left or right. And if you plan to smash the state, you better not drown, you better not smile, you better not steal a media file. FBI plant. Yes? Open up FBI. Prove it. Whoa, so many credentials. Oh, I'm hungry. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Kid, how many agents are there on Hamilton Street? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Who'd better not smile, you better not frown. FBI's are watching our town. Edgar Hoover's hanging all around. We requested FBI participation in this program. Initially by telephone and then by letter. We were turned down. First by an FBI spokesman. And then in this letter from the director, Jay Edgar Hoover. It reads and I quote. Your letter of December 16, 1971 has been received. As I indicated before, it is not possible for me to exceed to your request for a television interview. Close quote. It continues. And again, I quote. In so far as misflit craft is concerned, the public record will reflect that our agents entered her apartment only after a search warrant had been issued authorizing them to do so. Close quote.

The legal validity of that warrant and FBI actions in Hamilton are now being challenged in a suit brought by residents of that community against the FBI asking the court to and again I quote. And join and declare unconstitutional, the continuous and malicious harassment, intimidation, and open surveillance of the plaintiffs end quote. That suit also mentions the chilling effect of surveillance. If Powelton was able to shrug off that effect, Joseph Powers, a government employee, was not. An FBI agent and acquired at the home of a man locally who knows me quite well. And the agent in his questioning, in his opening remarks, identified himself as an agent, said he was doing a investigation of myself. And he wanted to know what civil rights organization I was the head up.

And the man who was being asked the question by the agent said that he was not aware that I was the head of any civil rights organization. And the agent had preliminarily said that it was part of a character investigation presumably for promotion or some type or security clearance. At this point, I said that I would give him no information at all unless he explained himself. And he told me that I was obstructing his activities. And I said that I didn't want to spend any more time with him and asked him to leave. He told me that if I didn't cooperate with him, I would get in trouble, at which point I got pretty hot. And there's no what kind of trouble he proposed to me. And he said he could take me downtown right now.

Well, as a matter of fact, he didn't, and he walked out, and I followed him out. And that was essentially the end of the interview. I was, however, concerned enough about the incident. So I immediately wrote to the head of the FBI operation in Chicago, detailing what had taken place. And asking for their explanation of one, the agent's conduct, and two, a rational explanation of why this interest in civil rights. About four or five days later, one of the senior supervisors, and his assistant came out to explain the incident to me. I must say that they were extremely courteous, butters wouldn't have melted in their mouths. They did apologize for the activities of the agents. They told me, or implied at any rate, that the agent was a new man, and that this sort of thing was very deplorable, and certainly they didn't approve of it at all.

And they wouldn't want me to think that it was their practice to threaten citizens and so on. I felt, under deep, I was deeply worried about my own secure position with the government. And I have fairly well adjusted the police somewhat compensated for the situation on that. My feelings of paranoia don't hit me quite as often as they did. I've known Joe for a number of years, and he's a very gentle and very quiet little man, who's been very concerned about the war, very concerned about injustice of any kind. But he's the type of person who would, under no circumstances, involve himself in anything that wasn't the most peaceful, the most establishment kind of sincere protest and dissent. When you're operating a force of the size of the FBI, that you don't have instances where one or two or three or maybe ten agents are overzealous in the conduct of their duties.

This has to occur sometimes. In this balancing act you have to go through, I would say that, unless the need is great, in other words, the stakes are high, people should be permitted to freely assemble, to demonstrate and to petition their government without having cameras on them. That type of surveillance is not going to inhibit the real troublemakers, it's just going to inhibit the people who do not have an illegal motive. The abuse or the possibility of abuse is not in the collection, but in the dissemination. The need here is to gelously guard all investigative and intelligence information that is collected by the government.

Others disagree that the danger is only in the dissemination. Gathered to discuss the dangers of both collection and dissemination are Professor Arthur Miller of the University of Michigan Law School and author of the book Assault on Privacy. Frank Dunner, now working on political surveillance under a grant from the American Civil Liberties Union, Robert Wall, former FBI agent, Irving Johnson, and Eric Heiberg, both former private credit investigators, and Ralph Stein, former military intelligence operative. Whenever anybody has to deal with a law enforcement officer, he's at a disadvantage, particularly in the initial contact. When I walked to the door, knocked on the door and showed my credentials, FBI agent, Mrs. Jones, we're investigating your son, he isn't in any trouble, we're just interested in finding out what he's been doing, what his feelings are towards certain things.

I knew when I went to the door that Mrs. Jones was probably going to have a heart attack when I finished. I knew that this was a chilling effect, I knew before I went there. Did you work at all closely with the Internal Revenue Service? Where does that stand in the pecking water? Internal Revenue Service was tough to get into, they kind of kept their files closed to us, but toward the end I got involved in a deal where I determined from the record center, our identification division, somebody in the Internal Revenue Service had requested a file, the rap sheet, on an individual that I had a case on that I was actively investigating. So I set out to find out what Internal Revenue was doing so that I could determine what direction to take in my case. The guy was a quote-black militant who ran a bookstore in Washington, D.C., it was a very subversive activity. At any rate, I went over to the Internal Revenue and I started out in the 7th floor with a director of some organization.

He took me down two floors to other guys and he took me up three floors to somebody else. I ended up in a basement room which was soundproofed in a locked door and a guy with a stack of files about four miles high in which one of which was the rap sheet on this guy. All they were doing was initiating investigations on their own hook of people who were supposed to be militants of one degree or another on the left or black militants. With an eye to seeing whether or not they might possibly be violating some Internal Revenue Statute. They'd gone from the position of checking an income tax return or taking an active lead from someone who said, you know, Joe Dokes didn't report all of his income to on their own hook going out and selecting individuals for investigation. You know, we talk about air pollution and water pollution. When are we going to start waking up to the fact that in an information-based society in which every organization in society makes decisions about you and me on the basis of the file, produced in the future electronically, instantaneously, anywhere in the world that we've got a serious problem of information pollution,

that we all live in a sense in an information envelope, that we have no control over, that others are disseminating the bout us, which in a real sense can cripple us vocationally, economically, socially. I don't know whether this is amusing or how to regard it, but one of my sources, just this week, provided me with an FBI report on Frank that has just been turned out within the last few weeks. And he said he had no objection, but I thought he left us here in the FBI. I think it's kind of interesting. I shouldn't give him too much credit. They don't apparently have a dosie under his own name. It's under the ACLU name, so that makes it quite all right. And it says a two-year study of political surveillance in the United States has been launched by the ACLU Foundation, according to the Project Director Frank J. Donner. One phase of the study concerns the academic community, and Donner has written to editors of college newspapers requesting data on the extent of political surveillance, wiretapping, photography, and the use of student informers. Frank J. Donner may possibly be identical with Frank J. Donner, a lawyer and Connecticut resident who, in 1965, reportedly admitted having been a Communist Party leader for 30 years.

And this is volume 1, number 11 of this year's edition of their intelligence rule. There's a dual inaccuracy in that. Number 1, I never made any such statement. And number 2, the fact about which I have supposed to have made the statement is false. Now, this kind of irresponsible reporting is pervasive. If you look at the media papers, for example, you'll get items like the fact that a man called his mother to send him money for bus fare home. But doesn't it disturb Frank as an individual that this statement exists? Well, now you've touched on something which I regard as key to this whole problem. And that is, what is the impact on the individual, on his sense of freedom? When he knows that someone, as keeping checked on him, amassing data about his private life, about his politics, true or false.

And that may be used someday. It's enormously intimidating. Somehow we've been taught to believe that the stakes are too high to raise these ethical concerns. We are taught to believe by the intelligence people that the very safety and security of our country is involved. And therefore, we must swallow our reservations and accept these things. Of course, I regard that as a complete myth. We are becoming a nation of informants. Because people in this country are usually willing, for one reason or another, to disclose everything they know about everyone else. And the danger today, because of the means of dissemination and because government is not benign in its collection efforts, is absolutely overwhelming. And that takes us to where quality of life has to be decided. You know, here we have this tremendously strong tradition in Western culture that goes back to the Bible, a Judas story. We have a very powerful ethical bias against informers. Now, what has happened to it?

I think one thing that's happened to it is that we, number one, we tend to kid ourselves about what's happening. We assume that because it's happening in our country today, that somehow it does not have the same stigma as these historic examples with which most people identify themselves. There's been two little talks about the psychology, the psyche of the agents, the psyche of the people who run this. And I think it deserves some attention. Quite often in making investigations and asking, how much does your neighbor drink? It's difficult for neighbors often to know that. But they could say, I see it doesn't empty fifths or something in his trash every week. And this is the kind of answer you get. And you have to build some sort of drink habits history out of that kind of information.

If obviously a customer is not going to take that, you can either throw it out of the report entirely or put it in there. We have quotas to meet, which we talked about. We have to get so much critical information out there. Well, you start off asking how long a neighbor has known the subject, how old they are, what their marital status is, the ages and sexes of their children, where they work, and how long they've been working there, and then previous job history. This is for auto insurance, incidentally. You mentioned I think marital harmony before. Yes. How would you ask that? You kick it into gear with the question, how is he regarded? That's an open end question that you can tell from the informants response, if everything is harmonious next door. And it's just up to you as an individual to pursue it anyway, you see fit. What happens if you pick a bad neighbor or a hostile neighbor? Well, in theory, you're supposed to get any adverse information confirmed through additional sources. You do feel this time pressure, though, and it compels you to make a judgment about the candor of the informants you've got right there.

If you feel he's being candid, you rush on to your next case, accepting that information and face value, generally. In a number of cases, where you have your so-called stock sources, in other words, the apartment house manager. You don't go down the checklist. You run in, leave your car engine running, you run in, you say, how about your doll? Is he okay? The manager says, yes or no? Yes, that's it. He received two conflicting reports, one negative, one affirmative. Which would you be inclined instinctively? You'd be inclined to accept the critical. You have these standards to maintain. You have limited time in which to do it. Generally speaking, we have files on roughly a third of the people in any given area. So you have quite a bit of dated information at your disposal to begin with. This is another thing that I believe, rather remiss about, we tend to rely far too heavily on dated information. What a man did back in the past. We cling to that information.

And without bothering to bring it up to date, it's reported again and again and again and again. And in the matter of drink habits, a new inspector, for example, who's out on the street and doesn't collect drink habits information this time around on the fellow, is inclined to report it verbatim, often old report. Let's say three, four years earlier and make it as though it applies to the present. I was involved in investigating a black organization in Washington DC, which was ostensibly a school. Black Studies Institute of some sort, I forget the name exactly. But I got a directive from the bureau from a particular individual who was a supervisor in the bureau headquarters saying to investigate this group because it was a revolutionary group planning, violent revolution and stockpiling arms and ammunition and so forth. I spent six months investigating the group and used the informants extensively. I had six informants who were working practically full time. There was never any indication from any of the informants that this was a revolutionary group. They were not stockpiling arms or ammunition.

They were not teaching how to demolish buildings or anything of this sort. They were involved in black studies in the history of various African nations and they were concerned with the revolutionary movements in Africa and explaining the revolutionary movements in Africa to blacks in Washington DC. At the end of the six months, I submitted a report with my recommendations that the case be closed. We do no further investigation with respect to this group because it was a legitimate enterprise, if you will. It was a valid social purpose. And the result was that I got what we call a greenie in the bureau. It's a letter back from the director on green paper which signifies either great praise or the other extreme. In this case, it was only about three paragraphs long and it said, in the first paragraph, it said apparently the agent doesn't know what he's investigating. Or he's been duped by his informants or this is a very, very super duper group that has completely clouded the thing so much that we can't find out the real issues.

Therefore, the agent should be moved from this particular type of work and the organization should be reinvestigated with all due vigor and more informants should be put in. More agent times should be put on it there should be further actual physical surveillance by agents of people coming and going and recording of license numbers and photographic surveillance of the location to find out who's going and who's coming. They disregard it six months of intensive work and the conclusion is drawn because of the pre-existing bias that this was a revolutionary group. Here to us, Jay Edgar Hoover said that Mr. Wall, quote, expressed an opinion in a report which was later overruled by supervisory personnel at FBI headquarters. Evaluations by special agents who conduct investigations are never final. They are always subject to review by the agent superiors. Then we'd have another incident. I did a full study on Ramparts magazine, broke it down into, we talked about financial information before at that time that we're having real financial difficulties.

And I had their bank statements down to the last check deposited the last day before I started my writing. And I took this all into a person who had now a top ranking civilian army intelligence. He looked at it with disgust and threw it down. He said, you haven't done a damn thing. You haven't found where the common turn is financing it. This man is still fighting the Cold War of 1945, 48, 49. He hasn't grown out of it. And this is the attitude you find where they have to, in order to maintain their own defenses, their own identity, project and continue to project their role as they see it and their role can't shift with the change in American society because they're not flexible enough, which is one solid reason right there. But why it's so important to supervise from the outside intelligence personnel and totally monitor their activities because they've left to themselves any dissent is always going to be perceived not as an exercise of First Amendment rights, but as an assault on the very institution of America. And I think we ought to just stop going around feeling ashamed of ourselves for ever since we've got our problems, but compared to the rest of the world with the freest thing that ever happened.

And with our sometimes our lack of personal responsibility for what we do, I think sometimes we ought to start recognizing that too and stop graphing about our lack of freedom. We haven't got any lack of freedom. We're an extremely free people. I think that people ought to be prosecuted for the crimes they commit and not harassed for the views they entertain. The first amendment after all was written for all the people in the United States and it extends its freedoms to the wise people and the foolish people. It extends its freedoms to those who are learning and those who are ignorant. It extends its freedom to those who are devout and those who are ungodly. It even grants its freedoms to those who love our country and its institutions and those who hate our country and its institutions. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it.

That was nothing. That was said more true than that. And if Americans are going to retain their freedoms, they're going to have to be eternally vigilant and they're going to have to be always ready to guard and defend them. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it.

Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God and defend it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God.

Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God.

Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God. Daniel Webster said on one occasion that God grants freedom only to those who love it and always read it to God. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.