UNLEASHING THE FBI MEANS INCREASED STATE REPRESSION

A statement from the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) - June 11, 2002

The Bush Administration is recommending that the FBI return to the full-time business of domestic spying, a centerpiece of its activities for over fifty years. Many people from progressives to conservatives and libertarians are opposed to this plan to unleash the FBI.

From the era of the Palmer Raids after World War I, through the period of left-led support for the Scottsboro defendants and organizing the CIO in the 1930s, to the brutal anti-communist repression of the 1940s and 1950s, the FBI established itself as the primary instrument of state repression in the United States. As a New York Times editorial pointed out about the FBI in the 1960s and 1970s, it "routinely infiltrated peace groups, electronically monitored civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and generally engaged in spying against Americans who were critical of the government." These operations led to the destruction of the left and the peace movement, and the incarceration and the murder of progressives such as Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and dozens of other leaders of the Black Panther Party as well as Sacco and Vanzetti.

The Bush administration wants the FBI to become more active in the infiltration, disruption and destruction of democratic rights and dissenting organizations. This is only the latest effort by reactionaries in the adminstration, led by Attorney General Ashcroft, to expand the instruments of state repression, using the legitimate concern of US citizens for terrorism, as a cover.

It is important to note that these new FBI powers were not sought for eight months since the tragedy of September 11 but are called for now when the FBI is being criticized for its incompetence for not using information about possible terrorism last summer to thwart the acts of 9/11. The implausible logic of the Bush/Ashcroft recommendation is that since the FBI failed in its intelligence activities before, it should be given more powers (not less).

The small but significant limitations on FBI domestic spying, adopted by the FBI in 1976 as a result of intense public pressure, are in danger of being rescinded. Only renewed public pressure can stop the efforts to unleash the FBI in 2002. Progressives and others who fear a radical decline in our freedoms must speak up in opposition to this new effort to weaken our democratic institutions.

We in CCDS call on all people who cherish democratic institutions, who support the rights of Americans to speak out and engage in political activities, and who are concerned about the drift from freedom to tyranny and state repression to make their voices heard against the new policies expanding the role of the FBI

Statement of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, 116 West 111th Street, New York, NY 10026-4206. Phone 212.663.3526. Fax 212.663.3650 email: national@cc-ds.org website: www.cc-ds.org