Meatspace

[George at Orwellian.Org]

jamesd at echeque.com
#
#    If those radicals were being murdered by the feds, the radical 
#    left would have been eager to have them investigated, instead 
#    of closing their eyes and looking the other way, and suddenly 
#    dropping vanished radicals down the memory hatch.

Being subject to:

    o illegal "Echelon" monitoring
    o murderous attempts on the organization
    o a "grand scale" of FBI interference with civil rights orgs
    o FBI aiding false imprisonment

...doesn't exactly make for a peaceful democratic process.

----


: The Puzzle Palace
:     Inside the National Security Agency,
:     America's most secret intelligence organization
: Author James Bamford, 1983 revision, ISBN 0-14-00.6748-5
#    
#    P317: 1962. Now, for the first time, NSA had begun turning its massive ear
#    inward toward its own citizens. With no laws or legislative charter to
#    block its path, the ear continued to turn.
#    
#    
#    P319: The Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI and the DIA submitted entries
#    for the NSA's watch list.
#    
#    The names on the various watch lists ranged from members of radical political
#    groups to celebrities to ordinary citizens involved in protest against their
#    government.
#    
#    Included were such well-known figures as Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Dr. Benjamin
#    Spock, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverand Ralph Abernathy, Black
#    Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, and Chicago Seven defendants Abbie Hoffman
#    and David T. Dellinger.



*   "The Rise of the Computer State", David Burnham, 1984
*
*   p128: Federal authorities were concerned that foreign governments MIGHT
*   try to influence civil rights leaders in the United States. The list
*   of Americans monitored ballooned as political groups, celebrities and
*   ordinary citizens were added to the 'watch lists'. The NSA surveillance
*   was illegal and was instantly stopped [years later] when it appeared
*   that Congress might learn about the eavesdropping.


*   Main Justice, by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9
*
*   The FBI had been spying on members of the civil rights movement
*   to discredit Martin Luther King and destroy the civil rights
*   movement, government files showed. There had been burglaries
*   and illegal wiretapping on a grand scale.


At the same time Hoover was in power and developed the "Security Portfolio"
and attacked civil rights movements in the United States, a Black Panther
named Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt was framed for a murder he didn't commit by
the FBI.

*   "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
*   At 4:00 A.M. on December 4, 1969, for example, a special fourteen-man
*   squad of Chicago police officers raided a house used by the Black
*   Panther Party. During the shoot-first-ask-questions-later raid, police
*   fired at least ninety-eight rounds into the apartment. Illinois chairman
*   Fred Hampton and Peoria chairman Mark Clark were killed.
*
*   An FBI informant gave the bureau specific information about where
*   Hampton was probably sleeping, and a detailed floor plan of the house
*   which the special squad used during its raid.
*
*   Thirteen years later, in November 1982, District Court Judge John F.
*   Grady determined that there was sufficient evidence of an FBI-led
*   conspiracy to deprive the Panthers of their civil rights, and awarded
*   the plaintiffs $1.85 million in damages.


:   5/30/97 MSNBC
:
:   After more than a quarter of a century in prison, a Black Panther
:   activist has won the right to a new trial. A judge ruled there had
:   been prosecutorial misconduct. The judge overturned the conviction
:   when it was disclosed the government prosecutors withheld critical
:   evidence:
:
:       o They never said the informer was working with and paid by
:         the FBI.
:
:       o A former FBI agent also agrees with his alibi: that he was
:         in the Black Panther HQ at the time of the murder. That the
:         FBI knew this because they were monitoring the HQ.
:
:       o And the jury never knew the eyewitness, who has since died,
:         had misidentified people in other cases.
:
:   He has been turned down for parole 16 times, and had been in prison
:   longer than most murderers.
:
:
:   6/10/97 MSNBC: Mr. Pratt has been freed over the U.S. Attorney's
:   objections. His first minutes of freedom were spent with his
:   94-year-old mother.
:
:   Court TV:
:
:        Judge Dickey overturned the conviction last month, ruling that
:   prosecutors failed to tell the defense that the key witness against
:   Pratt was an infiltrator and paid informant for the FBI and police.
:   *** This primary "witness" had claimed Pratt confessed!!! ***
:
:        "It's madness in there," Pratt said after walking out of jail
:   on $25,000 bail. "You have political prisoners on top of political
:   prisoners. I'm only one of a great many that should be exposed,
:   should be addressed."
:
:   The same judge who presided over Pratt's original trial set him free.
:   Johnny Cochran said Pratt spent the first eight years of his sentence
:   in solitary confinement.

That's a long time to sit in jail just because the FBI didn't want to
reveal its monitoring operations, isn't it?