Authoritarian governments are characterised by fully developed secret police forces, extensive government surveillance of civilians, a high level of official secrecy and censorship, and an elaborate system of state coercion to intimidate and silence dissenters. All of these phenomena have existed in the US for at least eighty years, but since World War II they have taken more extreme forms, especially during the 1980s. In this section we will examine the operations of the secret police.
The creation of an elaborate US "national security" apparatus has come about gradually since 1945 through congressional enactments, numerous executive orders and national security directives, and a series of Supreme Court decisions that have eroded First Amendment rights. The policies of the Reagan administration, however, reflected radical departures from the past, as revealed not only by their comprehensive scope but by their institutionalisation of secrecy, censorship, and repression in ways that will be difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. As Richard Curry points out, the Reagan administration's success stems "from major structural and technological changes that have occurred in American society during the twentieth century — especially the emergence of the modern bureaucratic State and the invention of sophisticated electronic devices that make surveillance possible in new and insidious ways." [Curry, Op. Cit., p. 4]
The FBI has used "countersubversive" surveillance techniques and kept lists of people and groups judged to be potential national security threats since the days of the Red Scare in the 1920s. Such activities were expanded in the late 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt instructed the FBI to gather information about Fascist and Communist activities in the US and to conduct investigations into possible espionage and sabotage. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover interpreted these directives as authorising open-ended inquiries into a very broad category of potential "subversives"; and by repeatedly misinforming a succession of careless or indifferent presidents and attorneys general about the precise scope of Roosevelt's directives, Hoover managed for more than 30 years to elicit tacit executive approval for continuous FBI investigations into an ever-expanding class of political dissidents [Geoffrey R. Stone, "The Reagan Administration, the First Amendment, and FBI Domestic Security Investigations," in Curry, Ibid.].
The advent of the Cold War, ongoing conflicts with the Soviet Union, and fears of the "international Communist conspiracy" provided justification not only for covert CIA operations and American military intervention in countries all over the globe, but also contributed to the FBI's rationale for expanding its domestic surveillance activities.
Thus in 1957, without authorisation from Congress or any president, Hoover launched a highly secret operation called COINTELPRO:
"From 1957 to 1974, the bureau opened investigative files on more than half a million 'subversive' Americans. In the course of these investigations, the bureau, in the name of 'national security,' engaged in widespread wire-tapping, bugging, mail-openings, and break-ins. Even more insidious was the bureau's extensive use of informers and undercover operative to infiltrate and report on the activities and membership of 'subversive' political associations ranging from the Socialist Workers Party to the NAACP to the Medical Committee for Human Rights to a Milwaukee Boy Scout troop." [Stone, Ibid., p. 274].
But COINTELPRO involved much more than just investigation and surveillance. It was used to discredit, weaken, and ultimately destroy the New Left and Black radical movements of the sixties and early seventies, i.e. to silence the major sources of political dissent and opposition.
The FBI fomented violence through the use of agents provocateurs and destroyed the credibility of movement leaders by framing them, bringing false charges against them, distributing offensive materials published in their name, spreading false rumours, sabotaging equipment, stealing money, and other dirty tricks. By such means the Bureau exacerbated internal frictions within movements, turning members against each other as well as other groups.
Government documents show the FBI and police involved in creating acrimonious disputes which ultimately led to the break-up of such groups as Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party, and the Liberation News Service. The Bureau also played a part in the failure of such groups to form alliances across racial, class, and regional lines. The FBI is implicated in the assassination of Malcolm X, who was killed in a "factional dispute" that the Bureau bragged of having "developed" in the Nation of Islam, and of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was the target of an elaborate FBI plot to drive him to suicide before he was conveniently killed by a sniper. Other radicals were portrayed as criminals, adulterers, or government agents, while still others were murdered in phoney "shoot-outs" where the only shooting was done by the police.
These activities finally came to public attention because of the Watergate investigations, congressional hearings, and information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In response to the revelations of FBI abuse, Attorney General Edward Levi in 1976 set forth a set of public guidelines governing the initiation and scope of the bureau's domestic security investigations, severely restricting its ability to investigate political dissidents.
The Levi guidelines, however, proved to be only a temporary reversal of the trend. Although throughout his presidency Ronald Reagan professed to be against the increase of state power in regard to domestic policy, he in fact expanded the power of the national bureaucracy for "national security" purposes in systematic and unprecedented ways. One of the most significant of these was his immediate elimination of the safeguards against FBI abuse that the Levi guidelines had been designed to prevent. This was accomplished through two interrelated executive branch initiatives: Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981, and Attorney General William French Smith's guidelines, which replaced Levi's in 1983.
The Smith guidelines permitted the FBI to launch domestic security investigations if the facts "reasonably indicated" that groups or individuals were involved in criminal activity. More importantly, however, the new guidelines also authorised the FBI to "anticipate or prevent crime." As a result, the FBI could now investigate groups or individuals whose statements "advocated" criminal activity or indicated an apparent intent to engage in crime, particularly crimes of violence.
As Curry notes, the language of the Smith guidelines provided FBI officials with sufficient interpretative latitude to investigate virtually any group or individual it chose to target, including political activists who opposed the administration's foreign policy. Not surprisingly, under the new guidelines the Bureau immediately began investigating a wide variety of political dissidents, quickly making up for the time it had lost since 1976. Congressional sources show that in 1985 alone the FBI conducted 96 investigations of groups and individuals opposed to the Reagan Administration's Central American policies, including religious organisations who expressed solidarity with Central American refugees.
The Smith guidelines only allowed the Bureau to investigate dissidents. Now, however, there is a far greater threat to the US Bill of Rights waiting in the wings: the so-called Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Bill. If passed, this bill would allow the President, on his own initiative and by his own definition, to declare any person or organisation "terrorist."
Section 301(c)6 states that these presidential rulings will be considered as conclusive and cannot be appealed in court. The Attorney General would also be handed new enforcement powers, e.g. suspects would be considered guilty unless proven innocent, and the source or nature of the evidence brought against suspects would not have to be revealed if the Justice Department claimed a "national security" interest in suppressing such facts, as of course it would. Suspects could also be held without bail and deported for any reason if they were visiting aliens. Resident aliens would be entitled to a hearing, but could nevertheless be deported even if no crime were proven! US citizens could be put in jail for up to ten years and pay a $250,000 fine if declared guilty.
An equally scary provision of the Counter-Terrorism Bill is Section 603, which subsumes all "terrorist" crimes under the RICO (Racketeer-Influenced Criminal Organisation) civil asset forfeiture statutes. Thus anyone merely accused of "interfering" or "impeding" or "threatening" a current or former federal employee could have all their property seized under "conspiracy to commit terrorism" charges. Some in Congress now want to designate all local gun-related charges as federal terrorist crimes. Obviously the Counter-Terrorism Bill would simply add to the abuses that are already widespread in drug cases under the seizure and forfeiture laws. This is hardly surprising, since Federal and state agencies and local police are encouraged to make seizures and get to keep the property for their own use, and since anonymous informants who make charges leading to seizures are entitled to part of the property seized.
If this bill passes, it is certain to be used against the Left, as COINTELPRO was in the past. For it will greatly increase the size and funding of the FBI and give it the power to engage in "anti-terrorist" activities all over the country, without judicial oversight. The mind reels at the ability this bill would give the government to suppress dissidents or critics of capitalism, who have historically been the favourite targets of FBI abuses. For example, if an agent provocateur were to bring an illegal stick of dynamite to a peaceful meeting of philosophical anarchists, he could later report everyone at the meeting to the government on charges of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. The agent could even blow something up with the dynamite and claim that other members knew of the plan. Everyone in the group could then have all their property seized and be jailed for up to ten years!
Even if the Counter-Terrorism Bill doesn't pass in its present form, the fact that a draconian measure like this is even being considered says volumes about the direction in which the US — and by implication the other "advanced" capitalist states — are headed.