Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agenciesand to [sic] much information has been collected. The Government hasoften undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of theirpolitical beliefs, even when these beliefs posed no threat of violence orillegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operatingprimarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusivetechniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mailopening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information aboutthe personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigationsof groups deemed potentially dangerous-and even of groupssuspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations-havecontinued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engagein unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disruptedbecause of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigationshave been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessivecollection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employedincludinganonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings,ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups intorivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have servedthe political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressurefrom high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they alsooccasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them fromofficials whom they had a duty to inform.!lWith this in view, the political operations touched on here, and the abusesthat accompanied them, cannot be dismissed as the excesses of individual, overzealousofficers, or even as the dysfunctions of particular departments. Instead,they should be understood as systematic in nature, institutional in scope,affecting the entire country, and (despite their purported aims) underminingdemocracy. 1bis is certainly true of the most flagrant abuses, but it may alsobe true of "legitimate" intelligence operations. However restrained, intelligenceactivities function to suppress dissent and undercut basic political liberties. YaleUniversity law professor Thomas Emerson explains:The very process of investigating political activities, involving the questioningof friends, neighbors, employers and other government agents, isintimidating. The compiling of dossiers, which may be the basis of internmentin the event of emergency or of other reprisals, is threatening. Thevery existence of agents, informers, and possible agents provocateurs ischilling. Opportunities for partisan abuse of intelligence powers becomeavailable and tempting. Freedom of expression cannot exist under theseconditions.72Secret police are always the enemies of democracy.LOOKING AT THE LEFTAt every level of government, campaigns against dissent have tended to focusdisproportionately on the activities of the left. In 1975 a former detective leakedto the press a list of organizations with files maintained by the Baltimore Police161