Posted on 10/29/2024 4:40:31 AM PDT by lasereye
Although the legacy media has buried the story, it turns out that over the last several years the Federal Bureau of Investigation has resurrected a hated and unconstitutional spying program once directed by the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. His program, called the COINTELPRO program, targeted Americans who committed no crime, but simply sought to express their political views.
Former President Richard Nixon directed Hoover to aggressively infiltrate and disrupt many political movements in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. This included the Vietnam War activists, the Rev. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. They even spied on environmentalists, women’s rights groups and animal rights activists.
According to an exclusive Newsweek expose that was published three weeks ago, it now appears the ghosts of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were resurrected by the Biden administration with a new expanded government spying and infiltration program based on political views. The FBI apparently redefined extremism to include those whom the administration determined hold unacceptable political views.
We now learn that during the Biden administration, the Bureau changed its domestic violence definitions from the "furtherance of ideological agendas" to "furtherance of political and/or social agendas." They report that it was a “gigantic departure for the Bureau.”
As Newsweek explained, “For the first time extremist groups worthy of surveillance and even infiltration could be so labeled because of their politics.” The FBI’s main target: Trump MAGA activists.
A review by its investigative reporters of previously unpublished FBI documents shows, “nearly two-thirds of the FBI's current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls "anti-riot" laws.”
Although I’m not a MAGA activist, I personally abhor any government spying program against its citizens. In fact, I was a plaintiff in a 1970’s leftwing legal lawsuit against the COINTELPRO program. The United States Supreme Court ruled in the case, called Hobson vs. Wilson, that the federal government’s political surveillance program was unconstitutional.
Under COINTELPRO the Nixon administration sent FBI agents and the DC police undercover agents to conduct surveillance of antiwar and civil rights activists. They even were directed to conduct what was later called “dirty tricks” or disruptions against activist organizations.
In the 1990’s, I filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to receive my FBI file from the bureau. It ran for hundreds of pages. All of it was innocuous information. And I was never charged with any crime.
But when we obtained documents during discovery under Hobson vs. Wilson, it was creepy to read their reports on public antiwar meetings I attended in the 1970’s. I was particularly upset to learn that over several years FBI informants spent time socializing with me and my friends, even hanging out in my apartment. Many times they also espoused weird, provocative and even violent ideas to me. They were provocateurs.
Once, one of the informants threw stones at D.C. Police during an antiwar demonstration that I attended in the nation’s capital. The riot never occurred. But it was unsettling to discover that this law enforcement official tried to spark a riot to discredit us.
Now, however, this type of spying apparently has been resurrected by the administration. In their view, MAGA views are extremist. They had to be met with the force of federal surveillance and infiltration.
snip
But now it appears that the past has become the future. As Newsweek charged, “The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump's army of MAGA followers.”
The news organization concludes that the redefinition “was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism.”
This is the background upon which I read this Newsweek account. They revealed that in the last few years the FBI quietly changed the definition of people who are supposedly anti-government. Previously, people who were subversive were defined as "anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism.” In governmental bureaucratize, these people were called “AGAAVE.”
Newsweek tells us the bureau decided to create a new subcategory called "AGAAVE-Other.” These are citizens who were a threat but do not fit into its definition as “anarchist, militia or Sovereign Citizen groups.” Their target was supporters of Donald Trump.
Newsweek says, “Though Trump and MAGA are never mentioned in the official description of AGAAVE-Other, government insiders acknowledge that it applies to political violence ascribed to the former president's supporters.”
COINTELPRO never died.
They just changed the name, contracted a lot of it out to private parties, and cranked up the security to make sure it did not leak out again....
BTTT
Yup. Just like MK Ultra is still around. That’s where they got the stiff in PA from.
MLK Jr. Was dead in 1968. Nixon became POTUS in 1969...
I noticed that too - funny how there’s no mention of LBJ, who was likely involved in the shenanigans.
And Hoover didn’t need Nixon to “direct him” to do anything. They all just stayed out of his way as he had dirt on everyone.
This is a lie:
“Former President Richard Nixon directed Hoover to aggressively infiltrate and disrupt many political movements in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. This included the Vietnam War activists, the Rev. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders.”
MLK was assassinated April 4th, 1968.
Nixon was inaugurated January 20th. 1969.
President Nixon could not have directed Hoover to spy on King: King was dead already.
Didn’t see your post. Came to the same realization on my own.
It is always much more fun and rewarding for the Left to blame these kinds of things on Nixon.
It never died..................
This verifies what Trump has always said over the years. ‘They viciously come after me because their real objective is you - I’m just standing in their way.’ All MAGA members are on our government’s ‘enemy’s list.’ The government we are paying for is our enemy. It’s fascinating how tyranny evolves and subsumes humanity. Big Government has and will always be freedom’s greatest threat. We are supposed to be the government but these bastards have flipped the Constitutional prescribed order of things.
I would think it never stopped? Once the feds print up the business cards, it doesn’t ever end. There is probably still an office for wagon wheel spoke safety and buggy whip standards.
The FBI apparently redefined extremism to include those whom the administration determined hold unacceptable political views.
From American Marxism to American Communism who says the democrats do sleep?.
And the (R)N(C), including Trump himself, just approved their NEW palatial bldg/BIG $$ budget.
Proving, yet again, the hard truth (for some): The (R)N(C) has NEVER reduced govt
The FBI spied on my maternal grandfather prior to WW2.
As a result, he spent a year at Fort Abraham Lincoln in North Dakota as Army and FBI intelligence tried to get information from him. But he was barely literate in Japanese and English and spent his spare time drinking beer, so they got nothing from him.
We’ve been watching it in action since the Obama regime.
It never stopped.
Obama just gave it more funding and cranked it up against us.
Hoover was a hero who warned that Marxism was infiltrating America.
Was he in the Army?
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