Posted on 12/01/2001 8:12:17 PM PST by OKCSubmariner
The US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, was yesterday reported to be ready to relax restrictions on the FBI's powers to spy on religious and church-based political organisations.
His proposal, leaked to the New York Times, would loosen limits on the FBI's surveillance powers, imposed in the 1970s after the death of its founder J. Edgar Hoover.
The plan has caused outrage within the FBI itself with agents expected to act upon new surveillance powers describing themselves as 'very, very angry'.
The spying, wiretapping and surveillance campaign unleashed by Hoover against church and political groups was called 'Cointelpro', and was aimed mainly at the movement behind civil rights activist Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, the anti-Vietnam war movement and, on the other wing, the Ku Klux Klan.
When the system was revealed, upon Hoover's death, restrictions were put on the security bureau, in the form of two sets of regulations pertaining to foreign-based and domestic groups. The rules forbade FBI agents from sending undercover agents into churches, synagogues or mosques unless they found 'probable cause or evidence' that someone in them had broken the law.
A Justice Department spokeswoman, Susan Dryden, said no final decision had been made on their reintroduction.
According to sources, the plan has caused a sharp rift within the department and the FBI. Ashcroft and the new FBI director, Robert Mueller, are pushing the plan eagerly, but there is strong opposition among officials inside both the bureau and the Justice Department.
Internal opposition to the plan will exacerbate an already fractious atmosphere in the FBI since President Bush took office.
Some agents told the New York Times that they considered any weakening of the guidelines 'a serious mistake', and that the Justice Department had 'not clearly described' the proposed changes. 'People are furious right now,' said one agent.
The changes would become part of what civil liberties groups regard as a dangerously changing legal landscape in the US: 1,200 people with connections to Islamic groups have been taken into custody, and Draconian security measures, such as wiretapping of lawyers, pushed through Congress.
Further plans are now afoot to seek out and interview some 5,000 immigrants, mostly Muslims, who have entered the US since January.
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