FBI agents rebel over new powers

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.

If I were an agent ordered to infiltrate the local Baptist church I would be furious too. I'd probably resign.

If you were an agent ordered to infiltrate something that wasn't a church, what would you do?

Well, I doubt Ashcroft will ever find time to respond to the eleven Burton Committee subpoenas. How much more time should Congress give the man, it has already been two months and three weeks?

Many of the networks have studio facilities in the C-Span building across from Union Station, well within the Capitol Police's jurisdiction. Maybe the next time Ashcroft blows off request to testify before Congress in favor of appearing on the leftist morning chat shows, as he did last week, a couple of officers can saunter over there and arrest him for contempt of Congress. . .

The guy who planned the first WTC bombing was also a mullah

And the guy who actually built the bomb was an FBI informant, working under the direct orders of his agent-handlers to build a real bomb and not a dummy.

power concedes nothing without a struggle and when have you ever known of tyrants and dictators giving up control over their subjects once it is established?

You raise an absolutely valid point. Yes, we are going to have to fight like Hell to get rid of these measures. All I'm saying is that we at least have a prayer of getting rid of the measures in place now. If we fight these measures, and in so doing make it possible for the terrorists to move around unseen like Atta Boy, we will sooner or later stand in horror as a million of our fellow citizens are killed in some biological or nuclear attack. If that happens, the boot that will come down next will make today's measures look like child's play.

You cannot expect ordinary humans to stand with you and decry the preventive detention of Jihad Joes when the penalty for letting them run around loose is the kind of horror we saw on 9/11. I think the so-called "sheeple" are ahead of you on this; I think they understand very well that our Constitutional liberties will have to be locked up and put away completely if we aren't able to find these guys and lock them up before they strike.

Assuming you go to church, are you comfortable with a clandestine FBI presence in your congregation from now on?

Of course not. I am, however, even less comfortable knowing that Islamic terrorists can rely on our own laws to protect them from the prying eyes of law enforcement, so long as they plan their attacks in mosques.

Sorry, but there's no good answer here. We have fanatics running around trying to kill us all. They're really serious about it. Bush is taking the right long-term measures (destroying the money men who fund these crazies) to eventually return us to something resembling ordinary risk. In the meantime, we have to deal with the reality that there are already al-qa'ida sleepers here with horrible intentions toward us, and we don't have the slightest idea who they are, or where they are.

I say let your local FBI agent sing some hymns, while his buddy assigned to the mosque tries to find out who's here to kill us.

What exactly do you think is going to happen when one of THEM gets elected with THESE powers?

I don't dispute that that's a horror. That's the horror for eight years from now. The horror for this year is 'sleepers' with truck driving skills and Hazmat licenses. We know they are here. We have no idea where they are living, or even who they are, or what their plan is.

You are trying to argue a theoretical principle when people are facing imminent death. You cannot win that argument. Most people will dismiss you as a crank, which will make you useless when it's time to mount the actual effort to get rid of these measures. Keep your powder dry, will ya?

I watched C-Span this morning for over an hour. The telephone call topic was: Should the FBI be given more powers to fight terroism.
I was dumbstruck by the callers' comments: Whatever it takes to make us safer, etc.

I'd say 90% of the callers didn't see a problem with the feds spying on churches.

Sheeple, plain and simple, there are even some in this thread that feel that way. They won't be feeling that way when it's their churches and groups being spied on. Anybody who thinks this will simply be used against terrorists is wrong. We'll have another mcveigh type or somebody blowing up an abortion clinic and then those Christians who don't think any of this applies to them will find their churches and gatherings monitored by the government.

I'm looking at making myself a tin-hat.

I had such high hopes for Bush, Ashcroft, and company. Now they are acting like a bunch of left-wingers, wanting the government to have the ability to roll over anybody they please.

Many don't care, as long as the "feel" safer.

And therein lies the problem. I remember right after 9/11, myself and others were criticized on here for saying the government needs to practice restraint and that we didn't need a bunch of feel-good legislation to go through in the name of fighting terrorism.

It's now here, and how people could feel safer when they could be losing some freedom is beyond me.

What really bothers me is my fellow Christians doing this "maybe they'll use it to investigate Scientology, etc." This is being ignorant. It won't be used just against fringe groups. They can make all the jokes they want, but when somebody from their church or denomination does something, and they wonder why people are monitoring them and what not, they won't be laughing, and it'll be too late.

What's the old parable about "they came for this group, and I said nothing because that wasn't my group, and then that group, and again I said nothing because it wasn't my group and finally they came for me and there was nobody left to speak for me..

Then why hasn't the "Administration" taken steps to close the borders to prevent additional terrorist from invading while the seek those already here?

I would like someone with Nick's point of view to answer this question too. In my mind, this would have been the VERY FIRST think I would have done after the 9-11 attack. So Nick, what say you?

In that case, you misunderstand the argument.

Let me be clearer.

With the Bush executive order, the Terrorists have won.

You have willingly given up Freedom out of fear. It was that FREEDOM the terrorists were trying to kill, because if all the terrorists in all the world came to the US and started a war, there'd be a bloody 2 months and then the world would be free of terrorism.

Am I a crank? Probably, I believe Freedom is more important than Life itself. That belief makes me a crank. That means, in another era, if bushwhackers came upon me as I slept to sell me into slavery, I'd fight to the death FIRST.

Now, try to think what you're trying to do here, you're trying to excuse sacrificing our freedom in order to save it.

Or...by analogy, cut your nose off to pop a zit.

It seems odd to me that FEAR could conquor the love of freedom of a guy with the nickname "Nick Danger".

Nick, you seem to be scared enough to allow the federal government (with its miserable record of fumbling nonperformance) to suspend the rules so that they can "protect" you.

With all due respect, buddy, I suggest you grow a pair.

It seems odd to me that FEAR could conquor the love of freedom of a guy with the nickname "Nick Danger".

Not to defend him, but a lot of people are doing the same. They are cowering under the beds asking Janet Ashcroft to do *anything* to keep them safe from terrorists.

At this point, I consider the terrorists to partially have won, irregardless of what comes out of Afghanistan, they caused the US to change, and to begin losing more freedom than it already had lost.

To sum up, what did we lose out of all of this?
The loss of 5,000 American lives
The loss of a bit of freedom.

What did we gain out of this?
Thousands of dead nutcases over in Afghanistan.

Just doesn't add up.

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