Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
A new book, as well as the first account written by a participant, remind us that, in the world of the national security state, when it comes to pure and simple illegality in the monitoring of, spying on, and surveillance of American citizens, there really is nothing new under the sun. In a late-night break-in and theft in March 1971, eight antiwar activists -- the Edward Snowdens of their moment -- made off with the files of an obscure FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. These proved to contain documents incriminating the Bureau for operations designed to breed paranoia in the anti-Vietnam War movement and for what turned out to be illegal spying on Americans.
The activists, who remained anonymous and whom the FBI never found, sent relevant documents to journalists. While some papers returned the documents under FBI pressure, the Washington Post began publishing pieces about them. In this way, in what was then still an all-paper world, a distinctly non-digital, quite illegal break-in, an act of conscience aimed at pulling back the curtain on government illegality, began the unraveling of a massive, secret counterintelligence, or COINTELPRO, operation against Americans. It had targeted both the Civil Rights and antiwar movements, and involved the use of agents provocateurs and blackmail, among many other illegal acts. Without that break-in by the Media 8, J. Edgar Hoover's "shadow FBI," a criminal conspiracy at the heart of a developing national security state, might never have been revealed. (The CIA, officially banned from domestic spying on Americans, turned out to be involved in massive surveillance as well.)
As a reporter at the Washington Post, Betty Medsger received some of the stolen documents and helped break the story back in 1971. Now, in her new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, several of those involved in the Media 8 break-in have finally identified themselves. In her personal account in the Guardian, one of the eight, Bonnie Raines, writes this of her modern counterpart: "Snowden was in a position to reveal things that nobody could dispute. He has performed a legitimate, necessary service. Unlike us, he revealed his own identity, and as a result, he's sacrificed a lot."
In our own time, despite Snowden, count on one thing: we undoubtedly don't yet know the worst or most illegal aspects of this era of "intelligence." After all, while Snowden "liberated" up to 1.7 million National Security Agency documents (many of them not yet looked at, analyzed, or written about), there have been no similar twenty-first-century break-ins at the FBI, the CIA, or other parts of the American intelligence community (or for that matter at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security). Massive and shocking as the NSA revelations have been, the curtain has only been pulled back on a corner of the new Washington world that we, the people, continue to fund, even if we aren't considered important enough to know anything about it.
In the meantime, the defenders of that world have been out in their legions reassuring us that we need know no more, that it's all for our own good, that NSA surveillance stopped untold terror plots, and that it's -- really and truly! -- not such a big deal. Former State Department whistleblower Peter Van Buren begs to differ in his latest post, "You Can't Opt Out," and so takes us through the labyrinth of NSA defenses, point by point, showing just what our favorite Constitution-shredders have to say and why it doesn't hold water.