![]() It didn’t happen.Ī surge in Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and related offshoot group terrorism in the Middle East, followed by the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, led to Arab and Muslim Americans becoming key targets. The subsequent Senate Intelligence Committee report on the FBI’s surveillance and related activities targeting CISPES was damning, and should’ve been a wakeup for Congress to put real legal restrictions on FBI domestic activity. Indeed, less than a decade after the Church Committee released its report on FBI, CIA, NSA, and military domestic spying and political chicanery, the Bureau was back in the same business.ĭuring the Reagan administration, the Bureau targeted the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which was opposed to Reagan’s foreign policy in Central America. ![]() ![]() I also worry that Rush’s bill might contribute to the false impression that improper FBI domestic surveillance or related actions are a thing of the distant past. But as I’ve previously noted, there are literally millions of pages of historical FBI records on the Bureau’s domestic surveillance and political repression activities that have yet to see the light of day. But his bill represents a major missed opportunity on several counts.Īs written, the bill confines itself to just FBI COINTELPRO records. Rush is to be commended for trying to discover what else the Bureau might know about, or have been involved with, concerning Hampton’s killing. Rush has long believed that the Bureau played a role in the killing of his friend and chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers, Fred Hampton. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) introduced the COINTELPRO Full Disclosure Act - legislation designed to make public any remaining records about the FBI’s most infamous, but hardly exclusive, domestic surveillance and political repression program.Īs the former co-founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, Rush has personally been on the receiving end of unwanted and unwelcome FBI attention during the Vietnam era, when COINTELPRO was at its height. On May 4, former Black Panther and long-time Rep. ![]()
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