Silencing the People's Voice

by Ali Khalid Abdullah

Such hysteria has led to the current prison building boom which has been dubbed the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), because of this fear induced frenzy the masses of people feel that this is what is needed.

Further, this hysteria has allowed the Clinton Administration to race into law the Anti-Terrorist and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (enacted after the Oklahoma city bombing) which has a clause within it that bars prisoners from continuously filing appeals on their cases. This is dangerous because of the way the prosecution, or even law enforcement officials, withhold vital information that, had it not been for exhaustive appeals, would lead to many prisoners still languishing in prison or dead from false convictions and executions.

After the bombing and government officials preaching for a need for tighter security, and after the media hastily taking questionable surveys of people by asking if they want to see greater government/law enforcement controls to ensure their safety, the masses of people accepted whatever restriction and controls the government wanted to enact. We have given up many constitutional protections.

Now there are laws instituted where there are no knock searches, chilling the fourth amendment and the right to privacy, and allowing unwarranted search and seizures.
There is the erosion of the second amendment that says you have a right to bear arms.
There is the censorship and continuous chipping away of the first amendment, where you are now spied on and where your phone calls, mail and Internet access can be monitored and used against you at will.
All of these implementations are being instituted at the people's expense in order to have tighter control and the democratic process more restrictive, whereby the landscape of freedom is less clear by the blurring of state control, prosecutions, jail and prison sentences.

We need to reexamine the role of government from its past and see what is clearly taking place. We must be aware of the various acts the government and its law enforcement has done and is doing as more of us raise our voice of discontent. We must examine how that voice can be and is being silenced, and how anyone who disagrees with the government's plans is targeted for an array of attacks. Thomas Jefferson made the following comment that I feel is worthy of noting:

Consolidation

On March 22, 1947 President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order (EO) 9835, initiating a program to seek out infiltration of disloyal, i.e., communists, within the United States. The order required the Justice Department to draw up a list of organizations to be considered "totalitarian", fascist, communist or subversives seeking to change the government of the United States by unconstitutional means. In 1950, the Republican sponsored Internal Security Act-also known as the McCarran Act after its sponsor, Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, required that all members of "Communist-front" or "Communist-Action" organizations be registered with the federal government, and corresponding proposal by Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey and Herbert Lehman that special detention centers (KonCentration kkkamps a la Dachau) be established for the housing of those registered, without trial, at any time the President wishes to declare an "internal security emergency."

This goes in hand with Section 533, title 28 of the U.S. Code which authorizes the Attorney General to order investigations of individuals and groups, even when prosecution is not contemplated.

What we see here is no different than what is being done today with the current build up of what is now being called the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) where anyone who is considered a threat or challenge to the status quo are removed from society, marginalized and restricted.

The Era of COINTELPRO

The COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s were modeled on the successful programs of earlier years undertaken to disrupt the American Communist Party...[which] continued throughout the 1960s, with such interesting variations as Operation Hoodwink from 1966 through mid-1968, designed to incite organized crime against the Communist Party through documents fabricated by the FBI, evidently in the hope that criminal elements would carry on the work of repression and disruption in their own manner, by means that may be left to the imagination.
-Noam Chomsky, COINTELPRO

Eavesdropping

This was part of the government's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) to induce paranoia and fear into the people and to disrupt their organizing.

These same tactics are being used and applied today. These proven government tactics should be well understood as we struggle for political, social, economic and environmental change. Nothing has changed except for the names of political-puppet politicians and the year. We should be attentive to clicks on the phone, being followed when driving or walking, paying close attention the arrangement of articles in our homes or buildings.

Bogus Mail

The fabrication of correspondence between members of targeted groups, or between group, was/is designed to foster splits within or between organizations; these efforts continue to exist today. We must be aware of the governments aim to disrupt any effective or potentially effective group, organization or individual in order to see that there is disunity. We must be on guard in terms of our mail.

This is vital for security reasons. It is always important that we thoroughly examine mail we receive; See if it has been opened, check the postmarks on envelopes and signatures on letters. In a memorandum by the FBI dated November 25, 1968 to the SAC, Baltimore from the Director of the FBI under the subject Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist- Hate Groups Racial Intelligence (BLACK PANTHER PARTY), the memo reads as follows;
For the information of recipient offices a serious struggle is taking place between the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the US organization. The struggle has reached such proportions that it is taking on the aura of gang warfare with attendant threats of murder and reprisals. In order to fully capitalize upon BPP and US differences as well as exploit all avenues of creating further dissension in the ranks of the BPP, recipient offices are instructed to submit imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP. Commencing December 2, 1968, and every two-week period thereafter, each office is instructed to submit a letter under this caption containing counterintelligence measures aimed against the BPP. The bi-weekly letter should also contain accomplishments obtained during the previous two-week period under captioned program. All counterintelligence actions must be approved at the Bureau prior to taking steps to implement them. This memorandum shows us to what length the government will go to destroy, discredit and disrupt any and all opposition. We must be aware of this so we do not allow the same tactics to destroy us.
[Note: the group "US" mentioned in the memorandum was the group United Slaves. US was an organization that Dr. Ron Karenga headed in California that the FBI also targeted and used to incite confrontations with the BPP. For analysis and reproduction of key documents, see Perkus, Cathy, (ed), Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom, Monad Press, New York, 1976.
Also see Taylor and Vanhouten, op. cit.]

Black Propaganda Operations

Black Propaganda refers to the fabrication and distribution of publications (leaflets, etc.) in behalf of targeted organizations/individuals designed specifically to misrepresent their positions, goals and objectives in a way to publicly discredit them and promote inter/in-group tensions. We can also call this "disinformation campaigns." It is something we are all too familiar with.

One example is the FBI's bogus claim that David Koresh and the Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas initiated gunfire at the FBI and setting fire to their compound which burned to death men, wimmin, and children. Only now, six years later, is the FBI confessing to firing grenade type instruments into the compound.

However, we should be aware that mainstream news media often perpetuates and pushes bogus information to sway public opinion. This was/is even more pronounced whenever New Afrikans and other people of color are involved.

Disinformation / Propaganda

The FBI and other government agencies systematically release disinformation to the press and electronic media concerning groups and individuals, designed to discredit them and promote tensions. This tactic is also seen as an expedient means of conditioning the public sentiment to accept government and law enforcement excesses aimed at targeted organizations/individuals, and to facilitate the convictions of those brought to trial, even on "suspect" evidence, as well as frighten the public into accepting an array of hastily passed bills, laws, and mandates that has touched the very fabric of life for the people living in Amerikkka.

Harassment / Arrest

This is the repeated arrest of targeted individuals and organization members on spurious charges with the hope of obtaining convictions, but mainly to harass, increase paranoia,unstableness and divert activists attention while using a series of pre-arraignment incarcerations, courtroom appearances while depleting the group or individuals resources by posting bonds, pay fines, etc. This was very effectively done against the Black Panther Party (BPP) and MOVE.

With MOVE the government consistently harassed and arrested MOVE members while the media portrayed them to be terrorists of some sort. We need to be well aware of these tactics and not fall victim to them if we are to press forward in our quest to destroy, dismantle and abolish state terrorism and fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic social ills that is attributed directly to kapitalism.

Infiltrators and Agent Provocateurs

This, as we should all well know, is a widely used tactic involving the infiltration of targeted organizations with informers and agent provocateurs, with the latter being used expressly for the purpose of fomenting or engaging in illegal activities which could be attributed to key organizational members and/or the organization as a whole in an attempt to discredit them and have law enforcement come to terminate the targeted individuals, and/or organization et al. Agent provocateurs are also used to disrupt the internal functioning of targeted groups and to assist in the spread of disinformation.

The government has used literally thousands of infiltrators in the 1960s against Leftist groups and ndividuals. We would be foolish to think that this isn't being done today as Amerikkka screams "terrorism" to the unconscious public more and more as various law enforcement agencies drill and prepare (in view of the media) for such alleged attacks, whereby the people will accept and allow any governmental abuse and excesses in the name of national security or public interests.

An example of governments infiltration, according to Arnold H. Lubash in the New York Times, Sept 5, 1976 under the title: 316 Used by FBI on Informer Role. It is indicated how the Bureau deployed 316 informers between 1960 and 1976 within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and its youth wing, Young Socialist Alliance (YSA). In early 1969, San Francisco attorney Charles Garry observed that between sixty and seventy infiltrators were working with the Black Panther Party nationally. [See, Tackwood, Lewis E., My Assignment Was to Kill George Jackson, Black Panther April 21, 1980] This should not be hard to believe when you consider how resourceful the BPP were in their connection with the people and what they were doing for the people. It is only natural that the government would work overtime to destroy them with infiltrators.

Bad-Jacketing

Snitch-jacketing or bad-jacketing refers to the practice of creating suspicion (through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc.) that key organizational members and strong supporters are FBI or police informers and guilty of such offenses as giving sensitive information or skimming organizational funds and the like. This procedure is often used to create extreme tension and isolate or eliminate leadership, sometimes even to the point of extreme violence being used against the suspected snitch.
We must be very careful when we rush to call someone a snitch or a rat.

Drawing from the lessons of COINTELPRO in the 1960s and early 1970s, we can see how these tactics destroyed many good comrades and their names, and even organizations. An example of this is a COINTELPRO proposal submitted on July 10, 1968 by the SAC, New York, to the Director of the FBI.
...[C]onsideration be given to convey the impression that SNCC leader Stokely CARMICHAEL is a CIA informer. One method of accomplishing [this] would be to have a carbon copy of informant report reportedly written by CARMICHAEL to CIA carefully deposited in the automobile of a close Black Nationalist friend...It is hoped that when the informant report is read it will help promote distrust between CARMICHAEL and the Black Community...It is also suggested that we inform a certain percentage or reliable criminal and racial informants that "we have heard from reliable sources that CARMICHAEL is a CIA agent." It is hoped that these informants would spread the rumor in various large Negro communities across the land.

As we examine this evidence, it becomes clear that the government will stoop to any despicable, vile, and unethical length to silence the voice or voices of anyone who opposes its corrupted acts.

This bad-jacketing is especially a problem within the prison system. An incident of such tactics, which was well covered in Jo Darden-Smith's Who Killed George Jackson?, offers the following insight on counterintelligence:
This bad-jacketing technique, well known in prisons where guards are adept at turning members of a group against each other, also creates a pressure point. When a man is abandoned by his comrades because of a rumor slipped into the prison grapevine, when suspicion and rancor suddenly replace old loyalties, it is easier to turn him into a stoolie, the cooperative, compliant informer.
[See, Darden-Smith, Jo, Who Killed George Jackson?
Fantasies, Paranoia, and the Revolution, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1976;
Bennet, pp. 104-107, Car, pp. 113-126]

Many of us who are in these prisons, [death kkkamps] have heard the rumors recklessly flying about an individual being a snitch, a rat, or an informant, but we seldom stop to evaluate the authority of these negatives, or ask the question "why is this being said?" We cannot advance in unsubstantiated labeling we. Not only does it hurt a person's name, but we also destroy any chances of building with that individual.

Fabrication of Evidence

Another well used tactic by the government and all its law enforcement has been the fabrication of evidence for criminal prosecution of key individuals, and the blatant withholding of exculpatory evidence which might serve to block convictions of these individuals. This includes the intimidation of witnesses and use of coercion to obtain false testimony. Many solid comrades who are now languishing in state/federal death kkkamps are there precisely because the evidence was withheld to exonerate them.

One such comrade we know, that the world knows, and who has become the celebrated symbol for the hundreds and thousands of this type of injustice is Mumia Abu-Jamal. He has been languishing on death row in Pennsylvania for an alleged murder of a kop. There is recently presented evidence that clearly shows he did not commit the crime.

Or that of another well know case, the MOVE family who were bombed by Philadelphia police with the blessing of the FBI and other government agencies, of which many were killed with nine members falsely accused and languishing in death kkkamps today. We must be vigilant in our struggle to stop these injustices and to reclaim our rights from a government out of touch with its people.

What has been illustrated here is merely a portion of all the various tricks and tactics employed to silence the voices of he people. To oppress anyone who dares stand against the plans of the U$ and their lackeys. The real war on crime is the war the U$ government has waged against anyone who views the kapitalist as exploiters, tyrants and oppressors of the people.

This "war on crime" is global. It is taking place in Third World countries where U$ interests, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank institute policies to manipulate the resources of the world for the few, setting up puppet regimes to do the bidding of the U$. All this while the people are denied the essentials of life.

The corporate world has much invested in the way the government operates and what laws are instituted, who is imprisoned, who is employed and so on. These are the issues we must attack, destroy, and change, not by reform but by absolute and total revolution.