|
The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI was a leftist activist group operational in the US during the early 1970s. Their only known action was breaking into a two-man Media, Pennsylvania office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and stealing over 1000 classified documents. They then mailed these documents anonymously to several US newspapers. Some news outlets refused to publish the information, as it related to ongoing operations and they contended disclosure might have threatened the lives of agents or informants. "The complete collection of political documents ripped-off from the F.B.I. office in Media, Pa., March 8, 1971" was published for the first time as the March, 1972 issue of WIN Magazine, a journal associated with the War Resisters League. The documents revealed the COINTELPRO operation,〔Tim Phillips, ("Activists Confess to Breaking Into Federal Bureau of Investigation Office More Than Forty Years Ago" ), Activist Defense, January 7, 2014.〕 and led to the Church Committee and the cessation of this operation by the FBI. Noam Chomsky has stated: According to its analysis of the documents in this FBI office, 1 percent were devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14 percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military without government permission." The remainder concerned bank robberies, murder, rape, and interstate theft.〔(Noam Chomsky. ''New Political Science'', Volume 21, Number 3 (September, 1999), pp. 303-324 )〕 The theft resulted in the exposure of some of the FBI's most self-incriminating documents, including several documents detailing the FBI's use of postal workers, switchboard operators, etc., in order to spy on black college students and various non-violent black activist groups. Some forty years after their successful infiltration, some of the perpetrators decided to go public. In 2014, Betty Medsger's book ''The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret F.B.I.'' was released, which contains the burglars' description of the burglary, and revealed the identities of five of the eight burglars. Filmmaker Johanna Hamilton also made a documentary titled ''1971''. == Members == The FBI closed their investigation into the group's burglary on March 11, 1976 without conclusively identifying any of the perpetrators. The group's identity remained a secret until early 2014, when four of its eight members agreed to be interviewed prior to a book on the burglary being published. The members breaking their silence were Keith Forsyth, John C. Raines and Bonnie Raines, and Robert Williamson. William C. Davidon (the recruiter and informal leader) died in 2013 but had planned to reveal his involvement. Later that year, Judi Feingold also revealed herself as a member and was interviewed and included in the paperback edition of ''The Burglary''.〔 〕 Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson were also members of The Camden 28, who broke into a draft board to destroy documents, in order to impede the war draft and make an anti-war statement. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|