Peter Maass, Destroyed by the Espionage Act. Stephen Kim spoke to a reporter. Now he’s in jail. This is his story. The Intercept, 18 February 2015. “On the morning of June 11, 2009, James Rosen stepped inside the State Department, scanned his building badge and made his way to the Fox News office in the busy press room on the second floor. It was going to be a hectic day. Like other reporters working the phones that morning, Rosen was looking for fresh news about the latest crisis with North Korea.”
April 18, 2014
1971, Johanna Hamilton, 2014
On March 8, 1971 eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, a town just outside Philadelphia, took hundreds of secret files, and shared them with the public. In doing so, they uncovered the FBI’s vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
On the night of the “Fight of the Century” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, the activists, calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, picked the lock on the door to the small FBI field office. They took every file in the office, loaded them into suitcases, and walked out the front door.
Mailed anonymously, the documents started to show up in newsrooms. The heist yielded a trove of damning evidence that proved the FBI was deliberately working to intimidate civil rights activists and Americans nonviolently protesting the Vietnam War. The most significant revelation was an illegal program overseen by lifelong FBI director J. Edgar Hoover known as COINTELPRO – the Counter Intelligence Program.
Despite searching for the people behind the heist in one of the largest investigations ever conducted, the FBI never solved the mystery of the break-in, and the identities of the members of the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI remained a secret.
Until now.
For the first time, the members of the Citizens’ Commission have decided to come forward and speak out about their actions. 1971 is their story….
August 23, 2011
AP’s Probe Into NYPD Intelligence Operations: Surveillance of Muslims
Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley, AP’s Probe Into NYPD Intelligence Operations. Associated Press, multi-part series beginning on 23 August 2011 and ending on 23 October 2012. “AP’s investigation has revealed that the NYPD dispatched undercover officers into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program. Police also used informants, known as “mosque crawlers,” to monitor sermons, even when there was no evidence of wrongdoing.”
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Winner of the 2012 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Update: Matt Apuzzo and Al Baker, New York to Appoint Civilian to Monitor Police’s Counterterrorism Activity. The New York Times, 7 January 2016. “The mayor will appoint an independent civilian to monitor the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism activities, lawyers said in court documents Thursday as they moved to settle a pair of lawsuits over surveillance targeting Muslims in the decade after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The agreement would restore some of the outside oversight that was eliminated after the attacks, when city leaders said they needed more flexibility in conducting investigations. In the years that followed, the Police Department secretly built files on Muslim neighborhoods, recorded sermons, collected license plates of worshipers, and documented the views of everyday people on topics such as drone strikes, politics and foreign policy.”
December 16, 2005
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Warrants
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts. The New York Times, 16 December 2005. “Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.” James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their stories on warrantless domestic eavesdropping.