FBI Files On The ACLU: Could The Past Repeat Itself?

This is a Stop the ACLU Thursday Blogburst

In 1977 the FBI releases its files on the ACLU. They reveal that "several ACLU leaders had sought information about ACLU members from the FBI and, worse, had given the FBI information about the organization and individuals." (In Defense of American Liberties - A History of the ACLU, Samuel Walker, p. 333, Southern Illinois University Press (2nd ed. 1999.)

Once more the FBI has files on the ACLU - over 1,000 pages worth of documentation that the ACLU wants to get their hands on to prove that the FBI has been abusing it's investigative powers by utilizing counter-terrorism intelligence avenues that according to the ACLU are violating their own and other activist organizations such as Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Muslim Public Affairs Council civil rights.

But will the ACLU get more than what they bargained for? As in 1977, when the FBI revealed that the ACLU, while damning the activities of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies for civil rights violations due to the arrest of protestors of the Viet Nam War, were not above solicitating FBI assistance in violating a few of their own. Perhaps these documents will be self-damning again. Connections with such groups as Greenpeace and PETA - who have been known to use whatever they can get their hands on to "fight their own little wars" - could be considered aiding in terrorist activities. Has not both groups been widely associated with personal attacks and property destruction to further their causes? Are not members of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Muslim Public Affairs Council supported by funding from the same mosques whose immans from their lecterns call for "jihad" against those "infidels" fighting in their holy cities and on their holy ground?

As for Code Pink their anti-American war cry is

We call on women around the world to rise up and oppose the war in Iraq. We call on mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters, on workers, students, teachers, healers, artists, writers, singers, poets and every ordinary outraged woman willing to be outrageous for peace. Women have been the guardians of life, not because we are better or purer or more innately nurturing than men, but because the men have busied themselves making war. Because of our responsibility to the next generation, because of our own love for our families and communities and this country that we are a part of, we understand the love of a mother in Iraq for her children and the driving desire of that child for life. Starhawk

This alone to me, a mother of a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is anti-American. What would they have the outraged woman outrageously do? Burn her panties? Spit in a soldiers face? Or possibly do exactly what the FBI is investigating their organization for by involving themselves in activities that support terrorism. In their World Tribunal on Iraq they are

acting on the belief that no state and no leader is above the law when it comes to matters of war and peace. It is primarily an expression of popular democracy, of ethical conscience about what is right and wrong in world politics, and an expression of resistance to what is understood around the third world as an American project to achieve world domination.

The group, United for Peace and Justice is actively fighting our government and claim they are

a coalition of more than 1300 local and national groups throughout the United States who have joined together to oppose our government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building.

Strategies? Oh, they've got them...

8) Occupation Watch in Baghdad (92 votes) Original proposal, plus attention to labor rights and working conditions, and explicit support for Iraqi resistance to U.S. occupation.

The ACLU doesn't believe that these anti-American organizations they are representing, as their champion of militant rights, should be under investigation. They don't believe that by representing these militant groups, they (the ACLU) should be under investigation for aiding terrorism activities.

The question remains will the released files on the ACLU reveal more than they would like to see. Tips from insiders, infiltration by government sympathizers may be just a couple possibilities of what may be revealed. In the long run, it may well come to light that the past has repeated itself. And that would be more than what the ACLU has bargained for.

Please join me in signing this Petition To Stop Taxpayer Funding of The ACLU.

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