Come Back to the Five and Dime...

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times Op-Ed:

A break-in to end all break-ins
In 1971, stolen FBI files exposed the government's domestic spying program.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pa., and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent.

The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, as the group called itself, forced its way in at night with a crowbar while much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. When agents arrived for work the next morning, they found the file cabinets virtually emptied.

Amongst the papers stolen, which were released to various news outlets:

The Media documents — along with further revelations about COINTELPRO in the months and years that followed — made it clear that the bureau had gone beyond mere intelligence-gathering to discredit, destabilize and demoralize groups — many of them peaceful, legal civil rights organizations and antiwar groups — that the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover found offensive or threatening.

[...]

Under COINTELPRO, the bureau also targeted actress Jean Seberg for having made a donation to the Black Panther Party. The fragile actress ultimately committed suicide after a gossip nugget based on a FBI wiretap was leaked to the L.A. Times and published. The item, suggesting that the father of the baby she was carrying was a Black Panther rather than her French writer-husband, turned out to be wrong.

Sobering stuff, and an important history lesson. Too bad no one seems to have learned from it.

My little tin foil hat is telling me that we just might need The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI again...