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How the FBI Spied on Edward Said Ave Ied in the Ar H D W ? by DAVID PRICE 30,000? No

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How the FBI Spied on Edward Said Ave Ied in the Ar H D W ? by DAVID PRICE 30,000? No $2.50 CounterPunchTells the Facts and Names the Names December 1-15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair VOL. 12, NO. 21 HOW MANY IRAQIS How the FBI Spied on Edward Said AVE IED IN THE AR H D W ? BY DAVID PRICE 30,000? NO. 100,000? he FBI has a long, ignoble tradition We believed that our phones were tapped for a BY ANDREW COCKBURN of monitoring and harassing Amer-i long time, but it never bothered us because we resident Bush’s recent off-hand sum Tca’s top intellectuals. While people knew we were hiding nothing.” Pmation of the number of Iraqis who ranging from Albert Einstein, William Carlos The FBI’s first record of Edward Said have so far died as a result of the U.S. Williams to Martin Luther King have been appears in a February 1971 domestic security invasion and occupation as “30,000, subjected to FBI surveillance, there remains investigation of another unidentified individual. more or less” was quite certainly an an under-accounting of the ways in which this The FBI collected photographs of Said from under-estimate. The true number is monitoring at times hampered the reception the State Department’s passport division and probably hitting around 180,000 by now, of their work. various news agencies. Said’s “International with a possibility, as we shall see, that it In response to my request under the Free- Security” FBI file was established when an has reached as high as half a million. Al- dom of Information Act, filed on behalf of informant gave the FBI a program from the most as soon as President Bush, speak- CounterPunch, the FBI recently released 147 October 1971 Boston Convention of the ing in Philadelphia in mid-December, of Said’s 238-page FBI file. There are some Arab-American University Graduates, where enumerated the Iraqis who have died as unusual gaps in the released records, and it is Said chaired a panel on “Culture and the Criti- a result of our invasion and occupation cal Spirit”. Most of Said’s FBI records were as “30,000, more or less”, his handlers possible that the FBI still holds far more files on hastened to downplay the presidential Professor Said than they acknowledge. Some of classified under the administrative heading of number as “unofficial”, plucked by these gaps may exist because new Patriot Act “Foreign Counterintelligence,” category 105, Bush from “public estimates”. Such and National Security exemptions allow the and most records are designated as relating to calculations have been discouraged ever FBI to deny the existence of records; however, “IS – Middle East,” the Bureau’s designation since the oafish General Tommy Franks the released file provides enough information to for Israel. infamously announced at the time of examine the FBI’s interest in Edward Said.. Post-Patriot Act alterations of the Freedom the 2003 invasion, “We don’t do body Most of Said’s file documents FBI surveil- of Information Act facilitate the FBI’s efforts counts”. In December 2004, an effort by lance campaigns of his legal, public work with to keep significant portions of Said’s FBI the Iraqi Ministry of Health to quantify American-based Palestinian political or pro- file classified – as if concerns with resolving ongoing mortality on the basis of emer- Arab organizations, while other portions of the Palestinian sovereignty from twenty or thirty gency room admissions was halted by file document the FBI’s ongoing investigations years ago are indelibly linked to Bush’s “war direct order of the occupying power. of Said as it monitored his contacts with other on terror”. Large sections of Said’s file remain In fact, the President may have been Palestinian-Americans. That the FBI should redacted, with stamps indicating they remain subconsciously quoting figures pub- monitor the legal political activities and intel- Classified Secret until 2030, 25 years after their lished by iraqbodycount.org, a British lectual forays of such a man elucidates not only initial FOIA processing. One 1973 “Secret” group that diligently tabulates published the FBI’s role in suppressing democratic solu- report is now “exempt from General Declas- press reports of combat-related killings tions to the Israeli and Palestinian problems, it sification Schedule of Executive Order 11652, in Iraq. Due to IBC’s policy of posting also demonstrates a continuity with the FBI’s Exemption Category 2,” and is “automatically minimum and maximum figures, cur- declassified on indefinite”. Such administrative rently standing at 27,383 and 30,892, historical efforts to monitor and harass Ameri- their numbers carry an air of scientific can peace activists. stonewalling diminishes our ability to under- precision that is perhaps misleading. As Edward Said’s wife, Mariam, says she is stand the past and further complicates our abil- the group itself readily concedes, the not surprised to learn of the FBI’s surveillance ity to document the FBI’s role in undermining estimate must be incomplete, since it of her husband, saying, “We always knew that domestic democratic movements. omits unreported deaths. any political activity concerning the Palestin- In February 1972, New York FBI agents There is, however, another and ian issue is monitored and when talking on the produced a report listing Said’s employment more reliable method for estimat- phone we would say ‘let the tappers hear this’. at Columbia University, his home address (Dead continued on page 3) (Said continued on page 4) 2/COUNTERPUNCH In the TALON Program (Threat and The NYT and the NSA’s Illegal Spying Local Observation Notice) a Pentagon unit called Counter Intelligence Field Activity BY ALEXANDER COCKBURN AND JEFFREY ST CLAIR (CIFA) has been amassing thousands of files on potential threats to US military hen it comes to zeal in protect the CIA’s charter. What the NSA has been installations. Many of the subjects of these ing the Bill of Rights, between doing is also illegal. Its warrantless domestic files have turned out to be antiwar groups WDecember 22, 1974 and Decem- eavesdropping is in direct violation of the and anti-recruiting activists. ber 16, 2005 it’s been a steady run down 1978 law which came about as a direct result Eggan also reported that “Teams of hill for the New York Times. Thirty-one of Hersh’s expose and the congressional Defense Intelligence Agency personnel years ago, almost to the day, here’s how hearings that followed. The eavesdropping stationed in major US cities [have been] Seymour Hersh’s lead, on the front page of also violates the NSA’s charter. conducting the type of surveillance typi- the NYT, began: Yet it wasn’t until the end of the third cally performed by the FBI: monitoring “The Central Intelligence Agency, di- paragraph that Risen and Lichtblau wrote the movements and activities — through rectly violating its charter, conducted a mas- timidly, “Some officials familiar with the high tech equipment of individuals and sive, illegal domestic intelligence operation continuing operation have questioned vehicles.” during the Nixon Administration against whether the surveillance has stretched, if Who designed this policy? Deep in the the antiwar movement and other dissident not crossed, constitutional limits on legal Times story hardy readers trudging through groups in the United States, according to searches.” Risen and Lichtblau’s leaden prose would well-placed Government sources.” In the eighth paragraph of Risen and have tripped over vice president Cheney’s And here’s the lead paragraph of the Lichtblau’s story comes the shameful dis- name in the twenty-fifth paragraph where NYT’s frontpage story December 16th by closure alluded to above: he is described as bringing congressional James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: “The White House asked the New York leaders to his office to brief them on the “Months after the September 11 at- Times not to publish this article, arguing that program. Only in the forty-eighth paragraph tacks, President Bush secretly authorized it could jeopardize continuing investigations do such readers as have survived the trek the National Security Agency to eavesdrop and alert would-be terrorists that they might learn that the legal brief justifying this on- on Americans and others inside the United be under scrutiny. After meeting with sen- slaught on the US Constitution was written States to search for evidence of terrorist ac- ior administration officials, the newspaper by Professor John Yoo, at that time at the tivity without the court-approved warrants delayed publication for a year to conduct Department of Justice. ordinarily required for domestic spying, additional reporting. Some information that Members of Congress, aside from Sena- according to government officials.” administration officials argued could be use- tor Jay Rockefeller, raised no demur. It was Government illegality is the sinew of ful to terrorists has been omitted.” the judiciary, in the form of judge Colleen Hersh’s first sentence. He says that what Risen and Lichtblau shirk any direct Kollar-Kotelly, presiding over the secret the CIA did was illegal and that it violated estimate of how big the NSA’s domestic intelligence court established by FISA, who spying has been, though one can deduce reprimanded Justice Department lawyers for from the ninth paragraph of the story that trying to get legal warrants from her, using Editors probably many thousands of people had as “probable cause” data from the illegal ALEXANDER COCKBURN their phone conversations and emails il- surveillance, although not admitting this. JEFFREY ST. CLAIR legally spied upon by the NSA. In fact it’s something of a puzzle why The Times suggests that it held up the the Times finally did publish the story, after Business story for a year partly to do “additional re- sitting on the information leaked to it by the BECKY GRANT porting”.
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