Roots of the NSA: How the White Panthers Saved the Movement and the FISA Court was Created

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http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/roots-nsa-how-white-panthers-saved-movement-and-fisa-court-was-created



On the Monday following the Watergate break-in, the Supreme Court decided U.S. vs. U.S. District Court (Keith) ex rel Sinclair, which struck down the Nixon/Mitchell program of warrantless domestic political wiretapping. The aftermath, leading to Nixon's resignation, revealed the ugliness of the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign to disrupt the civil rights, black liberation, anti-war, youth, women, environmental, LGBT and other social justice movements that exploded in the 1960s.

That led to the Church Commission, which recommended various checks on the FBI's power to disrupt political dissent and the creation of Foreign Intelligence Security (FISA) Court, which is today the subject of great controversy in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about the massive data mining and surveillance of U.S. citizens and their communications (not to mention that of the rest of the world). Particularly since 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, progressives and civil libertarians have protested the quasi-police state expansion and militarization of U.S. law enforcement, including infiltration of legal groups and the open quashing of political speech (see Occupy Movement), accompanied by widespread electronic surveillance.

The FISA Court (one of whose first judges was the Honorable Ralph Guy, who was the U.S. Attorney when the Keith case started in Michigan in 1970) supposedly protects U.S. citizens from warrantless electronic surveillance. Progressives have complained that the Court (secretive, one-sided, loaded with compliant judges) is a joke. But it was still not responsive enough for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and they simply ignored it on many occasions. After the Snowden releases, there have been congressional calls to strength FISA. But with the National Security Agency and the FISA Court judges admitting that even they do not understand how all of these electronic surveillance and data gathering programs work, it is nothing but a fig leaf, and a shriveled one at that. History has shown that we cannot legislate or litigate our way to liberation.

The Beginning: Bombings and Conspiracies

In early August 1970, two thin white guys with Afros and purple T-shirts that said “White Panther Party” (WPP) came into the National Lawyers Guild office in Detroit. A few weeks earlier, Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon, the first white revolutionary in modern times to make the FBI’s Top 10, had been arrested in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for allegedly throwing a beer can out of a van. He was being driven to a hiding place by Jack Forrest and another member of the WPP. They pled guilty to harboring a fugitive.

[Octafish]

1. Excellent history...what Santayana said...

From the original article:

The only apparent evidence against Sinclair were two FBI memos of interviews with Valler (the snitch) in the Wayne County Jail. In them, Valler indicated that while John was in town for a concert with the MC5 (Kick out the jams, m***erf***ers!), he met Sinclair in an underground newspaper office.

There, Valler claimed that he told John that he had a lot of dynamite and asked if he was interested. Even the FBI reports only claim that Sinclair said he would be interested in some dynamite, but did not want to blow anything up himself. On one other occasion after the bombing itself, Valler claimed that he and Sinclair were in the same room somewhere and that John looked at him meaningfully and nodded yes. Without more, that is not the stuff of conspiracy convictions.

About Jack Forrest, nothing can be said. He has never publicly spoken. He was clearly an acquaintance of Valler’s during the time that the bombings took place in 1968. Plus, he was a member of the WPP. But at the time of the CIA explosion, he was still living in Detroit.

That leaves Pun Plamondon, the flamboyant Minister of Defense for the WPP. He was a wildman. By the time I finished with all of his cases in 1973, I believe we had faced 18 felonies. Emblematic of Pun’s style is his comment in his autobiography, Lost to the Ottawa(he found out that he had been taken away from his unmarried Native American parents and given to a white family), that he was framed for a crime he does not deny committing: “I’m not saying I didn’t bomb the CIA building in Ann Arbor. But I damn sure didn’t tell that government snitch I did."

CONTINUED...

Tactic is old as the hills. Create an enemy. Drum up hate. Enlist toadies. Provide gear to blow up something governmental. Blame the enemy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat until fascist.