Surveillance, America’s Pastime: A Hall of Shame of State Snooping, Prying, and Informing

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Surveillance, America’s Pastime
A Hall of Shame of State Snooping, Prying, and Informing Aimed at Destroying the Fabric of Civil Society

By Stephan Salisbury


The dried blood on the concrete floor is there for all to see, a stain forever marking the spot on a Memphis motel balcony where Martin Luther King, Jr. lay mortally wounded by a sniper’s bullet.

It is a stark and ghostly image speaking to the sharp pain of absence. King is gone. His aides are gone. Only the stain remains. What now?

That image is, of course, a photograph taken by Ernest C. Withers, Memphis born and bred, and known as the photographer of the civil rights movement. He was there at the Lorraine Motel, as he had been at so many other critical places, recording iconic images of those tumultuous years.

In addition to photographing moments large and small in the struggle for black civil rights in the South, Withers had another job. He was an informer for the FBI, passing along information on the doings of King, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Ben Hooks, and other leaders of the movement. He reported on meetings he attended as a photographer, welcomed in by those he knew so intimately. He passed along photos of events and gatherings to his handler, Special Agent William H. Lawrence of the FBI’s Memphis office. He named names and sketched out plans.

In an exhaustive recent report, the Memphis Commercial Appeal detailed Withers’s undercover activities, provoking a pained and complex response from the many who knew him and were involved in the civil rights movement. His family simply refuses to believe that the paper’s report could be accurate. On the other hand, Andrew Young, with King during those last moments, accepts Withers’s career as an informant, saying it just doesn’t bother him. Civil rights leaders, including King, viewed Withers as crucial to the movement’s struggle to portray itself accurately in Jet, Ebony, and other black journals. In that Withers was successful -- and the rest, Young suggests, doesn’t matter. Besides, he told the Commercial Appeal, they had nothing to hide. “I don't think Dr. King would have minded him making a little money on the side.” ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175303/tomgram%3A_stephan_salisbury%2C_keeping_an_eye_on_everyone/#more (the story follows a brief intro)

[txlibdem]

1. Shameful, indicative of a corrupt society

Hmmm. I wonder if I could get a reward to turn you in for writing thing article...

:sarcasm: (we have seen the enemy and he is us)