The Bush Administration’s defense of its new and frighteningly broad anti-terrorism bill is being couched in exactly these terms. Unfortunately, history has shown us that, more often that not, these expansions of domestic surveillance powers are used to violate the freedoms guaranteed to the American public by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In Bush’s anti-terrorism proposals, many of the provisions enhance the power of the FBI to spy on Americans for “intelligence” as opposed to criminal purposes. Other “information sharing” provisions direct highly personal information about Americans into the hands of the CIA and the Department of Defense, without meaningful restrictions on how it is used or re-distributed. The historical record makes clear that unchecked trust in the government to spy on its citizens responsibly is misplaced. The following examples prove the point.

COINTELPRO: Created out of fear of growing social dissidence and operating under a veil of secrecy, the FBI’s infamous Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), created under Director J. Edgar Hoover, harassed and spied on a vast number of peaceful social protest groups. Few members of any of the groups targeted by COINTELPRO were ever charged with a crime. The vast majority of the organizations and individuals targeted for surveillance by the FBI and COINTELPRO were avowedly non-violent. One of the most prominent public figures investigated by the FBI and COINTELPRO was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1986, a federal court determined that COINTELPRO was responsible for at least 204 burglaries; the use of 1,300 informants; the theft of 12,600 documents; 20,000 illegal wiretap days and 12,000 bug days.

Stop Index: The FBI also abused its authority during the Vietnam War, operating what it called a “stop index.” The Bureau used its National Crime Information Center, comprised of a number of computerized databases, to track and monitor the activities of law-abiding citizens opposed to American involvement in the war.

CONUS: Possibly the most frightening abuse of power by a government actor involved the military’s cold war era, the CONUS (Continental US) program expanded its operations in the 1950s and 1960s. In violation of the American tradition of preventing the armed forces from engaging in law enforcement and domestic surveillance, the US military ran this cloak-and-dagger operation designed to monitor civilian political activity and dissent. CONUS collected and maintained files on upwards of 100,000 political activists and used undercover operatives recruited from the Army to infiltrate these activist groups and steal confidential information and files for distribution to federal, state and local governments. In 1972, Justice Douglas said, “This case is cancer in our body politic.”

Operation Chaos: During the social upheavals of the 1960s, the CIA initiated “Operation Chaos” under which it spied on as many as 7,000 Americans involved in the peace movement. In clear violation of its statutory mission to co-ordinate only foreign intelligence operations, the agency ventured into the domestic spying business and created its own version of COINTELPRO.

Filegate: In 1993-94, the Clinton White House improperly received thousands of documents from the FBI, including private and confidential information about members of the first Bush White House.

CISPES: In 1988, the FBI investigation into the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) began to come to light. The FBI’s own files seem to suggest that the investigation of this group as a terrorist organization had been initiated solely on political grounds.

In light of the September 11th attacks, the lessons of these historical examples of inappropriate and unconstitutional domestic surveillance are all the more relevant. We cannot let the FBI engage again in a COINTELPRO-like operation against law-abiding American citizens. We cannot let the CIA step outside its own charter and begin surveillance inside American borders as it has in the past. And we cannot let the military again engage in domestic espionage.