http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-...roft-on-trial/
"As noted here, Ashcroft has revived the FBI's totally discredited COINTELPRO program, which flourished from 1956 to 1971, during the anti-war and civil rights movements. In those years, the bureau monitored, infiltrated, and disrupted an array of religious and political organizations that were critical of various government policies."
http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-06-...ashing-the-fbi
"From now on, covert FBI agents can mingle with unsuspecting Americans at churches, mosques, synagogues, meetings of environmentalists, the ACLU, the Gun Owners of America, and Reverend Al Sharpton's presidential campaign headquarters. (He has been resoundingly critical of the cutting back of the Bill of Rights.) These eavesdroppers do not need any evidence, not even a previous complaint, that anything illegal is going on, or is being contemplated."
http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-11-...adowy-disciple
"Ashcroft has restored the reckless spirit of COINTELPRO by again giving the FBI the power to conduct investigations under such loose guidelines that the Fourth Amendment might as well be obsolete."
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/cointelpro.html
"Some fear that something like COINTELPRO may again be at hand. There are undercover agents infiltrating peaceful protests in America. Pretending to be political activists, local law enforcement officials are monitoring the activities of advocacy and protest groups based on what one judge calls those organizations’ "political philosophies and conduct protected under the First Amendment." The tactic has come about as a result of the relaxation of guidelines first put into place after the COINTELPRO scandal investigation."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff11252003.html
"Disclosure of a confidential memorandum sent by the FBI to local police disclosing a massive program of infiltration and surveillance of lawful anti-war and anti-WTO protest movements confirms what most progressives and leftists in the U.S. knew already--that the Bush Administration and the Ashcroft "Justice" Department have ushered in a full-fledged return to the Nixon-era practice of employing police-state tactics against opposition movements."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/national/23FBI.html
"The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover's political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities. Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event "open to the public."
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