Excerpts from the FBI & Your BBS

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From: glr@ripco.com (Glen Roberts)

Subject: Excerpts from the FBI & Your BBS

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Computer BBS systems offer an excellent opportunity for people to exercise 

their their First Amendment rights (expression of thoughts, ideas, 

information, etc). Unlike other communications media, any user can express 

their views to a large audience without prior restraint, at an affordable 

cost.  Other media, such as radio, require lots of money (and the content of 

the expression must meet with government licensing regulations). Newspapers 

do a good job at expressing the information the publishers want expressed. 

They don't help you, unless your ideas match the newspapers publishers, 

exactly.

The FBI (and others that want to control the free flow of information) feel 

threatened by communications media, like BBS's. Unlike other communication 

media, information on a BBS does not get read by anyone before its 

instantaneous publication. Therefore, the FBI has much less of a possibility 

of intimidating the owner of a BBS into NOT publishing certain information.  

The FBI also acts as if BBS's have a monopoly on the distribution of 

so-called ``illegal information.''  The FBI often uses this ``danger'' for 

justification to monitor the activities on these systems. In reality, 

however, BBS's transfer much less ``illegal information'' than the phone 

system.

Many people are well aware of the FBI's political activities in the 1960s 

and 70s. However, the FBI has been obsessed with keeping track of people 

with unpopular policial beliefs since the Bureau's inception in 1908. The 

following history of the FBI from the Final Report of the Select (Senate) 

Committee to Study Governmental Operations with repect to Intelligence 

Activies, Book IV, Supplementary Reports on Intelligence Activites shows 

this well (emphasis added):

Created on his own administrative authority in 1908 by Attorney General 

Charles J. Bonaparte in the face of congressional opposition for reasons of 

statutory obligations and practical need, the Bureau of Investigation had 

virtually no intelligence missions until European hostilities in the summer 

of 1941 precipitated a necessity for Federal detection and pursuance of 

alleged violations of the neutrality laws, enemy activities, disloyalty 

cases, the naturalization of enemy aliens, the enforcement of the 

conscription, espionage, and sedition laws, and surveillance of radicals. 

These duties evolved as the United States moved from a neutrality to a state 

of declared war and then, in the aftermath of peace, found its domestic 

tranquility and security threatened by new ideologies and their 

practitioners.

The Bureau's principal function during the war years was that of 

investigation. During this period, agents had no direct statutory 

authorization to carry weapons or to make general arrests. In the field, 

they worked with and gathered information for the United States Attorneys. 

Direction came from the Attorney General or the Bureau chief. In the frenzy 

of the wartime spy mania, Washington often lost its control over field 

operations so that agents and U.S. Attorneys, assisted by cadres of 

volunteers from the American Protective League and other similar patriotic 

auxiliaries, pursued suspects of disloyalty on their own initiative and in 

their own manner. To the extent that their investigative findings underwent 

analysis with a view toward policy development, an intelligence function was 

served, but for the most part this type of contribution appears to have been 

lost in the emotionalism and zealotry of the moment.

Bureau of Investigation Leadership 1908-25

Attorney Generals

Charles J Bonaparte (1906-1909)

George W Wickersham (1909-13)

James C McReynolds (1913-14)

Thomas W Gregory (1914-19)

A Mitchell Palmer (1919-21)

Harry M Daugherty (1921-24)

Harland F Stone (1924-25)

Bureau Chiefs

Stanley W Finch (1908-12)

A Bruce Beilaski (1912-19)

William E Allen (1919)

William J Flynn (1919-21)

William J Burns (1921-24)

J Edgar Hoover (1924-

In 1915, the first full year of the war, the Bureau, in the words of one 

sympathetic chronicler of its development and activities, constituted of a 

``small and inept force of 219 agents'' which ``was totally unequipped to 

deal with the clever espionage and sabotage ring of World War I which was 

organized by German Ambassador Johann von Bernstorff.'' [Don Whitehead. The 

FBI Story. New York, Pocket Books, 1958; first published 1956, p. 14.] Two 

years later, when America entered the hostilities, the Bureau's agent force 

was increased from 300 to 400, ``a puny squad for policing more than 

1,000,000 enemy aliens, protecting harbors and war-industry zones barred to 

enemy aliens, aiding draft boards and the Army in locating draft dodgers and 

deserters, and carrying on the regular duties of investigating federal law 

violators.'' [Ibid., p. 38.]  This state of affairs was one of the reasons 

the Justice Department welcomed the assistance of the American Protective 

League. In many of its initial wartime activities, the Bureau was still 

searching for a mission.

Early in 1917, the Bureau proclaimed that it was in charge of spy-catching 

and the Department's representative called it ``the eyes and ears'' of the 

Government.

However, the Army and Navy were the armed forces endangered or advanced on 

the European battlefields by espionage operations, and their own detectives 

necessarily had primary control of stopping the movements of enemy spies and 

of war materials, everywhere in the world, including the homefront. The 

military authorities associated with their own agents the operatives of the 

State Department, traditionally charged with responsibility for foreign 

affairs.

The military departments seemed primarily to want the help of the 

specialized forces of the Treasury, the War Trade Board, and the Labor 

Department for cutting off the flow of enemy spies, goods, and information; 

and the local police departments throughout America, as well as the Treasury 

detectives, for protecting American war plants, waterfront installations, 

and essential war shipping against sabotage and carelessness.

This attitude brought the Treasury police to the forefront. The Treasury's 

agents possessed not only vast equipment immediately convertible to wartime 

espionage in behalf of the United States, but also the necessary experience. 

They possessed the specific techniques that enabled them to find enemy 

agents in ship's crews, among passengers, or stowed away; to pick them up at 

any port in the world where they might embark or drop off the sides of 

ships; to foil their mid-ocean signals to German submarines.

Moreover, the Treasury's men knew how to discover, in the immense quantities 

of shipments to our allies and to our neturals, the minute but vital goods 

addressed to neutral lands, but actually destined to reach the enemy. 

Treasury operatives had the right training for uncovering the secret 

information transmitted to the enemy in every medium -- in ships' manifests 

and mail, in passengers' and crews' papers, in phonograph records, in 

photographic negatives, and in motion picture film. They had the experience 

for the job of protecting the loaded vessels in the harbors, the warehouses, 

and the entire waterfront.

The Justice Department police were invited to participate in various 

advisory boards. But when invited by the Post Office detectives, old hands 

at inspection of enemy mail, to sit on an advisory board, the Justice police 

spoke with self deprecation; perhaps after all, there was ``no use in 

littering up the board'' with one of their men. [Max Lowenthal. The Federal 

Bureau of Investigation. New York, William Sloane Associates, 1950, pp. 

22-23; this highly critical account of the Federal Bureau of Investigation 

contains the only detailed discussion of early operations of the agency.]

What did evolve as a major wartime Bureau function, and one having 

intelligence implications in light of espionage (40 Stat. 217) and sedition 

(40 Stat. 553) law, was the investigation and cataloging of the political 

opinions, beliefs, and affiliations of the citizenry. This Bureau activity 

also had a menacing aspect to it in terms of guaranteed rights of speech and 

association; also, it did not come to public notice until after Armistice.

The disclosure came as an indirect consequence of a political quarrel 

between ex-Congressman A Mitchel Palmer (a Pennsylvania lawyer and 

corporation director who became Alien Property Custodian, and was soon to 

become Attorney General of the United States) and United States Senator 

Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania. Mr. Palmer had accused the Senator of 

receiving political support from the brewers and of being a tool for their 

anti-prohibition propaganda. The attack was made while the war was still 

going on, and Mr. Palmer added to the charge that the American brewers were 

pro-German and unpatriotic. The ``dry'' element in the United States Senate 

promptly seized on the publicity thus provided and pushed through a 

resolution to investigate both charges, political propaganda and 

pro-Germanism. In the course of the hearings dealing with pro-Germanism, the 

investigating committee turned to A. Bruce Bielaski, wartime chief of the 

Bureau, and others connected with the Bureau. They revealed the fact that 

the Bureau had already been cataloging all kinds of persons they suspected 

of being pro-German. They had found suspects in all walks of American life. 

Among those of whose ``pro-Germanism'' the public thus learned, were members 

of the United States Senate, other important officials (e.g., William 

Jennings Bryan, President Wilson's first Secretary of State, and Judge John 

F. Hylan, soon to become mayor of New York City), and many persons and 

organizations not connected with the Government (e.g., William Randolph 

Hearst, his International News Service and various newspapers, his New York 

American, and the Chicago Tribune); Americans agitating for Irish 

independence (including editors of the American Catholic Weekly and the 

Freeman's Journal); some of the foremost men in academic life; political 

leaders such as Roger Sullivan of Chicago; and men of prominence in the 

financial and business world. [Ibid., pp. 36-37]

During the course of the congressional investigation, the Bureau's offerings 

were found to abound with factual inaccuracies and to have resulted in wrong 

conclusions even when the facts were correct. [Ibid., pp. 37-43] The 

occasion did not install mush public confidence in the Bureau's intelligence 

activities or product.

When confronted with a series of bombings directed against public officials 

during late 1918 and 1919, the Bureau's analytical skills again appeared to 

be deficient.

As in the case of the 1918 bombing, the Justice Department detectives made a 

prompt announcement of who the criminals in the 1919 case were. The bombing 

jobs, they said, were the work of radicals, whose purpose was the 

assassination of Federal officials and the overthrow of the Government. To 

support this deduction, they pointed our that some of the bombs arrived at 

their destinations shortly before the first of May, 1919, and others shortly 

after that time, and that May Day is the date traditionally chosen by some 

radicals to celebrate their doctrines by parading. However, another series 

of bombs was sent in June, posing the question how the detectives could 

attribute these new bomb attempts to May Day Radicalism.

The theory that the bombs were sent by radicals was beset with further 

embarrassments. The Government officials to whom the bombs were addressed 

included some men who were hostile to radicalism, but prominent public men 

whom the Bureau of Investigation suspected of being themselves radicals, and 

unsympathetic with the program against the radicals were included among the 

addressees. Indeed, some of the men were targets of denunciation from 

Capitol Hill as dangerous radicals. Critics who disagreed with the 

detectives' conclusions asked why radicals with bombs should select as 

victims the very men who might be their friends. Why, in particular, should 

they seek to bomb ex-Senator  Hardwick of Georgia, who had asked the Senate 

to vote against the very wartime sedition law under which the IWW 

[International Workers of the World] leaders and other radicals had been 

convicted?

A further difficulty arose out of the fact that some of the bombs were sent 

to minor businessmen and to relatively minor office holders, while most of 

the top Government officials whose deaths would have been of particular 

importance to the revolutionaries were not included among the potential 

victims selected by the bombers. [Ibid. pp. 68-69.]

Radicalism captured the attention of the Bureau in the aftermath of the 

world war. Preoccupation with the ideology, its leadership and organizations 

became so great that, on August 1, 1919, a General Intelligence Division was 

established within the Bureau to devote concentrated scrutiny to the subject.

There was, however, a difficulty with respect to the expenditure of the 

money appropriated for the Bureau's use by Congress. It specified that the 

appropriations were for the ``detection and prosecution of crimes.'' A 

provision for the detection of seditious speech and writings, however, might 

some day be passed, and the detectives concluded that preparation would be 

useful, in the form of an advance job to ascertain which individuals and 

organization held beliefs that were objectionable. With this information in 

hand, it could go into action without delay, after Congress passed a 

peacetime sedition law, similar to the wartime sedition laws enacted in 1917 

and 1918. The Bureau notified its agents on August 12, 1919, eleven days 

after the creation of the anti-radical Division, to engage in the broadest 

detection of sedition and to secure ``evidence which may be of use in 

prosecutions . . . under legislation . . . which may hereafter be enacted.'' 

[Ibid., p 84]

The new intelligence unit thus appears to have been created and financed in 

anticipation of a valid statutory purpose and seems, as well, to have 

engaged in investigations wherein the derivative information was not 

gathered in pursuit of Federal prosecution(s).

Coincident with the creation of the new Division, the Bureau selected J. 

Edgar Hoover as Division chief. He had joined the Department of Justice two 

years earlier, shortly after America entered the war, and shortly before 

Congress enacted the wartime sedition law. He had been on duty at the 

Justice Department during the entire war period, and obviously he was in a 

position to obtain a view of the detective activities against persons 

prosecuted or under surveillance for their statements. He had also been in a 

position to note the pre-eminence of the military detective services during 

the war and the connotations of success attached to their names -- Military 

and Naval Intelligence Services. Besides, the new unit at the Department of 

Justice was in the business of detecting ideas. He called it an intelligence 

force, in substitution for the names with which it started -- ``Radical 

Division'' and ``Anti-Radical Division.'' Mr. Hoover avoided one action of 

the War and Navy Intelligence agencies; their scope had been narrowed by the 

qualifying prefixes in their titles. He named his force the General 

Intelligence Division -- GID. [Ibid., pp. 84-85]

In 1920, when ``one-third of the detective staff at the Bureau headquarters 

in Washington had been assigned to anti-radical matters, and over one-half 

of the Bureau's field work had been diverted to the subject of radicalism, 

GID reported that ``the work of the General Intelligence Division . . . had 

now expanded to cover more general intelligence work, including not only 

ultra-radical activities but also to [sic] the study of matters of an 

international nature, as well as economic and industrial disturbances 

incident thereto.'' [Ibid., p 85.] And as its mission developed, so did the 

GID's manner of operations and techniques of inquiry.

The Bureau of Investigation faced and solved one problem in the first ten 

days of the existence of Mr. Hoover's division, the problem of the kind of 

data the detectives should send to headquarters. They were going to receive 

material from undercover informants, from neighbors, from personal enemies 

of the persons under investigation. The detectives were going to hear gossip 

about what people were said to have said or were suspected of having done -- 

information derived, in some instances, from some unknown person who had 

told the Bureau's agents or informers or the latter's informants. Some of 

the information received might relate to people's personal habits and life.

The Bureau's decision was that everything received by the special agents and 

informers should be reported to headquarters; the agents were specifically 

directed to send whatever reached them, ``of every nature.'' But they were 

warned that not everything that they gathered could be used in trials where 

men were accused of radicalism. Some items about personal lives, however 

interesting to the detectives, might not be regarded as relevant in court 

proceedings against alleged radicals. Furthermore, despite the fact that the 

Bureau instructed its agents to transmit to headquarters everything that 

they picked up, ``whether hearsay or otherwise,'' it warned them that there 

was a difference between the sources from which GID was willing to receive 

accusations and statements for its permanent dossiers and the evidence which 

trial judges and tribunals would accept as reliable proof. In judicial 

proceedings, the Bureau of Investigation informed all its agents, there was 

an insistence of what it called ``technical proof,'' and judges would rule 

that the rumors and gossip which the detectives were instructed to supply to 

GID had ``no value.'' [Ibid. pp. 86-87.]

In order to assess the program and thinking of the radicals, it was 

necessary to study the literature and writings of the ideologues. Gathering 

such printed material became a major GID project and acquisitions were made 

on a mass basis.

Detectives were sent to local radical publishing houses and to take their 

books. In addition, they were to find every private collection or library in 

the possession of any radical, and to make the arrangements for obtaining 

them in their entirety. Thus, when the GID discovered an obscure Italian 

born philosopher who had a unique collection of books on the theory of 

anarchism, his lodgings were raided by the Bureau and his valuable 

collection became one more involuntary contribution to the huge and 

ever-growing library of the GID.

Similar contributions came from others, among them the anarchist 

philosophers who had retired to farms or elsewhere. A number of them had, 

over the years, built up private libraries in pursuit of their studies; 

these are discovered by the General Intelligence Division, and it was soon 

able to report that ``three of the most complete libraries on anarchy were 

seized.'' The Bureau took over the contents of a school library which it 

discovered in a rural community of radicals. It also obtained the library of 

a boys' club, and assured Congress that the library was ``in the possession 

of this department . . . '' Catalogs of these acquisitions were prepared, 

including a ``catalog of the greatest library in the country which contains 

anarchistic books.''

In the search for literature, the Bureau sent many of its men to join 

radical organizations, to attend radical meetings, and to bring back 

whatever they could lay their hands on. The book-seekers, and the raiding 

detectives tipped off by them, were directed to find the places where 

specially valuable books, pamphlets, and documents might be guarded against 

possible burglary; they were to ransack desks, to tap ceilings and walls; 

carpets and mattresses had to be ripped up, and safes opened; everything 

``hanging on the walls should be gathered up'' -- so the instructions to the 

detectives read. [Ibid., pp 87-88]

In an attempt to improve upon the wartime surveillance records of the 

Bureau, and to enhance the GID information store, Hoover created a card file 

system containing ``a census of every person and group believed by his 

detectives to hold dangerous ideas.''

The index also had separate cards for ``publications,'' and for ``special 

conditions'' - a phrase the meaning of which has never been made clear. In 

addition, Mr. Hoover's index separately assembled all radical matters 

pertaining to each city in which there were radicals. Each card recorded 

full details about its subject -- material regarded by the detectives as 

revealing each man's seditious ideas, and data needed to enable the 

Government's espionage service to find him quickly when he was wanted for 

shadowing or for arrest. The Intelligence Division reported that its task 

was complicated by reason of ``the fact that one of the main characteristics 

of the radicals in the United States is found in their migratory nature.''

The GID assured Congress that Mr. Hoover had a group of experts ``especially 

trained for the purpose.'' This training program was directed to making them 

``well informed upon the general movements in the territory over which they 

have supervision;'' they were also trained to manage the intricate index; 

and they had to keep up with its fabulous growth. The first disclosure by 

the GID showed 100,000 radicals on the index; the next, a few months later, 

200,000; the third, a year later, 450,000. Within the first two and one half 

years of indexing, the General Intelligence Division had approximately half 

a million persons cataloged, inventoried and secretly recorded in Government 

records as dangerous men and women.

A considerably older unit of the Department of Justice, its Bureau of 

Criminal Identification, had long maintained an index of actual criminals. 

In 1923, after several years of trying, the Bureau of Investigation took 

over the older bureau and the 750,000 name index it had developed in the 

course of a quarter century. Whether the two indices were merged or kept 

separate has not been announced. Hence, when Mr. Hoover stated in 1926 that 

his Bureau's index contained 1,500,000 names, it is not clear whether this 

was the total for both indices or for one only. [Ibid., pp. 90-91]

Also, in addition to indexing radicals, GID prepared biographical profiles 

of certain of them deemed to be of special importance.

The writing up of lives and careers proceeded rapidly, so that within three 

and one-half months of the GID's existence its biographical writers had 

written ``a more or less complete history of over 60,000 radically inclined 

individuals,'' according to the official information supplied the Senate. 

Included were biographies of persons ``showing any connection with an 

ultra-radical body or movement,'' in particular ``authors, publishers, 

editors, etc.''

Rigorous secrecy has been imposed on the list of names of newspapermen, 

authors, printers, editors, and publishers who were made the subjects of 

GID's biographical section. How many additional biographies have been 

written since the middle of November 1919, who were the GID's first or later 

biographers, how they were trained so promptly, and how they managed to 

write 60,000 biographies in 100 days -- these questions have never been 

answered. [Ibid., p 91.]

The Constitution has three specific prohibitions against this type of abuse. 

These Constitutional protections often don't help, because of a willingness 

by the FBI to violate them, and a lack of understanding of them by the 

public. The following United States Government Memorandum demostrates the 

capricousness by which the FBI ignores the law:

TO: Mr. C. D. Deloach DATE: July 19, 1966

FM: W.C. Sullivan DO NOT FILE

SUBJECT: ``BLACK BAG'' JOBS

The following is set forth in regard to your request concerning what 

authority we have for ``black bag'' jobs and for the background of our 

policy and procedures in such matters.

We do not obtain authorization for ``black bag`` jobs from outside the 

Bureau. Such a technique involves trespass and is clearly illegal; 

therefore, it would be impossible to obtain any legal sanction for it. 

Despite this, ``black bag'' jobs have been used because they represent an 

invaluable technique in combating subversive activities of a clandestine 

nature aimed directly at undermining and destroying our nation.

The present procedure followed in the use of this technique calls for the 

Special Agent in Charge of a field office to make his request for the use of 

the technique to the appropriate Assistant Director. The Special Agent in 

Charge must completely justify the need for the use of the technique and at 

the same time assure that it can be safely used without danger or 

embarrassment to the Bureau. The facts are incorporated in a memorandum 

which, in accordance with the Director's instructions, is sent to Mr. Tolson 

or to the Director for approval. Subsequently this memorandum is filed in 

the Assistant Director's office under a ``Do Not File'' procedure.

In the field the Special Agent in Charge prepares an informal memorandum 

showing that he obtained Bureau authority and this memorandum is filed in 

his safe until the next inspection by Bureau Inspectors, at which time it is 

destroyed.

[Material apparently censored]

We have used this technique on a highly selective basis, but with wide-range 

effectiveness, in our operations. We have several cases in the espionage 

field [material censored]

Also through use of this technique we have on numerous occasions been able 

to obtain material held highly secret and closely guarded by subversive 

groups and organizations which consisted of membership lists of these 

organizations.

This applies even to our investigation of the [censored]. You may recall 

that recently through a ``black bag'' job we obtained records in the 

possession of three high-ranking officials of a [censored] organization in 

[censored]. These records have given us the complete membership and 

financial information concerning the [censored] operation which we have been 

using most effectively to disrupt the organization and, in fact, to bring 

about its near disintegration [censored]

In short, it is a very valuable weapon which we have used to combat the 

highly clandestine efforts of subversive elements seeking to undermine our 

Nation.

RECOMMENDATION:

For your information.

--

--------------------------------------

Glen L. Roberts, Editor, Full Disclosure Magazine

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