Coleen Rowley on the widespread use of surveillance by US security services — Transcript

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1. 0:00in the FBI surveillance of of the
2. 0:02American Indian movement was largely
3. 0:04ignored during the church the church
4. 0:06hearings and investigations which you
5. 0:09know coincidentally took place the same
6. 0:11year as the shootout in Oglala and the
7. 0:13Pine Ridge Indian reservation in June of
8. 0:151975.
9. 0:17and this was at the height of the reign
10. 0:20of terror which you mentioned
11. 0:22um so given what we know about the
12. 0:24hostility towards uh Peltier and aimed
13. 0:28by the FBI in the past but also today
14. 0:31with you know Ray's letter
15. 0:33um what needs to be done in this
16. 0:37particular moment and what kinds of
17. 0:38Investigations and inquiries would you
18. 0:41like to see
19. 0:43um
20. 0:45one of the reasons perhaps why that the
21. 0:49infiltration and disruption the
22. 0:51cointelpro activities directed on
23. 0:54American Indian movement maybe one of
24. 0:57the reasons why the church there might
25. 0:59be more than one but one of the reasons
26. 1:00why the church committee nor that might
27. 1:02have been the shootings so it was such
28. 1:05an emotional hot uh you know politicians
29. 1:09no matter what don't like to to wade
30. 1:11into any kind of hot button issue so
31. 1:14that might have been it they knew the
32. 1:15FBI would never at that point in time be
33. 1:19able to see you know again very
34. 1:21emotional at that time so that might be
35. 1:24a reason why it was kind of ignored I
36. 1:26know Frank Church himself was a target
37. 1:28of the NSA so he would have been more
38. 1:31motivated for all of this surveillance
39. 1:33during Vietnam that went crazy this is
40. 1:36just project mineral right yeah the the
41. 1:39NSA had this project called project
42. 1:41minaret the FBI had its cointel Pro and
43. 1:45the C CIA had won I think the name was
44. 1:47chaos just like in get smart
45. 1:50and not very little is known about
46. 1:53minaret and Chaos because they did not
47. 1:55have a a whistleblower type like William
48. 1:58Sullivan so William Sullivan ended up
49. 2:01telling the church committee about some
50. 2:03of these workings of the of cointel
51. 2:05progress he was at the table I think he
52. 2:07had a Fame uh Sullivan had a famous uh
53. 2:10quote something like well we all sat
54. 2:13around the table coming up with these
55. 2:15ideas one of which was to encourage
56. 2:18Martin Luther King to commit suicide
57. 2:20letter
58. 2:21um we all had these ideas and sat around
59. 2:23and no one said is it right is it wrong
60. 2:26not a soul you know a handful of these
61. 2:28high-level people so but there was
62. 2:30nobody who talked about minaret and so
63. 2:33all to this day it's still classified
64. 2:35somehow one little bit leaked out that
65. 2:39showed that had seven of the targets
66. 2:41there were many many more targeted and
67. 2:44one of them was senator Frank Church
68. 2:46whether he knew it or not there was
69. 2:49columnists
70. 2:50newspaper columnist humorist art
71. 2:53buckwald Ali Muhammad Ali of course
72. 2:57which wouldn't be surprising because he
73. 2:58was a opposed to Vietnam
74. 3:01um so he went not surprised a couple of
75. 3:03editors mainstream News newspaper
76. 3:06editors and another Senator so when you
77. 3:10have when you know that these these were
78. 3:12the you know again if public knows that
79. 3:16our national security agencies are
80. 3:19actually spying on our own
81. 3:22Publishers journalists government
82. 3:25officials I mean you can't have it I
83. 3:29mean the the we can't that's the rule of
84. 3:32law completely breaking apart so um so I
85. 3:35think the church committee was more they
86. 3:38had a lot to look at that's the other
87. 3:40thing they had a lot so they probably
88. 3:42looked at some of the things that were
89. 3:43nearest and dearest to them at the time
90. 3:46and uh I I don't know why they didn't uh
91. 3:48you know that those would be my guesses
92. 3:51as to why they did they more or less
93. 3:53ignored the AIM now if