THE GOOD OLE DAYS - WHAT CONSERVATIVES DON'T TELL US ABOUT THE POST-WAR ERA

Aryeh Neier has a short article in the NYRB that reminded me of how bad surveillance during the so-called "golden years" conservatives like Bill O'Reilly wish woudl return.  Here's one example of 15 years of overreach:

Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI operated a program known as COINTELPRO, for Counter Intelligence Program. Its purpose was to interfere with the activities of the organizations and individuals who were its targets or, in the words of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” them. The first target was the Communist Party of the United States, but subsequent targets ranged from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organizations espousing women’s rights to right wing organizations such as the National States Rights Party.

The FBI agents who carried out this program all swore an oath to defend the Constitution but that didn't matter and I think as lot of NSA employees are similarly unperturbed about truly massive data collection.