Page 35 - Fruits from a Poisonous Tree

Mel Stamper 19

in the United States. To be an unregistered alien was against the law. This
law also outlawed all organizations that advocated the overthrow of the
government, perhaps a reasonable measure in war, but this law was passed
during peacetime. The Smith Act was abused to jail labor leaders, socialists and
communists who were opposed to the ways of the robber-baron capitalists,
the very ones who created the conditions for the Great Depression.
The Red scare of the 30s and the communist witch-hunt, of the 40s
and 50s ruined many American lives. Their only crime was to know the
“wrong people,” or to hold liberal opinions, or to have such opinions in their
youth and the gall to stand up to demagogues and others who used anti-
Communism as the key to increasing their own power.
The 1950 Internal Security Act, passed by a super-majority to override
Truman’s veto, required registration of people and groups who were
communists or who had beliefs similar to communists. It created detention
centers around the country, which would be filled with FBI-identified
subversives if the President declared an emergency. Those detention centers
are still in existence and new ones have been built all over this country to
hold us. There are over forty-three of them at present under the direct control
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
More recently, many are familiar with the history of the civil rights and
anti-Vietnam War movement. Did you also know that the FBI’s operation
Co-intelligence Program (CointelPro), approved at the highest levels of
government, had as its object the suppression of those who worked to change
the system? It was used to intimidate the membership, discredit leadership,
and even put into jail those who fought for freedom and peace, in a manner
that was not only grossly immoral but also completely illegal. That was only
thirty years ago.
And there is Watergate and Nixon’s inches-thick list of enemies. He used
the power of the IRS, FBI, Customs, and other federal agencies to harass or
eliminate his political opponents and everyone he suspected of disloyalty or
political opposition. That took place only twenty-five years ago.
And now, after twenty-five years of drug war and a drug-war friendly
Supreme Court, we’ve seen our protections under the 4 and 5 Amendments
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eroded to nothing. All of these deprivations of liberty are always under the
pretext of some alleged war.
We’re at a watershed point in our nation’s history. Not everyone who cries,
“We must fight terrorism!” is really a friend of the Republic and freedom.
Some people think that we should live in a society with a lot fewer “civil
rights.” They believe that some opinions should be illegal, some activism
should be forbidden. It is this type of individual that permeates the Congress
and the federal judiciary.