On November 28, the Guardian posted an alarming report titled “The War on Democracy” by Nafeez Ahmed concerning “how corporations and spy agencies use ‘security’ to defend profiteering and crush activism.”
When it comes to governmental repression against efforts to reform the status quo, I am not easily shocked. After all, I lived through Cointelpro, bogus conspiracy trials against demonstrators opposed to the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon’s Huston Plan (modified but still substantially implemented). And I knew about the violent attacks on labor unions prior to the New Deal.
But Ahmed’s article, drawing on a report by the Center for Corporate Policy (CCP) in Washington DC titled Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage against Nonprofit Organizations, shocked me profoundly.
The CCP steering committee includes Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh from the Institute for Policy Studies, Ilyse Hogue from MoveOn, and Robert Weissman, editor of the Multinational Monitor.
Ahmed reports that Spooky Business relies on “a wide range of public record evidence, including lawsuits and journalistic investigations.” And he concludes, “It paints a disturbing picture of a global corporate espionage program that is out of control, with possibly as much as one in four activists being private spies.”
According to the report:
A diverse array of nonprofits have been targeted by espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups.… Many of the world’s largest corporations and their trade associations … have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers.
These efforts were not limited to intelligence gathering. Rather, they often involved active attempts to undermine the work of advocacy organizations.
Even worse, the FBI and the CIA assist these efforts. A September 2010 report from the Office of the Inspector General in the US Justice Department concluded that:
… the factual basis of opening some of the investigations of individuals affiliated with the groups was factually weak… In some cases, we also found that the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis…. In some cases, the FBI classified some of its investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification.
The FBI’s involvement has been formalized through “InfraGard’,” a partnership between private industry, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition, active-duty CIA agents sell their expertise to these private security operations. With this moonlighting assistance, corporations are now able to “replicate in miniature the services of a private CIA,” according to the report.
While recently researching the Kennedy assassination, I was worried that I was going off the deep end. But as I commented in “JFK and the CIA”:
Revelations about how the Surveillance State has recently taken unwarranted political actions against Occupy and certain Muslims heightens the need for a more transparent, accountable CIA. Their strange secrecy around the Kennedy assassination is another cause for concern. Even if Oswald was the sole shooter, we need to know more about the CIA’s relationship with Oswald.
Ahmed’s article about the Spooky Business report reinforces my concern. “Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”