Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, in my role as a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, I have always taken a serious view of my oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. It is vitally important that we keep a close watch on the activities of law enforcement, especially regarding their operations in domestic intelligence gathering. In the wake of September 11th attacks, a time of crisis when civil liberties can be viewed as a luxury, it was important to ensure that all Americans could rely on the Constitution to both protect our rights and protect public safety. As we all know, the FBI has a long, troubling history of using its broad investigatory powers to vulnerable or dissenting groups in our society. As a long-serving member, I was here in Congress when the reports of the FBI's surveillance activities against African-American groups involved in the struggle for civil rights first surfaced in the press. Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to ``increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections'' inside American Communist Party. Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally. An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists.…”