COINTELPRO REDUX?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100150031-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: May 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

L.-_ill -, LUI I I
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100150031-3
AR I ICLE AF PEARED
ON PAGE /4f-
May/June 1986
COINTELPRO redux?
Has the Reagan administration stepped up
domestic surveillance of political dissidents?
Those who say yes can point to cases of
federal agents infiltrating sanctuary-move-
ment church groups and a series of myste-
rious burglaries at the offices of organizations
opposed to U.S. policies in Central and South
America. Such incidents, they say, are rem-
iniscent of COINTELPRO, the covert and
illegal counterintelligence program against
antiwar groups - and their publications -
spearheaded by the FBI and the CIA during
the 1960s and early 1970s. (See "Sabotaging
the Dissident Press," CJR, March/April
1981.) Now, Sojourners, a monthly maga-
zine published by the ecumenical Christian
community of the same name, claims that it
has obtained proof that its offices were under
surveillance by federal agents.
Just before 6 A.M. on a Saturday morning
in the fall of 1984, Ed Richardson, a So-
journers staff member, stopped by the mag-
azine's Washington offices on his way out
of town for the weekend. As he came around
a corner to the building's back entrance, he
saw four men peering into the offices. Ac-
cording to Richardson, the men were all in
their late twenties or early thirties, white, and
dressed in suits and ties. One carried a cam-
era. Standing with their backs to Richardson,
the men were visibly startled when he asked,
"Can I help you?"
"Uh, is this Sojourners?" one of the men
reportedly asked, sheepishly. Richardson
said that it was the magazine's offices, and
the man said that the four had come to visit
the community. No one lives at the maga-
zine's offices, Richardson told him, adding
that Saturday morning just after dawn was a
strange time to pay a visit. He then offered
to give the man the name of someone who
would arrange a visit at a more convenient
hour. The man politely declined the offer;
then, together with the other three, he headed
toward the street. "All the while, " Richard-
son recalled in a statement to the police a
few days after the incident, "they acted as
if they had been caught at something and just
wanted to get away."
When they reached the street, Richardson
says, the four men got into their car - a
late-model dark-brown sedan with a long CB
antenna attached to the left side - and sped
away, tires screeching. Richardson took
`Ail the while,'
Richardson recalled,
'[the four men] acted as
if they had
been caught at something
and just
wanted to get away.'
down the car's license: Virginia plate G-306,
with a 1985 sticker in the corner. But because
there was no evidence of burglary or any
other crime having been committed, the Dis-
trict of Columbia police and the state of Vir-
ginia refused to identify the owner.
Last fall, however, after several attempts
to trace the plate, the magazine was put in
touch with a former government intelligence
officer now working as a private investigator.
In the February issue. Sojourners publisher
Joe Roos wrote that the investigator had dis-
covered that the car's license number was
one of a block of numbers assigned to the
National Security Agency, the highly secre-
tive organization charged with handling. the
nation's communications intelligence.
"Since government agencies often exchange
license plates," Roos wrote, "we are not
certain that NSA agents visited us that morn-
ing. However, it is clear that we were sub-
jects of government surveillance."
When questioned about Sojourners' find-
ings, NSA spokeswoman Carolyn Johnson
replied that the agency was unfamiliar with
the magazine and would neither confirm nor
deny its allegations. L.Z.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100150031-3