Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics & Research
Nixon’s Ghosts scanned from microfiche (SuDoc: Y 4.J 89/2:M 59/7) the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate report, Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics: A Report (93d Congress, 1st session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973).
Students of 1960-70s surveillance history and politics will recognize the Subcommittee as the Ervin Committee, the same congressional body that produced Army Surveillance of Civilians: A Documentary Analysis, which represents “a painstaking analysis of documents obtained in its investigation” of U.S. Army surveillance of peace, anti-war, civil rights, and other activist groups (Military Surveillance, p.3).
As an aside, I’ve meant to list a few research suggestions as an adjunct to my original intro and notes at The Memory Hole on researching this historically significant period :
- NARA has various findings aids available for the declassified records of the Army Staff (RG 319), including the finding aid for the CIC (Counterintelligence Corps) and Army Intelligence and Security Command (Records of the Investigative Records Repository, or IRR)
- Researchers may also search ARC (Archival Research Catalog) for materials in other records groups
And if you’re a diehard period researcher…
- Contact your local library to learn if they subscribe to the DDRS (the Declassified Documents Reference Service) or in microfiche, the Declassified Documents, Retrospective Collection (documents created from 1945 to 1975)
- Contact your local library to learn if they subscribe to The Sixties database, which I reviewed for the October 2009 issue of The Charleston Advisor
- Search presidential libraries, many of which have declassified documents relating to surveillance of activists that can be requested or accessed online
Thanks to Nixon’s Ghosts to liberating Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics.
Swine Flu Circa 1976 & Now
Searching for something quite unrelated to the swine flu (H1N1) virus in the stacks a few weeks ago, I stumbled on the following government publications (warning – hearings were tightly bound):
- U.S. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. Swine Flu Immunization Program: Supplemental Hearings. June 28, July 20, 23, and September 13, 1976. (Serial Set No. 94-113). Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976, (SuDoc: Y 4.In 84:94-113).
Note discussions on “The Need for Indemnification Legislation” (p.6); discussions between Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Dr. Theodore Cooper, Department of Health and Human Welfare (DHEW; p. 18-21) on insurance companies not willing to extend coverage to vaccine manufacturers and related Congressional Research Service report (June 22, 1976) on “exempting manufacturers of swine flu vaccine from liability” (p. 456). ***
- U.S. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Subcommittee on Health. Suspension of the Swine Flu Immunization Program, December 17, 1976. Washington: Government Printing Office, (SuDoc: Y 4.L 11/2:Sw 6/976).
Senator Edward M. Kennedy chaired the Subcommittee. In his opening remarks, Sen. Kennedy (p. 1) states
“Over 35 million Americans received the flu shot thus far, and they have a right to know what exactly the situation is, as well as the need to be reassured that their health is not in jeopardy.”
In addition to numerous articles on swine flu program, the report also includes a February 1977 DHEW review of informed consent practices (p.21). Observe the Committee had serious concerns with manufacturer liability (p.2); Senator Jacob Javits (p.3) admits he was inoculated against the disease, stating the Guillain-Barré syndrome “may or may not have something to do with the swine flu shots.”
In 1976, as summarized by the Centers for Disease Control, the “national influenza campaign was designed to immunize nearly the entire United States population in fear of an influenza pandemic.” Research trials linked the A/New Jersey/1976/H1N1 vaccine with Guillain-Barré syndrome . The program was suspended in 1976.
I’m providing a scan of these docs as an historical backdrop to the current public debate. For further info, Bowling Green Libraries, Government Publications has compiled an excellent finding aid, “The Swine Flu Scare of 1976: U.S. Government Publications, A bibliography of United States government publications about the Swine Flu scare of 1976″ replete with SuDoc numbers (Superintendent of Documents classification system) so you may head to the shelves at your local gov docs repository to pull the docs.
What does any of this have to do with government secrecy? Everything. Sen. Kennedy stressed the need for informed consent in 1976; and in their systematic review of the 1976 swine flu program, Neustadt and Fineberg (p. 73) write in The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease (Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1978),
“…in short, we advocate a comprehensive definition and review of assumptions everyone can see and weigh before decision and remember after. The review thus should be public.”
The same appeal for transparency holds today.
While there are more than enough issues to tease apart vis-a-vis the H1N1 vaccine such as safety and efficacy, I find manufacturer liability and immunity as documented in these lost hearings – when juxtaposed with PREP*** – the most historically relevant to today’s global dilemma regarding mass vaccination, public health, and informed consent. The public deserves to know why vaccine manufacturers are offered a release from liability, as well as an opportunity to examine all internal federal agency (including deliberative) documents that led to this decision.
____________
*** Consult the PREP Act (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, Pub. L. No. 109-148,) on issues of manufacturer liability and immunity, especially the Tort Liability sections #1 & 2, and #7, the Secretary’s ability to issue a declaration based on a “triggering effect” that would then confer immunity.
Chapter 7 “Liability” of the The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease (National Academy of Science, 1978) offers insight into indemnification discussions and policy during the 1976 program.
This post is dedicated to Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009).
I met Sen. Kennedy around a decade ago on the street as he walked towards the Hart and Dirksen senate office buildings, and I towards Jefferson, LOC. I expected him to be taller, eyes not as blue, and handshake not as firm. Although he was lost in thought, when I approached him he was earnest and present. I won’t share what we discussed as this is personal, but this singular meeting remains one of the highlights of my life.
Thank you Mr. Kennedy for your service and concern for ordinary Americans.
Dr. Mary Lee Bundy on Secrecy
Shame on me, I recently discovered Mary Lee Bundy’s work. I’m incredulous I hadn’t previously read Bundy, not even while in library school in the late 1980s.
As evidenced by her publications (Secrecy and Medical Experimentation on Prisoners: A Case Study of the Role of Government Information Suppression in the Repression and Exploitation of People, Leslie Burger and Mary Lee Bundy, University of Maryland, 1973?; The National Prison Directory: Organizational Profiles of Prison Reform Groups in the United States, Mary Lee Bundy and Kenneth R. Harmon, Urban Information Interpreters, 1975; Helping People Take Control: The Public Library’s Mission in a Democracy, Urban Information Interpreters, 1980; Activism in American librarianship, 1962-1973, Mary Lee Bundy and Frederick J. Stielow, eds., Greenwood Press, 1987), Bundy was deeply committed to freedom of information, the importance of libraries in the open society, and the osmotic role of information professionals in operating outside library walls in bridging the often bipolar worlds of access to information and information restriction.
It is two of her works – Secrecy and Medical Experimentation on Prisoners (1973?) and Helping People Take Control : the Public Library’s Mission in a Democracy (1980) – that inspired me to blog Bundy on secrecy.
Secrecy and Medical Experimentation on Prisoners outlines an attempt to gather information on a “volunteer” experimental vaccine program conducted by University of Maryland, School of Medicine, funded by NIH and U.S. Army at the Maryland House of Corrections, Jessup (” a seriously overcrowded, obsolete facility run in the old style penal tradition”). The study, “Accessibility of Information Available to the Public Concerning the Experimentation Taking Place in the Infectious Disease Unit, Maryland House of Correction, Jessup Maryland, December, 1973, was undertaken as part of a research methods class at the University of Maryland, conducted by Dr. Mary Lee Bundy,” and hoped to answer the following questions:
What experiments take place? How risky are they? Are inmates receiving adequate medical care? Have there been accidents, side effect etc. as a result of the experiments? Is informed consent obtained? Are inmates volunteering for a lack of other ways to earn money? Are doctors or others making profits from these experiments? How does participation effect work in prison, participation in educational and rehabilitative programs, and the prospects for parole? What legal and other protections do inmates have? (p.2)
As I read along, I wasn’t clear why a Freedom of Information Act request wasn’t filed with various agencies in order to obtain info on the volunteer vaccine prisoner program; instead Bundy and her students used the following methods to gather data:
The results of this effort support the conclusion that with regard to this program, there exists a virtually closed government information system, for an estimated total of five letters, five interviews and twenty telephone calls to sixteen different government agencies, resulted in retrieving little of the most significant data. Important sources of information either refused or simply failed to supply information which should have been in their possession (p.3).
At the conclusion of the study, Burger and Bundy observed that
Secrecy shields the exploitation of paying inmates only a fraction of what “free world” volunteers get. Secrecy, if not in this situation, then in others, permits doctors, drug companies and others in their hire to make enormous profits from the exploitation of incarcerated people. In a closed information system deaths and other casualties resulting from experiments can be covered up
The real significance of government secrecy is the very role it plays in the systematized exploitation of people (p.8).
I italicized the latter thought simply because I found the statement so profound – and obvious. Of the vast philosophical, theoretical tomes on secrecy I’ve poured over the last decade, no one has really made this connection. Burger and Bundy did it back in the early 1970s with little fanfare, and in one carefully crafted sentence.
~~~
In Helping People Take Control: The Public Library’s Mission in a Democracy, Bundy writes on a related complex of issues: national security, surveillance, spying, government secrecy, “media manipulation,” information advocacy, and library support of citizen research. Bundy also makes a plea for citizens to examine “the public library for its community responsiveness” (p.182).
Bundy (p.184) also calls for continued professional responsibility and vigilance in a grand way:
When middle-of-the-road organizations like the American Library Association speak out against police spying, government secrecy and discrimination in the media, we can expect they will be heard and carry weight. We would, therefore, propose that the library profession become actively involved in these information struggles.
Whether change emanates from citizens or librarians, whether from traditional libraries or new alternative libraries and information centers, whatever the line of development,the goal is an open information situation in the U. S.
The first, crucial step is to recognize the manipulation and censorship in the existing information system for what it is — a shocking, dangerous situation for all Americans, thwarting our effort at achieving a democratic society, and threatening our very future.
I urge both LIS students and information professionals in the field to consider Dr. Bundy’s work in a contemporary sociopolitical context, for the role of librarian-information worker – at least the way I believe Bundy thought of the field – is part of a greater information system beyond four walls and beige metal shelving. Bundy offers permission for information workers to think of themselves as advocates in the truest sense of the word.
For Their Eyes Only: How Presidential Appointees Treat Public Documents as Personal Property
Lost but now found buried in one of my file cabinets – and still available via the Web – is Steve Weinberg’s For Their Eyes Only: How Presidential Appointees Treat Public Documents as Personal Property (Center for Public Integrity, 1992), an amazing information policy paper that documents private ownership claims over public government information by former presidential appointees (such as former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State George Schultz), disparities with the prepublication review process, censorship, overclassification, glacial efforts to declassify information, and “granting some outside historians preferential access, while others are frozen out” (p.22).
For Their Eyes (p.3) proposes the not so radical idea that “no records should be considered ‘personal’ if created to conduct government business on government business on government time, or with the help of taxpayer supported personnel.” Historically valuable research info is available in various appendices:
Appendix I. ~ Truman through Reagan Administration records practices
Appendix II. ~ Bibliographic essay based on the GAO’s investigation into classified information held by former presidential appointees, Information Security:Disposition and Use of Classified Documents by Presidential Appointees (NSIAD-90- 195, September 1990)
Appendix III. ~ Is a really a bibliography of memoirs using potential classified material from the Truman through Reagan Administrations.
Lexicon & Army Surveillance Doc
There’s a new edition of On Their Own Terms up at FAS. Included in the 4th edition are quite a few new fascinating terms, including computerized personalities database, as reported in Army Surveillance of Civilians: A Documentary Analysis (92nd Congress, second session. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972). The doc was originally uploaded at The Memory Hole.
But don’t go there to retrieve the doc as the site is currently under hacker attack by evil doers. Wait a month or so until Russ gets the new server online. There are quite a few links on the Lex that head to MemHole, including my stuff on the Coolidge Committee. But wait it out – and please do consider helping Russ (russ at mindpollen dot com) with a generous financial donation during this manufactured crisis.
In the meantime, if you want to read Army Surveillance of Civilians: A Documentary Analysis:
go here for the doc: armyciviliansurveillance
go here for the intro: maret_army-surv-intro
Happy trails, Susan
The Ervin Committee
On April 24, 2009, Democracy Now! interviewed Bethine Church, Sen. Frank Church’s (D-Idaho) widow and Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., who served as chief counsel to the Church Committee (formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities).
This look back to the Church Committee’s work is an important reminder of CIA and FBI misdoings of the 1970s; it is critical this dark history remains alive and accessible. However, the chain of events as mentioned in the interview are more complex than mentioned. The flow of events are roughly:
Christopher Pyle’s 1970 revelations > Morton Kondrache’s Chicago Sun Times stories > Ervin Committee 1972 investigation of military surveillance of citizens > Church Committee various hearings and reports > And a lot more such as the Pike Committee (1976)
On the surface, the Ervin Committee (the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights) investigation and hearings might not appear linked to the Church Committee investigations of the intelligence community. But it would be a mistake to think this. One of the key findings of the Ervin Committee was the Army was not only conducting massive surveillance and record keeping on U.S. citizens by way of its large intelligence infrastructure, but it was also sharing voluminous amounts of information on citizens with intelligence agencies such as the FBI.
You can read the U.S. Army Surveillance of Civilians: A Documentary Analysis 92d Congress, 2d session) at the Memory Hole.
Update August 21, 2009:
The July 28, 2009 Democracy Now interviewed several activists who learned through a public records requests to the city of Tacoma (I believe) that an “active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military.”
The Pyle and Church Committees are mentioned in the DN report, but not Ervin. Hmmmm.
Challenger: The Untold Story
Around January 26th, I fully intended to blog about what is popularly referred to as the “Challenger disaster.” While I didn’t jump online to note my thoughts, I did watch a remarkable National Geographic film hosted on hulu.com on the grim accident. Watching incredibly honest interviews with Challenger engineers, a piece we included in our book Government Secrecy by Dr. Diane Vaughn on structural secrecy sprung to mind.
The documentary, though illustrating many of the points Dr. Vaughn stresses in her meticulous landmark study of the accident, including for example, the decision to launch, communication dynamics between the engineers and NASA’s bureaucracy, doesn’t make reference to Vaughn’s concept of structural secrecy, or
…the way that patterns of information, organizational structure, processes, and transactions, and the structure of regulatory relations systematically undermine the attempts to know and interpret situations in all organizations. At NASA, structural secrecy concealed the seriousness of the O-ring problem, contributing to the persistence of the scientific paradigm on which the belief in acceptable risk was based.
I encourage everyone who is interested in orgnaizational secrecy, technological decision making, transparency, and safety to head to hulu to watch the film. And brace yourself. The Challenger breakup evokes the same helpless, sinking feeling as it did watching live twenty-three years ago.
Leahy Calls for Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Today’s news brought a call from Sen. Patrick Leahy for a”fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened” during the latter years of the Bush Administration. In his speech at Georgetown, Leahy not only addressed the “secret governing processes of the Bush administration,” but also “repairing a broken oversight process and instilling greater accountability, and about renewing the public’s confidence in our justice system.”
It’s not a mistake the senator from Vermont mentioned the Church Committee in his speech. Although Leahy intended his statement “we are still digging out from the debris they left behind,” he could have been referring back to the rugged time in U.S. history that has many parallels with the last eight years.
Secrecy diminishes both the personal and joint responsibility for decisions, encourages careless judgment, and create an environment of defense, deception, and intrigue. Secrecy also offers officials a shield from outside criticism and obscures the possibilities of failure regarding for example, a foreign policy, or action (Bok 1982:108-109).
Let’s hope a Truth and Reconciliation Commission can open the secret files not only for American citizens, but for U.K citizens.
A New Era of Openness
With the swearing in of the 44th President, the U.S. also has a (hopefully) elected new information policy. A few noteworthy developments:
_The new Presidential Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act reverses the Bush Administration’s (Andrew) “Card” Memo that placed an almost a burden of proof on FOIA requestors. The current Presidential Memo states : “The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public.”
_Executive Order 13480, which reversed Bush E.O. 13233. Highlights include:
A change of definition in presidential records to include vice-presidential records;
What seems to me as a non-constitutional lawyer, is less of an emphasis on the current president’s claim of executive privilege. Per EO 13480, “a substantial question of executive privilege’ exists if NARA’s disclosure of Presidential records might impair national security (including the conduct of foreign relations), law enforcement, or the deliberative processes of the executive branch.”
What isn’t clear to me – even though 13233 is revoked by 13480 – are privilege claims of families (“the family of the former President may designate a representative (or series or group of alternative representatives, as they in their discretion may determine) to act on the former President’s behalf for purposes of the Act and this order, including with respect to the assertion of constitutionally based privileges…”)
If anyone has any insights, post away.
Responsible History
Historian and founder of the Network of Concerned Historians, Dr. Antoon de Baets has a published a new book titled Responsible History. After his Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide, 1945–2000, which is a remarkable attempt at documenting global censorship and violations of freedom of expression, I can hardly wait to pick up his latest work.
In our text Government Secrecy, we also plead for a “right to know” as it pertains to history, memory institution practices, and knowledge of governmental policies and actions. By way of Howard Zinn’s classic 1977 article on the relationship between secrecy, access to the archive, professional neutrality, and the public interest, included in our text, it is suggested that government secrecy is potentially an abuse of history, self-determination, and right to truth.
I’ll be curious to see how Dr. de Baets lays this out the argument for a responsible history.
