Taking Note
MLD
More of the Same T HE CALLER DIDN'T MINCE ANY WORDS. "EXPECT MORE OF the same, you Communist bitches." The staff at San Francisco's Women's Building are no strangers to harassment. Shortly after...
...We have written legislation that would require a warrant for this type of surveillance...
...Shortly after their founding in 1979 they lived through a pipe bombing and a month-long bomb scare...
...Congressman Edwards, a former FBI agent, addressed the need for protective legislation at the February hearings...
...Our recent Freedom of Information request revealed that the FBI has investigative files on the organization as well as six staff members...
...With sixty such break-in cases unsolved, the victims and New York's Center for Constitutional Rights have pressed Congress for an investigation...
...The intruders' behavior fits a now familiar pattern...
...On the night of March 10-11, 1987, they became the latest group critical of Reagan policy in Central America to be burglarized...
...The congresspersons also heard from paid CISPES infiltrator Frank Varelli, who testified that FBI agents showed him documents they had lifted from the Dallas CISPES office...
...FBI officials have agreed to discuss the groups they place in this category only behind closed doors...
...Perhaps we can expect more of the same...
...In this era such a bill cannot be enacted...
...While the FBI has denied any involvement "as an institution" in this rash of illegal entries, they maintain that Executive Order 12333 gives them the right to break into offices of those engaged in "foreign intelligence"without a warrant...
...In an interview following the hearing, Varelli confirmed that he shared intelligence on NACLA with the Salvadorean National Guard...
...We on this committee have for many years been concerned about the use of informants and the intrusive nature of undercover work...
...Like our experience last May, there was no sign of forced entry...
...In early March, FBI Director William Webster told the subcommittee that while an inquiry about the alleged break-in was in progress, he was "absolutely confident in my own mind that it did not occur...
...This time three items were missing: a $20 check, $19 in cash and a computer disk labelled "tenants," containing information on each of the 11 occupants, among them the Margaret Randall Defense Committee, Women Against Rape, Somos Hermanas and a Salvadorean women's federation...
...valuables were overlooked...
...With the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the International Center for Development Policy and several sanctuary churches, we related the story of our own burglary and took the opportunity to tell Congress about NACLA's work and 20-year history of surveillance and right-wing interest...
...But I say that only in my own mind...
...NACLA was among eight groups invited to testify in February before Congressman Don Edwards' Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights...
...The building houses 11 women's organizations, three of which work on Central America...
Vol. 21 • January 1987 • No. 1
