A Nation in Fear

...I've proposed, for example, that we have a study commission go into the whole problem of data banks to find ways of protecting citizens against this onrushing technology which may envelop us...

...or is he a real American...

...I found several loopholes in Secretary Resor's denial...

...I remember when, in my own home state of Wisconsin, people refused to sign a resolution commending the Bill of Rights because they thought it was a Communist document...

...I'm pleased to see that the response so far, at least from those who have spoken up, has been universally against the military intelligence activities...

...Interestingly enough, eveiy time those hearings have come close to the question of military involvement in invasions of privacy, the subcommittees have backed away...

...The problem—the appalling problem—is that the military can completely lose sight of the overriding principle of a democracy: that the civilians are to run the military for the sake of the country, rather than have the military run themselves—and the country—for their own sake...

...My own judgment is that many of your colleagues—and much of the public—are convinced that individual liberties must be sacrificed in the inter-est of preserving "national security" Tm tempted to suggest that the nation has slipped into a police-state mentality...

...They have to keep those cards and letters coming and make it clear that on this issue there is no middle road...

...Mikva, a former member of the Illinois legislature and chairman of its House Judiciary Committee, was recently elected to his second term in Congress...

...Clearly, of all the people who might potentially go around blowing up arsenals, I'm the least likely...

...I gather you were not persuaded by the denial...

...We probably are entitled to less privacy than the average citizen...

...if they are civilians, their resignations should be obtained—not as a punishment, but as testimony to the proposition that a person who makes such decisions just does not understand what the country is all about, and cannot be trusted in a responsible position...

...To give credit where due, the Nixon Administration finally endorsed repeal of this obnoxious statute...

...I hope I'm not overstating their concern, because I know this: if the Congress doesn't put a lid on military surveillance right now, the military intelligence people will read our failure to act as approbation of what they are doing...

...You can't have civilian control unless you declare categorically that the military must stay out of all things political...

...Do you have the impression that many members of Congress share your concern on this issue...

...Why would anyone want to compile one...

...Unfortunately, the manifestations of that kind of fear and suspicion are police-state measures...

...It boggles the mind to think that the President or any of his top advisers were aware of this and did nothing to stop it...

...they would say, "Well, Congress can't tell us outright to go ahead and do this, but the fact that it hasn't done anything about it is proof positive that it wants us to continue doing it...

...Nothing may have gone out of the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Holabird to indicate to the Joint Chiefs that dossiers were being maintained on political figures...

...John M. O'Brien, who served as a self-described ce domestic spy for the Army" in the Chicago office of the 113th Military Intelligence Group, said his unit kept dossiers on some 800 persons, including Representative Mikva, Senator Ad-lai Stevenson 111, and former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner...

...Perhaps they wanted to compile evidence to be used in some future military court— evidence that I was disloyal to the military establishment because I suggested that we cut manpower by ten per cent last year, or because I voted against their appropriations in the two years I've been here...

...My best guess is that it was a group that encompassed most of the intelligence services but operated independently of the rest of the military establishment...

...I've puzzled about that...

...One logical extension is to have the military keep watch over civilians...

...I had assumed, without being certain, that the FBI and other civilian agencies kept surveillance on political figures...

...There is nothing sacrosanct about the privacy of a public official...

...It was almost as if he had said, "No one can prove that all three of you were being followed at the same time on the same day...

...What purpose would a dossier on you serve...

...There was a time when we feared only our enemies abroad...

...There was no way the Secretary of the Army could have exhausted all possibilities so quickly and come up with an unequivocal answer, so he equivocated to buy some time for the Department and find out what has been going on...

...I'm naive enough to believe that the civilian heads of the Defense Department were probably unaware of the extent to which political figures were kept under surveillance...

...When they start investigating political figures, there is no place you can draw the line and maintain any kind of civilian control...

...He has been an active and outspoken critic of the Vietnam war and of repressive domestic legislation...

...Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor has denied the allegations that you and Senator Stevenson and former Governor Kerner were spied on by military intelligence agents...

...What can citizens do to help make sure that these are thorough inquiries, and that they result in significant remedial action...

...Those would be the only two reasons that make any sense at all...

...I'm convinced now that we must have not only a thorough investigation of military surveillance, but also a public examination, discussion, and debate on the limits that should be imposed on the kind of information the Government is entitled to receive, and the ways such information is to be collected, stored, and used...

...There has been so much evidence lately that some kind of surveillance is going on that I just can't be satisfied with the bland assurance that it isn't happening...

...Up to now, all of those proposals have languished...

...The people who had been kept under surveillance would be the ones singled out for arrest and removal from the scene...

...I'm writing my own script here, because I don't have all the facts...

...So far as I can see, there are only two reasons, and both of them sound so Seven Days in May-\s\\ that I don't like to think about them...

...I'm afraid I've had a pretty good doctoral education recently, in terms of how far down this road we've gone...

...We can't let the Government say, "All right, we'll stop watching Congressmen but we'll continue to watch the citizens...

...Another, equally disturbing, is the kind of legislation we have recently enacted to stop crime by doing away with our liberties—by instituting preventive detention, no-knock searches, stop-and-frisk laws...

...The following interview with Mr...

...I shudder to think what it would mean for the country if it turned out that the civilian controls designed to prevent military domination of the body politic had, themselves, been corrupted to the point where they became mere tools for military domination...

...I wish the last Congress had at least repealed the detention camp section of the McCarran Act...

...Well, I do now...

...Many who had given no thought to the problem in the past have told me they are disturbed about having the military spy on elected officials...

...Now I suspect that the reason they backed away was because the military asked them to—because they didn't want anyone to know how widespread military surveillance is...

...At one point they referred to "infiltrating public meetings" at which Senator Stevenson and I spoke, and I wondered how you "infiltrate" a public meeting...

...Why hasn't Congress addressed it-self to the danger of invasions of privacy...

...Whatever else one may say about the FBI, they've been in this arena for a long time, and have developed some political sense about the difference between the SDS, say, and the ADA...

...But I had never dreamed the military would be involved in this...

...My mail indicates that at least those people who are communicating with me feel strongly that this must be stopped, and that it must be stopped now...

...It was just inconceivable to me that we had gone that far down the road...

...At what level, then, do you suppose the decision might have been made to carry on this kind of activity...

...I can see exactly how they would read it...

...That's Naval intelligence, Senator...

...This may be the last time that people can really express their outrage effectively...

...Some Congressional subcommittees have held hearings...

...If Congress had acted on this, it would have been some sign of hope to those who oppose the police-state mentality and police-state conduct...

...If they are military, they should be cashiered out of the service...

...The second purpose occurred to me when the former agents described some of the activities they had been directed to keep track of, such as my public speeches...

...I think the recent disclosures may have shocked many who have previously been complacent...

...Now we seem to be as fearful of our enemies at home, and depending on whom you talk to, those enemies can include people under thirty, people with foreign names, people of different races, people in the big cities...

...The Senate passed the repeal bill, but the House, after some foot-dragging by the Internal Security Committee, conveniently couldn't get the bill out until it was too late to act...

...I find it conceivable that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not aware of what was going on so far as it concerned spying on civilians, and that the only people who received detailed reports on individuals were in military intelligence...

...There are many ways in which we give up our privacy, and rightfully so...

...I've sponsored bills in the last session of Congress which would have limited the use to which such information can be put...

...Psst...

...A Nation in Fear An Interview on Military Spying with Abner J. Mikva Representative Abner J. Mikva, Illinois Democrat, has figured prominently in recent disclosures by former military intelligence agents that they had maintained surveillance over civilian individuals and organizations...

...You refer to these conjectures as Seven Days in May-ish, and yet you apparently entertain them seriously...

...They have just to bombard the President, and Defense Secretary Laird, and their Congressmen, and their Senators, with letters and telegrams to let them know that they do not appreciate this kind of military takeover of our Government...

...We have become a suspicious nation, as afraid of being destroyed from within as from without...

...One purpose would be served if there were ever some kind of a military putsch in this country...

...But the military, with the myopic vision of political affairs that they develop at the Academy and the straitjacketed approach they maintain throughout their service careers—I can understand why they might think Bill Buckley is to the left of center, and why they would follow W. Clement Stone and Adlai Stevenson, and why they would consider them both equal enemies...

...Suppose one of them were elected President...

...The Editors Did the reports that you were kept under surveillance by military intelligence agents come as a complete surprise to you, or had you suspected that this might be going on...

...Mikva was conducted by The Progressive's Washington editor, Erwin Knoll...

...I used to think this happened because the members felt that domestic surveillance by the military was of a very limited nature, and that a public airing might result in breaches of security...

...Would you regard that as an overstatement...

...is your Daddy an open minded, intellectually concerned, issue oriented, morally questioning, youth loving, politically involved, socially conscious, antiwar citizen...

...would the military continue to think of their Commander in Chief as one of the most dangerous men in the country...

...It was very fuzzy, and of course it was very quick...

...We really must use this as a basis for weeding out of Government those people who so clearly are unsuited for Government service...

...Army intelligence is up there/' A Senate subcommittee has scheduled hearings in February on the question of military surveillance of civil-ians, and there is a move under way to launch an investigation in the House...

...We have become a fearful people...

...I hope this new session of Congress, spurred by the impetus of these military surveillance disclosures, will pass some legislation along those lines...

...For example, they have referred to Senator Eugene McCarthy and Senator George McGovern as two of the most dangerous men in the Congress...

...Unfortunately, when one looks over the record of this last Congress, we refused to do those things that could have eased the pressure toward a police state, and we passed some measures which move a long way in that direction...

...I don't think it's an overstatement...

...Perhaps we aren't quite as dead as a people as our obituary writers are suggesting...

...For some months I had my own private, informal poll going, asking Congressmen whether they thought their telephones were secure, and I was dismayed to find that almost none of them—and certainly none of the activist Congressmen—thought they could conduct a private conversation over the telephone...

...We have to satisfy the country that this spying has not only been stopped, but that everyone connected with it has been swept out of Government...

...It caught me by surprise...

...No one put a gun to our heads and forced us to run for public office...

...At least we haven't gone quite as far down the road toward a military state as we once did toward McCar-thyism...