COINTELPRO Comes to My Town: My First-Hand Experience With Government Spies
COINTELPRO Comes to My Town: My First-Hand Experience With Government Spies
Dave Zirin
Sports correspondent for the Nation Magazine
Posted: July 20, 2008 07:01 PM
Finally, at long last, I have something in common with Muhammad Ali.
No, I’m not the heavyweight champion of the world, and haven’t been named spokesperson for Raid bug spray. Like “the Greatest” – not to mention far too many others — I have been a target of state police surveillance for activities — in my case against the death penalty — that were legal, non-violent, and, so we assumed, constitutionally protected. In classified reports compiled by the Maryland State Police and the Department of Homeland Security, I am “Dave Z.” This nickname was given by an undercover agent known to us as “Lucy.” She sat in our meetings of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, smiling and engaged, taking copious notes about actions deemed threatening by the Governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich. Our seditious crimes, as Lucy reported, involved such acts as planning to set up a table at the local farmer’s market and writing up a petition. Adding a dash of farce to this outrage, she was monitoring us in the liberal enclave of Takoma Park, Maryland, a place known more for vegans than violence, more for tie-dying than terrorism.
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[quote]
?As his son, Paul Robeson Jr. has written, “From the files I received, it was obvious that there were agents who did nothing but follow every public event of my father, or even of me…. It took on a life of its own…. Over time, even for someone as powerful and with as many resources as my
dad had…the attrition got to him.”
[/quote]
Even back then, people who did nothing but follow his and his son’s every public move. The son was not the one under investigation.
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