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Jennifer Dohrn: I Was The Target Of Illegal FBI Break-Ins Ordered by Mark Felt aka "Deep Throat"
(Democracy Now!, June 2, 2005)
Mark Felt -- who was exposed this week as Deep Throat -- was one of only two FBI officials ever to be convicted for ordering COINTELPRO operations. In 1980 he was convicted for ordering FBI agents to break into the home of Dohrn and other associates of the Weather Underground. He was later pardoned by President Reagan. Jennifer Dohrn discusses the FBI surveillance, break-ins and a secret FBI proposal to kidnap her infant. Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez also reveals that as a leader of the Young Lords that he, too, was also a target of a similar FBI campaign. . . . On Tuesday the family of Mark Felt publicly said they hoped history would view him as hero for being Deep Throat. . . . But not everyone is praising Felt. . . . While Felt's name will forever now be linked to helping expose the Watergate scandal, he is also connected to another dark moment in U.S. history -- the FBI's counter intelligence program known as COINTELPRO. . . . Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI carried out an extensive campaign of surveillance and neutralization of political groups including the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, the Young Lords, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. . . . In 1980, Mark Felt -- along with Edward Miller -- became the highest ranking FBI officials to be convicted of criminal charges since Hoover became head of the agency in 1924. . . . The two officials were convicted by a jury of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens for ordering FBI agents to secretly break into the homes of friends and relatives of the militant anti-war group The Weather Underground. . . . In September 1980, government prosecutors said in court that Felt's actions were a "violation of the rights of all people of this country, violations that cannot and will not be tolerated as long as we have a Bill of Rights." . . . Felt and Miller were later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan who credited them for bringing a "end to the terrorism that was threatening our nation." In 1983 a federal judge ordered that Felt and Millers' criminal record be swept clean. Felt and Miller were the only FBI officials convicted in connection to COINTELPRO.

[NOTE: Click on the link above for the complete transcript of an interview with Jennifer Dohrn.]

posted by Lorenzo 12:22 PM