Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

December 7, 2017

The Presidents' Spies -- Trump plan for private spies is same old COINTELPRO and Operation Chaos


Russell Means

The Presidents' Spies -- Trump plan for private spies is same old COINTELPRO and Operation Chaos

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

The Trump administration's plan to hire private spies to stalk enemies is not new. COINTELPRO and Operation Chaos, during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, carried out the same Presidential stalking.

Russell Means, Lakota, the American Indian Movement, and other Native Americans were stalked during Operation Chaos, which is exposed less often than COINTELPRO.

Buffy Sainte Marie was among those targeted by U.S. presidents. Buffy said she found out that President Johnson was responsible for putting her out of the music business in the United States.

The article that I wrote was censored for seven years by Indian Country Today, where I was a staff writer. When it was finally published, before I was terminated, the portion about uranium mining on Pine Ridge was censored by Indian Country Today.

Buffy said even shipments of her records were disappearing. She discovered that she was targeted because of her anti-war stance, and song Universal Soldier.

"I found out ten years later, in the 1980s, that Lyndon Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationary praising radio stations for suppressing my music," Buffy said at Dine' College on the Navajo Nation in 1999. http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id99.html

Now, the Intercept reports: THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. https://theintercept.com/2017/12/04/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies/

Censored News previously exposed Operation Chaos, targeting Russell Means, Lakota, the American Indian Movement, and other Native Americans who traveled abroad.

Operation Chaos targeted American Indian Movement

Attorney William Kunstler with Russell Means
Photo by Maddy Miller
Operation Chaos targeted American Indian Movement

Russell Means said Indian Nations are "living in the belly of the monster, and the monster is the United States."

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News
English and Dutch
Dutch translation by Alice Holemans, NAIS at:
http://www.denaisgazet.be/nieuws/operatie-chaos-richtte-zijn-pijlen-op-de-american-indian-movement

In 1967 President Johnson created Operation Chaos to spy on the American Indian Movement, Black Panthers, student movements and anti-war movements.
The CIA operation gathered documents on 7,200 US citizens, tracking their contacts with so-called 'dissidents' in other countries.
Although a great deal has been exposed about COINTELPRO, very little has been written about Operation Chaos.
There is only one mention of Operation Chaos spying on the American Indian Movement in Wikileaks, and the document is not available online. 
However, other documents on the Internet reveal the purpose of Operation Chaos, a highly classified, secret intelligence project of the CIA. 
Agents targeted US activists interaction with people in other countries, stating they were suspicious that the unrest at home was coming from abroad. However, in the end, agents discovered there was plenty of unrest originating within the US, including the movement against the Vietnam War.
The agents were segregated from other CIA agents and the first targets were the Peace Movements and African American movements. Then, the American Indian Movement and occupiers of Wounded Knee were targeted. 
The report below reveals how the CIA exceeded its authority with domestic spying of Operation Chaos in the 60s and 70s.
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/rockcomm/pdf/RockComm_Chap11_CHAOS.pdf
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Operation Chaos document with history: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/rockcomm/pdf/RockComm_Chap11_CHAOS.pdf 


AIM focus of US government spying prior to Wounded Knee

American Indians involved in the anti-war movement were targeted by spying during the 1960s and 1970s. The US carried out domestic operations, as revealed when the US targeted Buffy Sainte Marie. There were also foreign operations, which focused on AIM and travel to Europe.

During an interview at Dine' College, Buffy Sainte Marie said President Johnson put her out of the music business because of her stance against the Vietnam war and song, 'Universal Soldier. 'http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id99.html

The US cables reveal that the State Department was focused on spying on Russell Means.
The US State Department took notice and sent out a cable when Russell Means, Lakota, said a delegation to Eastern Europe planned to "ram the human rights issue down President Carter's throat." https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1977STATE226024_c.html
Means promised to expose the genocide of American Indians in Europe and seek support for the ongoing "foreign occupation" in the US. The US was also concerned that the delegation to Europe in 1977 would use "Iroquois passports," according to the US spy cable.
One document in Wikileaks shows that after Wounded Knee, the American Indian Movement was planning an Indian Treaty Convention near Mobridge, South Dakota, in 1974. The US was concerned that Bolivia and Mexico would attend. "The USG (United States government) would regard official participation in this event by any foreign government as inappropriate." The US continued to try and find out who was coming. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974STATE101850_b.html
The US State Department was monitoring Russell Means, as shown below.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1977STATE237305_c.html
The American Indian Movement's relationship with Libya also created alarm and accusations in the US State Department, as revealed in the cables.
Earlier, in 1973, the Six Nations Iroquois Confederation engaged the UN and responded to the request from Wounded Knee to serve as peace mediators during the Wounded Knee occupation. 
These words ring true today as the mainstream media presents a biased version of the real story in Palestine.
In January of 1974, the US State Department became alarmed when Soviet journalists were planning to travel to Minneapolis. The US tracked them to see if they were there to cover the trial of those who occupied Wounded Knee. Once again, the US feared the American Indian Movement's ability to gain global support and contacts. The US also tracked unfavorable news coverage on Indian and human rights issues published in other countries. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974STATE012511_b.html
                                                                               
One Wikileaks document is from Geneva in 1977, the statement on Discrimination and Indigenous Rights, which also refers to the sterilization of women without consent. The cables also show that the US tracked comments of Russell Means regarding the sterilization of Indian women in the US without their consent.

Read more about US spying on American Indians and First Nations at: http://indigenousresistancejuly2014.blogspot.com/2014/08/texas-spies-ponder-mohawks-stratfor.html

For permission to repost this article contact brendanorrell@gmail.com
Copyright Brenda Norrell

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