I am a retired Army intelligence type. In the 1960s I participated as a Countintelligence Officer in two programs designed to allow the Army, and the Navy and Air Force to surveill the American public, in coordination with the FBI and CIA, as well as other Federal, State and local agencies. This went on from about 1964 to some time in the 1970s. A major portion of our surveillances included the black community, which was under desgination by [J. Edgar] Hoover as communist, officially. The Justice Department Official who signed the request to Department of Defense to help the FBI: Ramsey Clark! We were looking at anyone who opposed the Vietnam War, and most anything else that could be wrapped under that bag.

The programs were: COINTELPRO and Garden Plot. They were designed for two reasons: (1) get extra counterintelligence and spying resources on the ground to complement the FBI and do routine CIA work investigating people under the pretext of pre-clearance screening and investigation; (2) Hoover did not want to let his sweethearts get their fingers dirty in Counterintelligence work, which he deeply hated, just as he ignored the mob and drugs. And, yes, the services intelligence operations did black bag jobs, as far back as the 1950s in the name of chasing Commies.

Garden Plot was fundamentally the Government would install a military government, imposed on state and local public saftey resources, with of course the addition of very active counterintelligence presence from the services -- martial law. The Pentagon opened a complete warroom to which field agents routinely reported by telephone. Resources from various agencies tapped phones and listened to radios of people they thought suspicious, just suspicious. In 1965 at the CI school at Fort Holabird, I was warned that reading the New York Times, as I did occasionally; would bring me under suspicion for character and loyalty defects.

COINTELPRO was a program run out of the Justice Department, far as I can tell, designed to do "black bag" and "black propaganda" jobs, like the one did on Martin Luther King. Again, it used Army and other services resources.

There is much more to tell. This was the reason the Church Committee in the 1970s restricted the activities and authorities of the major intel agencies and services -- which was a real service to the country -- much wailed about by all those to who like the "black stuff" and considered the violation of the civil liberties of anyone just another days work.

So, this is not a fairy tale. The goblin is back garbed in khaki and just as determined as ever to practice on you and I as they are soon to run out of countries to invade and torture, even it if is because we can no longer afford our military abroad.

So, what will you do when they snoop and poke into your lives; set you up with local Gestapos; and simply harass you endlessly - to the loss of your job, reputation, etc.?

And, just as now, everyone will (1) not believe and (2) be too scared to raise the questions. What will you do? Which side are you on?