"Appeal to supporters of the Bill of Rights" AT THE END of August this year, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) - organizations in solidarity with the Fourth International - were awarded 264,000 US dollars in damages after 18 years of harassment by the FBI. (1)
The following statement on the ramifications of this victory was published in the SWP's newspaper, The Militant, on September 12, 1986. SWP POLITICAL COMMITTEE STATEMENT and the YSA with important legal protection. It pushes back the political police. It puts us in a stronger position to pursue the fight for socialism and democracy.
But this decision is also a direct gain for every labor union, every opponent of Washington's dirty contra war against Nicaragua, every organization fighting for women's rights, and everyone seeking to halt racist discrimination and cop violence against Black people.
"The impact of this decision goes far beyond the SWP and YSA," Leonard Boudin, a leading constitutional rights attorney who is the lawyer for the SWP and YSA, told the press the day the decision was released. "This ruling is a contribution to constitutional law, extending important new protections to the rights of all politically active individuals and organizations," Boudin said.
Judge Griesa notes in his decision
The federal court decision in the case brought against the FBI by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance puts a valuable weapon in the hands of every working-class organization in this country. It is a new weapon, one that can - and should - be widely used to win broader freedoms to engage in political activity.
For the first time, a federal court has declared it illegal for the FBI to use under-cover informers against political activists. In reaching this conclusion, Judge Thomas Griesa has expanded the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. This right was conquered by the battles of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and formed part of the basis for the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
As Griesa emphasizes, without the right of privacy, there can be no genuine freedom of association for those whose views and activities are opposed by the government. 22
Griesa's opinion also marks the first time a federal judge has ruled that burglaries carried out by the FBI to steal or copy private papers or to plant microphones are violations of the Fourth Amendment, which was written to protect the people against illegal searches by the government. The judge, on the same grounds, ruled that the government has no right to tap phones in the name of "national security." And, for the first time, a federal court has ruled that a surreptitious campaign of disruption operations, whether called Cointelpro or any other name the goverment might conjure up, is against the law. The sweeping character of the ruling makes it unambiguous that this applies not only to the FBI, but to similar actions taken against any organization by any government cop agency - the immigration cops, the CIA, the armed forces' secret cops, or any other.
The government's political police have carried out these covert activities against the SWP and the YA and against countless other groups and individuals. Now, all of these practices are illegal. And such activity by the FBI or by any other cops - against the SWP or YSA in the future will be in violation of the court ruling. Attorneys for the SWP and the YSA will immediately bring evidence of any such acts to the judge's attention.
And it is not only the SWP and YSA that benefit. To the contrary, every labor union, farmers' organization, or social protest group facing government harassment will now be on strong ground to seek exactly the same relief.
The court ruling provides the SWP that the SWP makes no secret of its views. We clearly explain our internationalist and communist objectives and our goal of leading the working people of this country to overthrow the capitalist government and replace it with a government of the workers and farmers, as the Bolsheviks did in Russia in October 1917. But Griesa rejects the FBI's argument that this fact can be used to justify the FBI's action in violation of the Bill of Rights. In its September 6 issue, the Nation magazine editorially hails Griesa's opinion, accurately summarizing his condemnation of decades of FBI operations against the SWP and YSA: "All in all, it amounted to a domestic contra operation against a lawful and peaceful political organization," he said, "for no reason other than ideological orientation." A domestic contra operation is exactly what it has been. Washington insists on keeping its contra war against Nicaragua classified as a covert operation so that as much as possible of the truth about it can be hidden from public view, and so that the operation can be conducted without regard for restrictions imposed on the government by laws and the Constitution. Exactly the same is true of the FBI's domestic contra war. Even when its existence is known, it seeks to continue to operate in secrecy, run by officials and cop agencies operating above the law. It is this covert side of the political police operation - the truly totalitarian kernel of the state's functioning - that has been dealt a blow by Griesa's ruling.
See International Viewpoint' No. 104, September 15, 1986, page 25.
International Viewpoint 29 September 1986
BRITAIN
By forcing to light important aspects of these underground and illegal police operations, the lawsuit filed 13 years ago by the SWP and YSA has gained ground for the entire working-class movement and for every defender of democratic rights. Hundreds of thousands of pages of secret government files were brought to light, expanding the knowledge of the people of the United States about the nature, methods, and scope of the government's secret police operations.
This suit against the government has already won active support from thousands of individuals and scores of organizations around the country. All those who have been supporters of this fight, and the many more who will now join us, have three opportunities.
First, to use the truths this case has uncovered to educate about