A new declassified document of NSA reveals that the agency spied communications of Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald and MLK.
During the midst of the protest against the Vietnam War, NSA has been doing some spying activities. Some classified documents of NSA have been declassified as they were revealed this Wednesday show that the NSA officials tapped overseas communications that were going on between some war critics. The names include Muhammad Ali, Senator Frank Church and Martin Luther King Jr. It also includes the name of humor columnist of Washington Post i.e. Art Buchwald.
During the midst of the protest against the Vietnam War, NSA has been doing some spying activities. Some classified documents of NSA have been declassified as they were revealed this Wednesday show that the NSA officials tapped overseas communications that were going on between some war critics. The names include Muhammad Ali, Senator Frank Church and Martin Luther King Jr. It also includes the name of humor columnist of Washington Post i.e. Art Buchwald
According to the documents, Howard Baker, another senator who has been among the war supporter was also included in the list of targets to be subjected to surveillance. The surveillance includes overseas communications via phone calls, cable traffic and telexes. The list, which includes almost 1600 names has remained active in the period of 1967 to 1973.
It’s no hidden fact that the government has been spying on the evident war protestors and the promoters of civil rights from the 1960s and the 1970s. However, this most recent revelation of the secret history of the NSA which has been released by the National Security Archive has opened new chapters of NSA tapping the communications of Americans. Well it has been actually going on for quite some time.
It’s no hidden fact that the government has been spying on the evident war protestors and the promoters of civil rights from the 1960s and the 1970s. However, this most recent revelation of the secret history of the NSA which has been released by the National Security Archive has opened new chapters of NSA tapping the communications of Americans. Well it has been actually going on for quite some time.
The country has been burning in flames in 1967 as written in the notes of the NSA’s internal history. Johnson was taking steps to ascertain whether the domestic protest that was raging against the war was being funded by some external force. The army and the CIA initially showed concerns about the reservations of the president and the FBI drafted a list of names for this purpose. The job of eavesdropping was given to NSA and it dubbed the Minaret of the program in 1969.
The documents which have been revealed this Wednesday has given out 7 names which includes Larry King and his fellow Whitney Young who was a leader of civil rights, Muhammad Ali the boxing champion, legislators Baker and Church, a columnist of New York Times Tom Wicker, and Buchwald.
Matthew M. Aid, who is an analyst historian and deals in studying the NSA intelligence history has said that ”he is clueless about why Artie Buchwald and Tom Wicker were there in the list.”
According to the documents, an NSA lawyer who later went on to review the program said that the people that were involved in the list seemed to have an idea that the program was disreputable.
According to William Burr and Aid, Buchwald at that time wrote some very scathing columns related to the war on Vietnam. One of the columns by Buchwald suggested that it had cost around 332,000 US dollars for killing a single soldier. He argued in the column that it would have been cheaper and effective if the government would have offered Cong defectors, a home worth 25000 dollars, a television and children’s education.
Aid is of the view the column was not enough to give NSA the right of putting Buchwald on the list.
