Beware the FBI’s patriotism inspectors

FBI investigates on people saying their opinion – interesting article by Nat Hentoff from the Washington Times

source at http://www.washtimes.com

I started reading the Christian Science Monitor (founded in 1908) as a youngster in Boston, and haven’t stopped because it’s often illuminating. As in a Jan. 8 story by a reporter in its Houston bureau, Kris Axtman, about how some Americans are learning to be careful about what they say or hang on their walls.

“Political dissent can bring federal agents to [your] door,” she said, regarding a visit by FBI agents and the Secret Service to Houston’s Art Car Museum. The agents were investigating a tip that “anti-American activity” was going on there. They found, Ms. Axtman reported, “an exhibit on past U.S. covert operations and government secrets.”

The museum’s docent, Donna Huanca, asked her visitors, after they showed their badges and said why they had come, “What’s anti-American about free speech?”

Barry Reingold, a 60-year-old retired phone company worker from San Francisco, had reason to ask himself the same question when two FBI agents announced themselves on the intercom at his residence. They told Mr. Reingold that a fellow weightlifter at his gym had called the FBI to report that he is a disloyal American. This, as Mr. Reingold told the Christian Science Monitor, is what led to the FBI’s visit:

At the gym, “discussion had turned to bin Laden and what a horrible murderer he was. I said, ‘Yeah, he’s horrible and did a horrible thing, but Bush has nothing to be proud of. He is a servant of the big oil companies, and his only interest in the Middle East is oil.’”

read full article at: http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020121-97468678.htm