AP:
[Mary Lou McFate, a] gun-control activist who championed the cause for more than a decade and served on the boards of two anti-violence groups is suspected of working as a paid spy for the National Rifle Association, and now those organizations are expelling her and sweeping their offices for bugs.
Boxes of documents filed in the dispute reveal that McFate worked as a subcontractor for Beckett Brown and that the firm's clients included the NRA. And they show that McFate billed the firm for unspecified intelligence-gathering services, submitting among other things a request for a $4,500-a-month retainer in 1999.
And then again:
"To have somebody that I consider a friend, have been with dozens of times, shared meals with, treated as a friend, to have her be an employee, a subcontracted spy for the NRA, is just mind-boggling. It's so venal," Miller said. "In the battle of ideas with the gun lobby, we're at a constant disadvantage because we're honest."
$4500 a month isn't much. Well, it's a lot, but it isn't much for the kind of people who want to infiltrate moles into progressive organizations. Yes, it makes you think.
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I think there has been a lot of that
explains what happened at NARAL and a great many other things
wake the fuck up, progressive/liberal amurkins
jeebus krist, has everyone forgotten the 60s? what they did to the panthers? other groups? of course there are well paid plants, spooks, fakers, etc., all over the landscape of progressive organizations. if you don't know that is a part of progressive organizing, get the fuck out of the business.
recently, i went to an environmentalist/hippy festival up north. i smoked a lot of grass and listened to some damn fine folk music. but i considered it my job, indeed, my Holy Duty, to eyeball the plants, undercover cops, and fakes that i perceived there. when i was wrong in my suspicions, yeah, i suppose i pissed off some people. but i think it's incredibly important to show them: at least some of us know what, and who, you are. and we're not afraid.
the ironic part is how many of the festival goers (it was my first year at this one) thought *i* was the narc. sigh.
shorter me: the rethugs have raped the treasury blind, and those trillions have been spent on what they love best: fascism. which means more than every once in a while, you're like to run into yes, mary, and honest to goodness jackbooted thug.
...and let me edit this to say i'm not yelling at anyone here, just expressing a little pent up anger with some other progressives i work with, who, still, even now, after 8 years of bushist neofascist surveillance and all the rest, think what i just wrote is "too foily" and not really a concern for them. blockheads.
What was new and different to me...
... is that it wasn't the government that was doing the infiltration, but the NRA. Cointelpro has been privatized. And I like the NARAL analogy, a lot.
Reminds me of Lucianna Goldberg, who did the same thing, back in the day.
And it also brings to mind -- too lazy too link -- some analysis I did on the Republicans infiltrating the press; the budgetary figures thrown around would have permitted 200 paid plants in the press, and yet we only knew of 4. So....
And now that I think of it, it would make total sense that the Conservative
Movement would have a counter-intelligence wing. It's how they think.
And I like the NARAL analogy, a lot. So yes, I think it makes a lot of sense that many liberal organizations have been rotted from within for similar reasons. The means, the motive, the opporunity is there, it would be relatively cheap to do, and the Conservatives have piles of money.
Meanwhile, the Dems seem determined to morph into and unify with the party who infiltrated and corrupted them. It's very strange.
NOTE And if you really want a intra-cranial splatterfest on the sixties, music, and people of rather dubious origins, read this on Laurel Canyon, from Avedon as per fucking usual. How does she do it?
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
6.6 degrees of separation
Give or take, according to Microsoft and they should know.
Is everyone who was in and around the Laurel Canyon scene in the 60's a suspect? How about those who were there and the SF Bay area, as well as back and forth across the Mexican border - for ostensibly recreational purposes - and up to their pony
tail in peace marches and the Free Speech Movement?
Oh, no; I should have been suspicious of me the whole time.
This kind of connect the dots stuff will drive you crazy if you let it. Jackson Browne, secret agent man; Joni Mitchell, the spy from Saskatoon (her dad was in the RCAF). They're everywhere!
Somebody is always watching. Hardly ever is it the government, most of the time just a nosy neighbor or a jealous acquaintance; if you don't want to be caught doing illicit things, there are rules to follow and procedures to respect. Get sloppy, run your mouth, you'll get caught. Keep things neat and tidy, use common sense and don't let someone you don't know well talk you into doing stupid stuff, then the spies don't matter much.
What a waste of NRA money.
Is it possible
PB1.0 had the same "problem"?
After all, what better way to uh,....
Say, maybe this PB2.0 thing is a REALLY GOOD idea, huh?
-----------------------------
Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
It could well be
Let's remember that the screens Larry Johnson and I (among others) got during the purge could only have been put in place with the powers of a system administrator.
Going forward, though, it's not at all clear to me how to prevent this in PB 2.0. Part of the solution is a decentralized network, so there are more places to attack, but what McFate shows is that there are people who will do this for not very much money at all.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Harsh, CD
I came up through the ranks of a statewide progressive organization to become its spokesperson, lobbyist, and project coordinator, on the strength of my volunteer organizing, knowledge of the subject, and willingness to write the grants to pay myself. No question I was naive politically, but that part took time. If I hadn't done it, the work wouldn't have gotten done. Most grassroots work in my field is managed by unpaid volunteers far less politically aware even than I. I well knew I was in a field famous for funding countering Astroturf operations.
Yet Lambert's NRA tale shocked me deeply. Laugh if you will, but I admit I've never heard of such a thing in a nonprofit, and am now racking my memory wondering what mysteries a mole could explain. Although it's far less likely one might operate at a lowly state level, I suppose it's possible. More troublesome is that I should have been aware of the possibility I might have been dealing with one in our national office in Washington.
If folks like me are too naive to be in the business, I'm afraid there wouldn't be enough left to keep the lights on. That may be a risk most organizations just have to accept, vs. doing nothing at all.
Deja Vu
Reading your comment, BoG, I had a sense of deja vu about some past incident, and now I can't remember it. Sigh...
Interesting set of experiences. There seem to be others with your background here, too. I hope the PB 2.0 discussion is useful.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
PB 2.0 is great
I have a special interest in the "consilient," human ecology, "third culture" outreach angle, but it's too amorphous right now. Eventually I'll explore how it might pan out in concrete small steps and work to de-jargon and de-elitist it.
Meanwhile, RL prevented me from participating in the last couple discussions, but I later read most of it. Love what FrenchDoc, et al. are up to.
BoG, i didn't mean to harsh on you or folks here
it's just that a) i'm "of color" and i've seen this up close because we have been targets of this forever and ii) my family has some intelligence background and i've perceived this sort of thing 'from the other side,' as it were.
really, all i'm asking for is a little common sense. trust, but verify. did you see Moore's F911? you'll recall what happened to that peacenik group and the cop who was planted among them, a local, regular cop and nothing so grandiose as a fibbie or Agency person.
remember always that the fascists and jackboots literally get off on torture, surveillance, and other fascists tactics of control and observation. they can't help it, and with the piles of money they've stolen over the last few years, not to mention the 'privitization' and corporate cooperation, it's likely there is no organization left that isn't at least a little bit corrupted by this. the age of Big Brother has long since arrived, it's just prettier and has better music than orwell predicted.
Here's what's new to me
Thanks, CD. No question about government plants in groups suspected of illegal or "UnAmerican" activity. When I'm in hippie mode amidst that "element," my radar is out for sure. But a corporate mole in your average, nicely behaved liberal issues group like gun control? That's a new one for me.
This seems obvious to me
And when I first heard the story of McFate (could the name be any more perfect?) I don't recall batting an eye.
This is always how I've viewed the Oppo Research teams the Repubs have made famous - as a cointel shop. It's a joke amongst liberals, but wingnut welfare clearly exists and if they'll buy a whole catalog of shitty books just to get the author on the NY Best Seller list why wouldn't they be paying for moles in orgs they oppose?
Two things strike me:
1. ISTM this is exactly what the police did with Red Teams during the 60's.
2. I'm reminded of the old joke during the movie Independence Day when one of the characters explains the fancy alien research facility no one knew about, "You didn't think we were really paying $600 for a hammer did you?" IWO - the funding has been right in front of us the whole time and we just never really saw it.
Now, these two examples are Gov't-related and McFate issue is a private case - but I feel the same thing has been happening in the private sector for at least the last 50 years. Sorry, no links, just IMO.
BoG, the popular definition of fascism is my friend
and goes something like "when corporations and the government act in concert, they should be thus taken as One." that's more or less what we've got right now, and more and more i'm inclined to ignore the Kabuki of national gov't and look to those who make the call in backrooms and boardrooms, for they are our true masters. but yeah, it is occasionally surprising to perceive just how far reaching and all pervasive the tactics of the neofascists truly are.
Totally Unsurprised It's Not Restricted to the Government
Whatever you think the Government collects and does with information, it pales in comparison to private industry, which is more focused and often has more money that's easily accessible. The most frightening thing I've learned in the last few weeks is that more than half of our intel budget is done through private contractors (who I'm sure won't maximize their profits by finding ways to do other things with it).
Where did so many of the Bushies come from? Corporations, which haven't needed the last eight years to slowly destroy the controls of the Constitution. They've never had those controls.
But hark, the shining corporate soul?
One of the hardest things I found in both government and nonprofit was the pressure to talk about corporate partners as if the company was a person with character, with a soul, with ethics, with a bottom line that included community welfare. A point that I know Lambert rails about. I did know better, and tried my damndest to avoid the omnipresent jargon and cheerleading that promotes that surreal thinking. My government and nonprofit experiences have been simply SOAKED in that meme; it's excruciating. In government, many of us boycotted this language as much as possible while keeping our jobs.