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| Gossip? President Richard Nixon and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover |
Freedom to Tweet
Donald Trump and I have something in common, besides our age. (He’s 72, I’m 73.) What we have in common is this: the FBI has admitted using an informant to secretly observe me and it has just admitted using an informant to secretly approach members of Trump’s campaign.
I used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1978 to see if the FBI had a file on me when I was a student at Kent State University (1969-73) during the time when shooting of students –four fatally --by Ohio National Guardsmen occurred and the call for justice ensued..
But unlike Trump, I have the FBI document in my hot little hand. He doesn’t. Not yet.
It has a spot at the bottom that whites-out the name of the “ confidential source” and calls him/her “K-2” instead, but indicates K-2 has provided “reliable information” in “the past”.
It is dated May 3, 1972, the day after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died and has the title “urgent” on it, since it refers to an event scheduled for the next day, May 4th, the second anniversary of the shootings.
And here is the thing K-2 “reports” to the FBI, the awful and terrible, un-American dangerous thing I had done as organizer of Kent State students seeking a federal grand jury investigation of the shootings -- and I quote:
“Twenty-four hour vigil which was scheduled for the White House and the United States Department of Justice this May 4th next (tomorrow) has been cancelled.”
Now get this next sentence please. It show what a menace I was, how I deserved to have a “reliable source” following me around at Kent State and reporting on me.
“Cancellation has been made out of respect for the recent death of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.”
Are you kidding me? A bona-fide dangerous radical student activist in the 1970’s would never respect J. Edgar Hoover and honor the fact that he had died two days before the student demonstration to occur at the White House, and cancel the event ! Hoover had ordered tape-recordings of Martin Luther King’s bedroom behavior when away from his wife.
But I honored Hoover’s death. I cancelled a student protest at the White House and Justice Department which would have seemed rude so recently after a death.
I was one student activist who certainly needed a reliable “source” following him.
Why in heavens name was the FBI reporting on me with it’s “reliable source “K-2”? I’ve always wondered if K-2 was a beautiful girl I had taken a fancy to or one of my own professors in grad school? I was a counselor in the Kent State dorms for 3 years so maybe it was a fellow counselor.
It gives me the creeps. And I’ll bet it gives Donald Trump the creeps too.
You can read the whole document below.
I am not a big-shot like President Trump so I can’t “demand” an investigation of the “reliable source” . But here’s what I did instead. I made fun of the spying. I held a “Freedom of Information Act Party” and sent all guests a copy of my FBI file.
I saved the Freedom of Invitation Act party invitation, and I offer it here to Donald Trump as an example of how he can make fun of his own “K-2”
Maybe his FBI source has a longer alias.
May I respectfully suggest an alias to FBI Director Christopher Wray?
How about “Tweet-2” ?
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| In 1978 while at Yale Divinity School I used the Freedom of Information Act Privacy Amendments of 1974, to obtain my FBI file from my students days (1969-74) at Kent State, and in defiance of the FBI's invasion of my privacy, promptly held a "Freedom of Information Act Party" sending out an invitation and copy of my file to guests at Yale and in New Haven. ( to enlarge, click on documents above) |
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT
The FOIA has been changed repeatedly by both the legislative and executive branches.
[edit]The Privacy Act Amendments of 1974
Following the Watergate scandal, President Gerald R. Ford wanted to sign Freedom of Information Act-strengthening amendments in thePrivacy Act of 1974, but concern (by his chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld and deputy Richard Cheney) about leaks and legal arguments that the bill was unconstitutional (by government lawyer Antonin Scalia, among others) persuaded Ford to veto the bill, according to documents declassified in 2004.[7] However, Congress voted to override Ford's veto, giving the United States the core Freedom of Information Act still in effect today, with judicial review of executive secrecy claims.[8][9]
These amendments to the FOIA regulate government control of documents which concern a citizen. It gives one “(1) the right to see records about [one]self, subject to the Privacy Act's exemptions, (2) the right to amend that record if it is inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely, or incomplete, and (3) the right to sue the government for violations of the statute including permitting others to see [one’s] records unless specifically permitted by the Act.”[10] In conjunction with the FOIA, the PA is used to further the rights of an individual gaining access to information held by the government. The Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy and federal district courts are the two channels of appeal available to seekers of information.[11]
