Pelosi's calls for the FBI to investigate ceasefire protesters echo Cold War aspersions
Sunday morning, Nancy Pelosi called on the FBI to investigate ceasefire protesters for financial ties to Russia. We've seen the hunt for foreign influence among domestic dissenters play out before.
On January 28, 2024, Nancy Pelosi called on the FBI to investigate protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza for connections to Russia, saying “For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message…I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.” Pelosi invoked these evidence-free aspersions to openly call on the FBI to investigate supposed Russian funding of domestic supporters of a ceasefire.
In making this claim, Pelosi offered no evidence beyond purported similarities in views in support of a ceasefire between the protesters and Putin. Support for a ceasefire is a view held by a majority of Americans, a plethora of UN experts, major humanitarian and human rights organizations, and 153 member states of the United Nations General Assembly. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently voted to adopt a resolution in support of a ceasefire. Support for a ceasefire is far from a niche view, much less one distinctly associated with the positions of the Russian government.
When J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of the FBI, the FBI tracked what it dubbed the “Communist Line,” the position of the Communist Party on every issue imaginable. The FBI would compare the views of individuals targeted by the FBI to these volumes documenting what the Communists thought about women’s rights or foreign policy. By showing someone had the same views as the Communist Party on the poll tax or constitutionality of warrantless wiretaps, the FBI believed it had proven that person adopted the Communist line. This not only made their political speech illegitimate, it opened them up to pernicious surveillance and even attempts to destroy them. The similarity between what Hoover’s FBI did during one of the darkest chapters for civil liberties. The type of FBI investigation Pelosi has called for echoes Cold War-era McCarthyism.
Martin Luther King Jr. was also accused of being influenced by Communists, so Hoover was able to obtain a wiretap order from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. In addition to investigating King’s First Amendment-protected political associations, the stated purpose of the wiretap, Hoover sought derogatory information about King’s personal life. Hoover hoped to use this information to destroy King’s reputation and his ability to advocate for civil rights. King is not the only civil rights leader or activist targeted under the FBI’s “Communist Infiltration” program. In all of these cases the logic used to facilitate the abusive surveillance closely parallels Pelosi’s calls to investigate supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza.
In the 1960s, the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations became convinced that protest movements against the Vietnam War and racism in the United States were the work of foreign influence. In 1967, the Johnson Administration Department of the Army, Department of Justice, and FBI explored the relationship of “civil disturbance” to foreign influence. In order to ferret out supposed foreign influence behind the peace and Black power movements, domestic agencies--mainly the FBI--instructed the National Security Agency to spy on Americans. As part of this program, known as Operation MINARET, the NSA created a watchlist of 1,200 Americans, including Dr. King.
That same year, the CIA was also tasked with finding a link between protests against the Vietnam War and supposed foreign influence. At the prompting of the White House, they set up CHAOS, which resulted in the illegal surveillance of US citizens. This program never found a connection between Americans' opposition to the Vietnam War and any foreign power. Nonetheless, it was continued and expanded by politicians desperate to clamp down on domestic dissent.
Both MINARET and CHAOS, along with the FBI’s domestic surveillance regime, were widely condemned upon their revelation. Today they are remembered as shameful attacks on the US citizenry’s rights out of line with the principles of democracy. No foreign influence was ever found, but attacks on the basic rights of our citizens were carried out by our own government.
The First Amendment protects Americans who both support and oppose a ceasefire. However, it is worth noting that Americans hardly need Putin’s funding to adopt this view. In fact, it is one of the least logical explanations for what drives it.
The death toll in Gaza has currently topped 26,422. According to Oxfam, the daily death rate in Gaza exceeds that of any other major conflict in the 21st century. This includes over 10,000 children, an unprecedented number. Journalists, hospitals, and aid workers also appear to have been intentionally targeted by Israel. Palestinians in Gaza have been told to evacuate, only to be bombed or shelled by Israel during the evacuation or in supposed safe zones. In addition to the confirmed dead, people remain buried under the rubble, likely dead. Individuals have been horribly maimed and injured, including children who are undergoing amputations without anesthetics. Medical workers in Gaza have had to coin the acronym WCNSF--wounded child, no surviving family. Israel has been credibly accused of grave violations of international humanitarian law (i.e. war crimes) and the International Court of Justice recently found it plausible that Israel’s actions in Gaza have violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
As a civil liberties organization that has long documented the abusive surveillance of the FBI and other government agencies, as well as been the victims of it ourselves, we know all too well that calls for an investigation - and the surveillance of activists that investigation entails - are not to be treated as stray remarks. The demonization of American supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza coupled with explicit calls to abridge their civil liberties through pernicious government surveillance is reminiscent of some of the worst abuses of civil liberties in US history. Instead of repeating the logic that was used to surveil the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements in order to incite surveillance against supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza, Pelosi should call for us as a nation to learn from the past and respect the right to dissent.
Pelosi owes it to her constituents, our country, and the Constitution to retract these dangerous statements.