Hightower Lowdown

Just when you think that John Ashcroft will finally bottom out in terms of the depths he’s willing to go to subvert the Bill of Rights, he manages to plunge even lower.

The latest news is that our autocratic attorney general is out to revive Cointelpro, the notorious FBI domestic-surveillance program that J. Edgar Hoover established during his reign of error. Cointelpro spooks secretly spied on, infiltrated, and tried to undermine such peaceful dissidents as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Students for a Democratic Society, and the anti-war movement.

Cointelpro agents were directed to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” groups that the Powers That Be simply didn’t like. Now, Ashcroft wants to bring this dark force into your church or political-discussion group.

Oh, no, cries Ashcroft, I’m only after bad people, and I merely need to “modify” our civil-liberty protections in order to get these terrible terrorists. But Cointelpro never was restricted to terrorists or violent groups. And American history — from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the vicious McCarthy period — shows how easy it is for ambitious authorities to define even the most benign group or person as an “enemy of the state.