Kelb, Keep The Ethical Light Burning, Inc., keepkelb.wordpress.com, is working to repeal the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA (Title 50, Chapter 36). In our work in advocacy against non-consensual experimentation, it seems that some survivors may be on that list. Activists, human rights workers and civil rights workers may also be on these secret lists. We believe the very act itself, is violative, unconstitutional and denies due process and Fourth Amendment rights. Please sign our petition, join us and support this activity - the repeal of FISA and presentation of the names on the FISA list. 

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA seems a rebirth of the Cointelpro program and the Blacklist.  The elements of each are the same.  One’s placement in any of those programs is based on a subjective interpretation of everyday common events, at some point deemed anti-American or subversive (without a judge or jury). These same activities, originally called Cointelpro, now, have become secret, through Title 50 Chapter 36.

To be placed on the Blacklist (1956), an innocent comment, such as actor Will Geer made, praising the Russian theater, resulted in him being placed on the Blacklist.  This negatively impacted his acting career. Lucille Ball’s grandfather was on a Communist Party roll.  That got her placed on the “List”.  Similarly, in 2018, with FISA enacted, it is possible that one’s conversation with an Afghanistani or Iranian  taxi driver, about life and war, and one’s perceptions, could get one on the FISA list. 

We all have thoughts on the theater, Russian or other, life, and war.  Should voicing them, put U.S. military intelligence in our bedrooms – and put us at the risk of directed energy surveillance devices/ weapons, which DARPA furnishes to military contractors doing the surveillance, as allowed by Title 50, Chapter 36? 1. 

Normally, warrants require “probable cause”, that a crime is being planned or committed.  But FISA warrants do not.  They require only that the FBI show probable cause to believe that “the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.”2.  This was the same prerequisite of the earlier Cointelpro activities.  Will Geer praised the Russian theater, therefore, “he must be a Communist.”  Flawed reasoning, then, had these people placed on a “list”, resulting in their lives and careers, being ruined.

Ramasastry at Findlaw, writes of this non-evidential process leading to surveillance: “Amazingly, even if the defendants move to suppress evidence resulting from the wiretaps and microphones from being offered at trial, they may still not have a chance to see the warrant applicants.  The government will show them only to a “FISA Judge” – along with the underlying evidence, and an affidavit from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office stating that releasing the material would harm national security.

Without the benefit of adversary briefing, the judge will then rule on whether the warrants satisfied the law.  Defendants will still remain in the dark – and when the motion is decided, they’ll receive yet another ruling based on secret evidence.” 3.  IBID

All of the elements of Cointelpro, are present in FISA, only they have become secret.  Placement on the FISA list takes the place of individual warrants and these people are accused of no crime.  Those acts which infringe  rights for a criminal thief, or drug dealer, in the FISA situation, can occur, to unknowing uncharged citizens.  – this infringement/denial of rights, under FISA, includes due process and Fourth Amendment rights. 

We seek repeal of FISA.  It violates due process and the Fourth Amendment. It is a re-engagement of Cointelpro activities deemed illegal, by directive and case law. We seek full disclosure and transparency of the names on the list. Cointelpro –type acts are now encoded and secret under FISA.  For these compelling reasons, we seek its repeal.  

These definitions of terroristic acts and persons include much conditional language; such as “are about to involve”, “activities that are in preparation for”, “when circumstances indicate that a person may engage in such activities”.  There is much conditional language in these definitions.

It would seem that a person “may” be “about” to engage in some questionable activity, or possibly he/she is following his religion, a set of beliefs, practices, different from the U.S. norm, yet not necessarily, with an intentional criminal outcome.  These acts might be interpreted in many ways.  Yet nothing in this code, FISA, allows for differing interpretation of agent reports, which might indicate innocence of the “charges”. 

There is no “layer” of definition, of “reasoning”, including known and accepted legal reasoning, in this code.  If it appears one “may” engage in a questionable act, that seems to be enough to have him “convicted” in this secret court, setting him up for years of warrantless, surreptitious surveillance – for an act or acts may be harmless, innocent. Legally, this is an unusual and legally questionable method of determining criminality. 

Displaying a tattoo that says, “kill”, does not mean that the wearer is a killer.  It seems it would be easy to lose this distinction with some of these conditional FISA definitions. 

The Hollywood blacklist, was the practice of denying employment to screenwriters and other American entertainment professionals during the mid-twentieth Century, because they were accused of having communist ties or sympathies.  The blacklist was rarely made explicit or verifiable, but it directly damaged the careers of scores of individuals working in the film industry.

Mississippi congressman John E. Rankin, a member of HUAC, held a press conference to declare that “one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood … and the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States”.  Rankin promised, “We’re on the trail of the tarantula now. 8.  Lucille Ball, Eddie Albert, Pete Seeger, Lee Grant, Orson Wells and many others, were similarly blacklisted.

To be on the blacklist was both invasive and harmful.  People were fired, unable to get rehired and prevented from working in their fields. Marriages were broken up and families destroyed.  Miller was married twice.   Singer Pete Seeger moved to Beacon, NY, built his house by hand and scheduled his own performances, singing children’s songs to get scheduled, as the blacklist placement began to impact him and his singing career. 

When the U.S. Army was under investigation for communist activities, the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, asked Senator  McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”  A week later, the hearings into the Army’s “communist infiltrations” came to a close.  McCarthy was officially condemned by the U.S. Senate for contempt against his colleagues .  The list was closed out in 1960.

Later the Church Senate Subcomittee  would find the companion, FBI’s subversive programs Cointelpro illegal.

Some of  the Blacklisted artists and others, openly discussed topics characterized, then, as “Socialist “ and “Communist”. They spoke of inexpensive medical help for the poor, help for economically disadvantaged women with children, inexpensive housing and methods of surviving in a competitive, “middle class society”.  Discussions such as these, in those years, could well be, and often was, considered, subversive.

In later years, these topics would be openly discussed.  FDR instituted a welfare system for dependent persons in 1930.  In the 1960’s,  Lyndon B. Johnson began the “Great Society” to raise the standards of living for poor people. These became American law.  Certain socialist concepts became the very fabric of American law.  Ironically, support of these principles, the cause of the intentional destruction of these American men and women’s lives, became written into American law.

As the Blacklist and House Committee on UnAmerican Activities was created and used, Cointelpro developed, along with it, for the same reasons and purposes.  Hoover interpreted 50 USCA Section 841, the Communist Control Act, to validate these activities. 

Between 1956 and 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a campaign of domestic counterintelligence. The agency's Domestic Intelligence Division did more than simply spy on U.S. citizens and their organizations; its ultimate goal was to disrupt, discredit, and destroy certain political groups. The division's operations were formally known within the bureau as COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program). The brainchild of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the first Cointelpro campaign targeted the U.S. Communist party in the mid-1950s. More organizations came under attack in the 1960s. FBI agents worked to subvert civil rights groups, radical organizations, and white supremacists. Cointelpro existed primarily because of Director Hoover's extreme politics and ended only when he feared its exposure by his critics. A public uproar followed revelations in the news media in the early 1970s, and congressional hearings criticized Cointelpro campaigns in 1976. 9.

In 1956 Hoover interpreted a recent federal law—the Communist Control Act of 1954 (50 U.S.C.A. § 841)—as legal justification for the Blacklist and acts of Cointelpro.

Cases, concerning really strong violations of due process, our constitution and felony law, began to arise after Cointelpro was used to apparently harm and discredit Americans, who were causing no actual harm.

In cases, Handschu, The Socialist Party, and others, Cointelpro acts are found to be illegal.  The Socialist Party was heavily harassed including, as per their case, “disruption, surreptitious entries, use of informants and electronic surveillance…” These seemed the acts the FBI and other intelligence agencies were involved in.

The Handshu agreement, (agreement made, 1971) or decree, was the result of a class-action lawsuit filed against the City of New York, its Police Commissioner and the Intelligence Division of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on behalf of Barbara Handschu and fifteen other plaintiffs affiliated with various political or ideological associations and organizations, known as Handschu v. Special Services Division, 605 F.Supp. 1384, affirmed 787 F.2d 828.[3] The plaintiffs claimed that “informers and infiltrators provoked, solicited and induced members of lawful political and social groups to engage in unlawful activities”; that files were maintained with respect to “persons, places, and activities entirely unrelated to legitimate law enforcement purposes, such as those attending meetings of lawful organizations”; and that information from these files was made available to academic institutions, prospective employers, licensing agencies and others. In addition, plaintiffs protested seven types of police misconduct: (1) the use of informers; (2) infiltration; (3) interrogation; (4) overt surveillance; (5) summary punishment; (6) intelligence gathering; and (7) electronic surveillance, and alleged that these police practices which punished and repressed lawful dissent had had a “chilling effect” upon the exercise of freedom of speech, assembly and association, that they violated constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures, and that they abridged rights of privacy and due process.12.

In this case and similar cases, suh as Bivens and Social Worker's Party, the acts and intentions of the Cointelpro program of the U.S. intelligence agencies, were found to be legally violative and illegal under American law.  

Later, similarly in the FISA, the loss of due process and ability to answer charges the legal reasoning or any reasoning step attempted in the name of fairness or due process, is similarly eliminated. This violates the very basic tenants of our court system – the ability of the accused to face his accuser.

One noteworthy victim of Cointelpro activities was the actress Jean Seberg and her subsequent suicide.  13.   Because of her support for the Black Panther Party, actress Jean Seberg was targeted for 'neutralization' by the FBI's COINTELPRO effort. SAC Richard W. Held, the author of the request, went on to become SAC San Francisco at the time of the bombing of Earth First activist Judi Bari. He subsequently retired from the Bureau to become Head of Security for Visa International. 19.

Congress has adapted and upgraded a Blacklist, based on inquisitional precepts, precluding guilt.  FISA,(code, definitions, included)  a secret court,  now includes electronic and mass surveillance methods of targeted harassment.

The Red Scare has morphed into the “Terrorist Scare”.  Prohibited behavior, openly coded nowhere, includes everyday occurences and innocent friendships.  The FBI man, hidden by sunglasses and his newspaper, has been replaced by a secret  FISA court order, (with Fourth Amendment rights unheeded) enacted with unseen highly invasive, minimized, electronic devices.

We assert that FISA is an extension of Cointelpro, an attempt to codify and secret the illegal actions and intentions of Cointelpro.  Any secret legal proceeding, be is state or federal seems clearly violative of American Constitutional intentions.  We came here to overcome the kangaroo courts, the workhouses of a repressive and corrupt England.  A secret  FISA court, making judgements in secret, on unknowing citizens seems in league with the kangaroo courts in England.  For these pressing reasons, we seek repeal of this “secret” American court, along with a restoration of constitutional rights, to those aggrieved by these violative practices of FISA. 

In the United States v. Battle case (a FISA case), Battle alleged he was followed, surveilled and electronic bugs were placed in his living spaces.  

In their argument, the defendants contended that the government should reveal the justification that support the issuance – by the clandestine Foreign Intelligence Surveillance ACT (FISA) Court – of the secret warrants that enabled the FBI to surveil them.24.

Specifically, the defendants seek to review the warrant applications the FBI submitted to the FISA Court on the basis of which the warrants were granted.  Pursuant to the warrants, the FBI secretly wiretapped the suspects’  phones and planted microphones in their homes.  As a result of its surveillance, the FBI ended by intercepting more than 271 conversations. 

Without knowing the basis for the warrants, the defendants contend, they cannot know if their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures were abridged.  The judge ruled, however, that the basis for the warrants will remain secret.  25.

This is a very troubling development.  Unless the ruling is reversed on appeal, it will mean that a U.S. citizen can now be convicted of a crime, without ever knowing the reasons why the government was given permission to spy on them in the first place. 17. These same allegations of wrongdoing are also complained of in the Handschu, Social Worker’s Party and other Cointelpro cases.  The wrongdoing defined in the Cointelpro cases is the same wrongdoing complained of in the FISA case.  It would seem that these intentional actions are the same – merely made secret in FISA includes due process and Fourth Amendment violations.  FISA must be repealed and the list of names revealed, to stop the rights’ violations, which occur in its enactments. 

As the unethical precepts of Cointelpro were found to be unethical and illegal, so must FISA be found so, repealed and names revealed.  Cointelpro activities were found to be illegal, constitutionally violative and unethical.  The same acts, of intentional discrediting, break-ins, privacy invasion, stalking – occur to uncharged Americans, now daily, through the vehicle and intent of FISA, in place of Cointelpro. 

Cointelpro was found to be illegal, so too, FISA needs to be found illegal, repealed, and the list of names repealed. 

 FISA must be repealed, so that  America can reclaim her soul and citizens can once again be free to “ live by no man’s leave”, as the international code, established at the Nuremberg Trials, after our engagement in the war fought “for democracy”, instructed. This is vital to the American way of life.  We came to America, not to harness obliging servants, but to be free from servitude.  FISA violates our constitution and our governmental intent.  It must be repealed and list names given.

The following “Repeal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA Title 50 Chapter 36” is Workproduct of Kelb, Inc., Keep The Ethical Light Burning, keepkelb.wordpress.com.Any resemblance noted, is coincidental. This Kelb Workproduct may not be copied in any form, reproduced, or copied, computer or social network copied and shared with any individual, nor any entity, unless with written permission from Lynn Weed, Director, Kelb. It is Kelb Workproduct.