East Germany’s Stasi (State Security) is showing itself in our country today. This is a piece well worth reading and passing along for it is very telling.

I’m posting this in remembrance of those left behind in East Germany who couldn’t get out, for the families separated, and for the families that still to this day mourn them, and how it can and just might be happening here and now. Having family that couldn’t leave the East was very hard for those that legally immigrated to the US, no way could we get them out or even hear from them. We had only one letter from them when my grandmother passed on in the 1950′s. Most of that only letter was blacked out, by hand too. I love America, God Bless Her always and keep her free!

God bless my family always, I pray God is with you all. And thank you to Mr. King for writing this. ~Anna

East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, also known as the Stasi, posed a major challenge during my three-year stint as an attache at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn during the 1960s. Detecting and preventing Stasi agents from penetrating the security of U.S. diplomatic facilities in West Germany was a 24-7 undertaking.

The East German secret police were even more ruthless and relentless in operations against their own citizens. Political suppression in that communist state was total. There was no room for dissent. Thousands of East Germans were arbitrarily imprisoned for “internal security” reasons.

So it was especially galling to learn upon returning to the states in 1969 that the FBI had a counterintelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, that was, in some ways, as pernicious as the threat we were working against overseas.

Senate hearings in the 1970s revealed that the FBI, under the guise of protecting national security, had treated rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as little more than a collection of antiquated wishes best ignored.

With its surveillance of citizens, infiltration of civil rights groups and disruption of legal activities, the FBI’s counterintelligence program echoed the behavior of East Germany’s Stasi. The FBI acknowledges on its Web site that “COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.”

Fortunately, Congress reined in the FBI, placing it behind, and not beyond, the Constitution.

Where are we now?

The revelations that the Justice Department had secretly seized journalists’ phone records and that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status show that government’s heavy hand has not been lifted. Are these examples of COINTELPRO revisited?

Not quite, though they are disturbing… continue reading here, well worth it, thank you, Anna