War at Home:Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About itby Brian GlickSouth End Press |
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Guidelines for Coping with Psychological Warfare
1. Verify and double-check all arrangements for housing, transportation, meeting rooms, and so forth. Don't assume movement organizers are at fault if something goes wrong.
2. Don't believe everything you hear or read. Check with the supposed source of the information before acting on it. Use a neutral third party if necessary. Personal communication among estranged activists, however difficult or painful, could have countered many FBI operations which proved effective in the 1960s.
3. When you discover bogus materials, false media stories, or forged documents, publicly disavow them and expose the true source, insofar as you can.
4. When you hear a negative, confusing, or potentially harmful rumor, don't pass it on. Instead, discuss it with a trusted friend or with the people in your group who are responsible for dealing with such matters.
5. Don't gossip about personal tensions, rivalries, and disagreements. This just feeds and amplifies rumors. Moreover, if you gossip where you can be overheard, you may add to the pool of information that the FBI and police use to divide our movements. (Note that the CIA has the technology to read mail without opening it and that telephones, including pay phones, can be tapped by a computer programmed to record conversations in which specified words appear.)
6. Be sure to make time in group meetings for open, honest discussion and resolution of "personal" as well as "political" issues. This is the best way to reduce tensions and hostilities and the urge to gossip about them.
7. Warn your parents, friends, neighbors, and others who may be contacted by government agents. Consider telling them what you are doing and why before they hear the FBI's version. Provide them with materials which explain their legal rights and the dangers of talking with the FBI. Offer to connect them with lawyers and support groups.