According to senior government officials, Attorney General John Ashcroft is planning to loosen restrictions that keep the F.B.I. from spying on political and religious organizations in the United States.
In the 1970’s, fundamental restrictions were placed on the conduct of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after it was revealed that the F.B.I. had orchestrated a secret program to undermine the popular upsurge that swept the country during the 1960s.

Code-named “COINTELPRO” (short for Counter Intelligence Program), the FBI’s clandestine domestic program was used to eliminate radical political opposition within the US.

Its methods extended far beyond surveillance, and some say it even amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world. Ashcroft’s proposal would relax restrictions that resulted from the disclosure of COINTELPRO’s existence in 1970.

This move comes as yet another step by the Bush administration to place restrictions of civil liberties under the guise of defending the country against terrorists.

Some senior F.B.I agents oppose Ashcroft’s proposal, claiming that it will open up the agency to “embarrassment and lawsuits.” But others argue that the surveillance restrictions were geared toward obsolete investigative methods and had stood in the way of F.B.I. counter-terrorism efforts.

“We’re going to do what we need to do to protect the American people,” said Ashcroft earlier this week.

Despite Ashcroft’s words of assurance, many people in today’s activist circles are deeply concerned about what this new move will mean to them.

F.B.I. agents working originally under COINTELPRO were instructed to “misdirect, discredit, disrupt and otherwise neutralize” specific individuals and groups such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, The Black Panthers, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and many student, anti-war, and feminist groups.

“The FBI has a history of violating the legal limits. There is no telling what they might do without such limits,” said Fordham University Professor Brian Glick. “It’s not just the surveillance part of Ashcroft’s proposal that is worrysome; it’s the psychological operations, the false rumors, the planted media stories, forged documents and the infiltration of dissident groups that the people running the country dislike or fear.”