We knew we were being wiretapped back in 1968. I heard the clicking and buzzing on our phones all the time. It was part and parcel of the constant harassment we were getting from law enforcement. Police cars would park in front of our house in the middle of the night and shine their spotlights in our windows and crank their sirens up, then drive away.
This harassment was a result of J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell’s Operation COINTELPRO, a secret FBI program to disrupt and subdue domestic dissent. They targeted organizations that stood in opposition to government actions and policies: the civil rights movement, the Anti-Vietnam War movement, the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, and every other group that opposed the powers that be, including us. They used dirty tricks. The FBI developed and distributed disinformation that fomented deadly rivalries between Black Panther Party members and others. They spread rumors of Dr. Martin Luther King’s infidelities, along with those of many other prominent civil rights leaders.
They set agents provocateur on us. A guy showed up at our house in 1968, with an implausible story about wanting to “join up.” I told him we weren’t recruiting. Another time it was a woman. I was paranoid as hell and suspicious of strangers. The acid didn’t help.
When the Mitchell Justice Department appealed Judge Keith’s ruling, the case was sent up to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with Judge Keith’s conclusion. The government then appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court: United States vs. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).
The White Panthers’ attorney at the Supreme Court was the legendary civil rights and labor lawyer Arthur Kinoy. Kinoy was cofounder, with William Kunstler, of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and was a professor of constitutional law at Rutgers. In the fifties, Kinoy represented people being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and was once bodily removed from a congressional hearing after strongly disagreeing with a senator.
Kinoy’s defense rested on the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which provides “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
IN FEBRUARY OF 1972, in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, the government again argued that they didn’t need to produce a warrant, as this was a matter of national security. As an illustration of this faulty legal reasoning, Kinoy contended that “for example, a sitting president could wiretap his political rival’s offices, and call it ‘national security.’” Later that evening after court, Kinoy reflected that perhaps he “went too far” with that example—never once suspecting what would happen later that year just up the street.
On Saturday, June 17, 1972, at the Watergate office of the Democratic Party, five burglars were arrested while removing surveillance equipment surreptitiously installed in that office. Two days later, on Monday, June 19, the Court handed down their verdict in favor of the White Panthers. The decision would be the new law of the land, and those unwarranted wiretaps would be illegal.
Our White Panther illegal wiretapping case was the spark that led directly to the resignation of Richard M. Nixon and prison terms for most of his gang. Rather than reveal the scope and details of their illegal operations, the government decided to withdraw cases grounded in illegal wiretaps against the Black Panther Party, the Weathermen, and various antiwar, civil rights, and other organizations across the country that were caught up in Operation COINTELPRO.
Since we were a small group of poets and revolutionaries and a rock & roll band, the government believed we’d be the easiest to railroad, thereby setting a precedent to crush all domestic dissent. After all, we weren’t the Beatles or the Rolling Stones with millions of fans, or the antiwar or civil rights movements with the grassroots support of the nation. But we did have the U.S. Constitution, which provided protections from the overreach of a policeman, a prosecutor, or a president, and demonstrated that we are a nation of laws, not men. And for that one bright and shining moment, justice prevailed.