How did they do it? By planting false information in respectable journals such as Life magazine, paying off members or organized crime for deeds done, and planting evidence to implicate innocent people. This is the story of New Jersey Congressman Neil Gallagher and his nightmarish encounters with Hoover and others in the American intelligence business. Gallagher championed privacy after learning of a young girl being forced to take a lie detector test for a low level administrative job. As Gallagher continued to delve into breaches of privacy over the years, he was astonished to discover massive deceptions carried out by the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI.
In one such case, approximately 300,000 children ranging in age from 6 to 12 were given psychotic drugs such as Ritalin without the consent of their parents in a study to determine which drug was the most effective in behavior modification. It was discovered that the U.S. Army was quietly shipping canisters of dangerous chemical weapons by train through such heavily populated areas as Philadelphia. Once at port they were loaded on WWII Liberty ships, taken 250 miles out to sea, and sunk into the depths. Congress and the public were totally in the dark.
Of course the nefarious Roy Cohn showed up in Gallagher's life, at first as a friendly, knowledgeable Washington insider, later threatening the successful Congressman with warnings from Hoover. Hoover went out of his way to terrorize Gallagher and his family. FBI agents ransacked their home while they were on vacation, interrogated his daughters while they were in college, and stormed into their home threatening his family at gunpoint. Author Ron Felber does not draw any conclusions, but allows the words of Gallagher and others to cast doubt on the veracity of the Warren Commission report.
Felber conducted extensive interviews with Gallagher, cited newspaper accounts, and obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act in assembling his book. He uses the convention of jumping between time periods to provide background information on the current storyline. It is a technique that can be distracting, but Felber does a remarkable job. In light of the events of today, Felber's book is very relevant and a call to remember that in the past government institutions have acted against government officials and private citizens irresponsibly and maliciously.
Invasion of privacy in our current environment has the potential to rise to dangerous, even outrageous, levels. Government secrecy and deception are enemies of democracy. As Albert Einstein said:
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
