Protest initiated by CUNY Internationalist Clubs against imperialist spy agency recruiting at Hunter College, March 4. ISO participated also.
(Internationalist photo)

The following leaflet by the CUNY Internationalist Clubs was distributed at Hunter College on March 4.

Everybody knows about the CIA and the FBI. But the National Security Agency (NSA) is the largest – and most secretive – of all the government’s spy agencies. This is the outfit that Senator Frank Church said, when he investigated U.S. domestic spying and “dirty tricks” back in 1975, could be used “to impose total tyranny.”

Intelligence historian James Bamford called it “the agency that could be Big Brother,” the sinister figure in George Orwell’s novel 1984 that was watching everyone. Only the NSA isn’t fiction, and YOU are the target.

In 2005 the NSA was exposed for engaging in massive, illegal telephone surveillance ordered by George W. Bush. The next year, it was revealed that with the help of AT&T the super-secret spy agency was intercepting almost all international (and likely most domestic long-distance) phone calls.

The NSA also scans and stores your e-mails, instant messages and every other form of electronic communication: some 1.7 billion messagesa day, as reported in the Washington Post’s 2010 investigation, “Top Secret America.” And this continues under President Barack Obama.

These attacks on your basic rights go together with the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act’s shredding of much of what was supposedly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. This ever-expanding intelligence apparatus is part and parcel of the U.S. government’s “Global War on Terror,” which is really a war to terrorize the world into submission to Washington’s diktat. As U.S. forces bomb civilians in Afghanistan and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, the government needs to regiment the population on the “home front.”

Now the NSA has announced that it is coming to Hunter this Friday, March 4, to hold interviews with students “looking for a career.” The spy agency recruiters plan to conduct an “Info Session for Language Students” this Friday, March 4, beginning at 1:00 p.m. in the Chanin Language Center (Hunter West B126). There should be vigorous protest by students, faculty and staff against this outrageous intrusion of imperialist spies! ■