That the federal government secretly recorded conversations, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of labor unions and progressive groups in Minnesota as part of a surveillance effort during Operation Metro Surge should be repugnant to all Americans. 

Citing court documents released Thursday, the Reformer’s Madison McVan reports that, for instance, “Agents collected the license plate numbers of attendees during a meeting of anti-ICE protesters at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville to obtain the names of the attendees. The agents then compiled a dossier including attendees’ names, photos, addresses, vehicle registrations, family and employment information.”

Can’t say I’ve been to Prince of Peace, but I suspect the only threat to public safety there is the over-salted hotdish. Americans are allowed to meet and strategize about how to oppose the policies of their government, especially when agents of the government were openly racially profiling people, snatching them off the street and violating their constitutional rights. It’s sort of an important thing about us. 

In a revolting bit of irony, the investigation began four days after the killing of Alex Pretti, which was about three weeks after the killing of Renee Good. 

Rather than investigate the circumstances of those killings, the Department of Justice began investigating Minnesotans. 

Unfortunately, the use of government resources and intelligence methods to investigate civil society groups engaged in lawful political activism is not surprising. 

Especially if you’re familiar with American history — and specifically the 1976 document, “Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans,” i.e., the Church Committee report, named after U.S. Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, though the committee and its conclusions were bipartisan. 

The report concludes that the intelligence services and their skulduggery are necessary in a dangerous world and appropriate within strict legal, constitutionally bound limits.

And then Book 2 of the report lays out in detail over nearly 400 pages how the vast apparatus of the federal government was misused to violate the rights of American citizens.

“Whatever opinion one holds about the policies of the targeted groups, many of the tactics employed by the FBI were indisputably degrading to a free society,” the report reads. 

“For approximately 20 years the CIA carried out a program of indiscriminately opening citizens’ first class mail,” the report states. “Since the early 1930s, intelligence agencies have frequently wiretapped and bugged American citizens without the benefit of judicial warrant,” including a member of Congress, congressional staff, journalists and others who didn’t engage in criminal activity. 

“During the 1960’s alone, the FBI and CIA conducted hundreds of break-ins, many against American citizens and domestic organizations.” 

Note the word choice, indicating this was illegal behavior: Break-ins.

The FBI anonymously sent intel about people to their employers to get them fired and anonymously sent letters to spouses of targets to destroy marriages. They falsely claimed targets were government informants, thus exposing them to retributive violence. They provoked IRS audits. 

The geniuses at the FBI’s “Domestic Intelligence Division” decided that Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which they called “demagogic” (?!), established King as the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”

What followed was a years-long and shameful campaign to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize winner. 

The FBI had King under heavy surveillance, “employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau’s disposal … about the ‘private activities of Dr. King and his advisors’ to ‘completely discredit” them.” The FBI put their goals in writing. 

The bureau smeared him, the report states, with “executive branch officials, congressional leaders, foreign heads of state, American ambassadors, churches, universities.” 

They secretly recorded King in hotel rooms with women other than his wife and mailed them to him. 

“The tape recording was accompanied by a note which Dr. King and his advisors interpreted as threatening to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide.”

Back to our mournful present: As the filing states, “The government’s initial disclosures reflect that (Homeland Security Investigations) and the (Department of Justice) embarked on an improper investigation of First Amendment protected activity without any suggestion that the investigation’s targets had committed any crime,” the defense attorneys wrote in their filing Thursday. 

The motion continues: “Indeed, HSI undercover officers seemingly sought to manufacture a basis for prosecution where no crimes had been committed.”

For decades, the American right was obsessed with the overweening power of the federal government, the “jack-booted thugs” who were going to confiscate their guns and their Gadsden flags. I’m sure they’ll eagerly join our effort to expose and neutralize this attack on our Constitution, right? 

We don’t yet know the extent of this despotic activity by the Trump administration, but Thursday’s filing makes clear that if and when the honorable people ever again fill the halls of Congress, we’ll need yet another Church Committee for our amnesiac nation.