Defenders of Democracy

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Chronicles :

Defenders of Democracy

Philip Jenkins - NOVEMBER 01, 1995

 

Covert Policing and Dirty Tricks

"High ranking police officials trained by the FBI and J. armed by a U.S. marshal formed a secret unit that may have committed political murders... under the banner of counter-terrorism, the secret police turned into terrorists." Until recently, most Americans reading such a news report would assume that it derived from the most eccentric radical tract, while even connoisseurs of conspiracy theory might have trouble placing the exact context. Never in the worst years of J. Edgar Hoover did the FBI ever go so far, and it seems a little extreme for the Nixon White House. In fact, the words quoted stem from the quite moderate pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which in 1992 reported on an antiradical operation devised by federal officials working out of the United States Marshals service. In the late 1970's, the deliriously named "Defenders of Democracy" "disappeared" individuals who might pose a threat to federal judges and apparently bombed the headquarters of the local Bar Association. One might think that this would be a major story, the sort of thing that actually brings down governments, until one realizes that the attacks in question occurred under the United States flag, but on the soil of Puerto Rico. As Graham Greene reminded us, the world can be neatly divided into those who can and cannot be tortured and "disappeared" with impunity, and the Defenders had the wisdom to direct their illegal acts at torturees. With a few honorable exceptions like the Inquirer, the national press treated the death squad affair with all the fanfare normally received by the retirement of a school crossing guard.