Listening in on The Church

Government surveillance is back. It never really left us, of course. When the intelligence "excesses" surrounding the civil rights movement, Vietnam War protests, and Watergate hit-lists came to light, public outcry called for reform within the intelligence community. Some important restrictions were imposed. Unfortunately, that simply produced an even more covert style of domestic government surveillance and created a thriving private intelligence industry supported substantially by federal dollars.

Under the Reagan administration, however, domestic government surveillance has returned to its former pre-eminence. Within months after taking the oath of office, President Reagan signed Executive Order Number 12333 on Intelligence. The order liberalized previous constraints on intelligence gathering and gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency a much freer hand in domestic surveillance.

Since then other government agencies having nothing to do with domestic intelligence—such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service—have joined the hunt and are willing participants in surveillance, intimidation, and harassment.

Some intelligence gathering has its place. Seeking to uncover and stop a conspiracy to assassinate a public figure is a good example, assuming the evidence substantiates a legitimate threat. But that kind of purpose is not the primary concern of the political intelligence community.

The real goal of most domestic surveillance is political control. The suppression of domestic political dissent and the containment of social change movements lie more at the heart of our government's intentions. And that has never been more true than at this point in our nation's history.

The church has become one of the primary targets of government surveillance. In the last decade, church people and church-related organizations have been at the forefront of social change in this country. During the Reagan years, the climate of confrontation has grown even more as church-based opposition to administration policies, especially on the issues of nuclear arms and Central America, has mounted.

In this issue of Sojourners, we take a look at surveillance and the church. William J. Davis examines the current extent of government surveillance and describes some of the technologies being used. Jeanie Wylie documents the Detroit Peace Community's experiences. And Bill Kellermann studies Jesus' response to the surveillance he encountered and offers insightful theological reflections on how a faithful church can respond to surveillance.

We know many of you are personally facing incidents of government surveillance, intimidation, and harassment because of your active, faith-rooted commitments to peace and justice. Some of you have told us your stories. The experiences can be chilling, to say the least.

Last spring a woman living in the Midwest gave me a call. She is active in both the sanctuary movement and the Pledge of Resistance. Some Pledge mail was clearly being tampered with or never arriving at all. Yet her bigger concern was about the morning that two INS agents came to her house (where she lives alone) and asked to talk with her about her sanctuary involvements—at 6 a.m!

Subscribers in Georgia also told me that FBI agents have admitted spying on their soup kitchen, while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has infiltrated vigils and worship services that they have held for victims of capital punishment.

OUR OWN EXPERIENCE with surveillance continues to grow. In 1984 Jim Wallis traveled to Winnipeg, Manitoba, for a speaking engagement. He was stopped by Canadian customs and interrogated for two hours, because of his "criminal record," they said. (Jim has been arrested many times for nonviolent protest.)

While he was being detained, customs officials checked with the FBI in Washington. They returned and asked Jim, "Did you know that you have a very thick FBI file?" He was eventually permitted to continue to Winnipeg but was told that he is not allowed to return to Canada without special permission from the Canadian minister of immigration. In response to our subsequent Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI claimed to have no file whatsoever on Jim.

Just last fall the IRS came to audit our fiscal records and organizational activities for 1983. It is the first audit of Sojourners by the IRS. We do not yet know whether it is simply a routine audit or the beginning of the type of harassment for which the IRS has a well-deserved reputation. The final audit report is due later this winter.

Many of you remember the surveillance incident at our magazine office building in October 1984 (see "Some Saturday Morning Visitors," February 1985). Four well-dressed men, one with a camera, were caught peering into our building before 6 a.m. one Saturday. When confronted by a Sojourners employee, they acted very embarrassed, quickly returned to their car, and sped off in their late-model, plain brown sedan, which had a long CB-type antenna attached near the back left window. We took the license plate number and began our investigation.

With some invaluable assistance from a well-placed source, we have discovered the car's 1985 Virginia tag, "G-306," is part of a block of numbers assigned to the National Security Agency, the super-secret government agency responsible for U.S. communication intelligence activities. With an annual budget billions of dollars larger than the CIA's, the NSA's duties include monitoring international phone traffic.

Since government agencies often exchange license plates, we are not certain that NSA agents visited us that morning. However, it is clear that we were subjects of government surveillance.

During the past few years, incidents like these have made us wonder to what extent the government might be investigating us. Our organizing work with nuclear disarmament and Central America issues could make us a target of surveillance. Our source settled any doubts we may have had when he informed us last fall that Sojourners is indeed under active investigation by several government agencies.

How should people of faith respond to surveillance? Bill Kellermann and William J. Davis offer some very helpful practical and biblical guidance elsewhere in this issue. And Paul's words of encouragement to the Christians at Philippi (Philippians 1:27-28) are a fitting exhortation for us:

Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ ... stand firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear omen to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God.