AMY GOODMAN: Just before we go to investigative journalist, David Wise, with Jennifer Dohrn still in our studio, I think there was one last story we wanted to hear from you, and that was a trophy that the burglars got when they broke into your apartment.
JENNIFER DOHRN: Right. Apparently on one of the break ins, they took a pair of my underwear and put it in a glass case and gave it as a trophy gift to Mark Felt.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And this was discovered how?
JENNIFER DOHRN: This was discovered -- it was actually leaked to me by someone in the press years later who had gone over my F.O.I.A. files.
What's that from? In case you missed it today, Democracy Now! has a story (listen, watch and read -- transcript is up) entitled "EXCLUSIVE... Jennifer Dohrn: I Was The Target Of Illegal FBI Break-Ins Ordered by Mark Felt aka 'Deep Throat.'" As Charlie notes in his e-mail, "Democracy Now! doesn't take part in any shine-ons." No, it doesn't. If you missed the report, please check it out today, tomorrow, this weekend . . . Here's one more excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it's good to have you with us. When you heard that Deep Throat had been revealed, and it was Mark Felt, your response?
JENNIFER DOHRN: My response was that history needed to be reviewed, re-looked at, re-examined, and this was a great time to look at the comparisons between what happened in the early 1970s to me and many others and what in fact is happening now around Iraq and the building of a counterintelligence system.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about what happened to you. Where did you live?
JENNIFER DOHRN: I lived in New York primarily. I was based in New York. I was very, very active in the anti-war movement and in support of the Black Freedom Movement and the Puerto Rican liberation struggle, and I was followed night and day by the F.B.I. I had my apartments, several apartments, wiretapped. Apartments next to me were rented by F.B.I. agents who kept continuous 24-hour surveillance of every sound made in my apartment. I was followed up and down the streets. I would get a job, the F.B.I. would go in after me, and I would then be fired from the job. It was around-the-clock harassment.
Charlie writes, "Throw in some calico cats, some drapes over statues and it's John Ashcroft. Is there a reason that the Democracy Now! addresses what the mainstream shies away from? Yes, I think there is a reason and it's that Democracy Now! is about journalism and the mainstream news is about lifestyle features."
Lucy e-mails this column by Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher) entitled "My Secret Life with W. Mark Felt:"
I'll never know for sure, but it's possible that I was once on, ahem, fairly intimate terms with W. Mark Felt, the leak artist formerly known as Deep Throat.
Journalists and many others lionizing the former FBI official -- rightly -- for his contribution in helping to bring down Richard Nixon, should not overlook the fact that Felt was one of the architects of the bureau's notorious COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign.
He was convicted in 1980 of authorizing nine illegal entries in New Jersey in 1972 and 1973 -- the very period during which he was famously meeting Bob Woodward in a parking garage.
Only a pardon, courtesy of Ronald Reagan, kept him out of jail for a long term. So the man knew a thing or two about illegal break-ins. COINTELPRO was the Patriot Act on steroids. And that's where I come in.
Back in the bad old/good old days of the early 1970s, a fellow I'll call "Stew" used to write, off and on, for a rather legendary magazine that I helped edit in New York City, before I went straight, called Crawdaddy. (We had plenty of other contributors, including Joseph Heller, P.J. O'Rourke, Tom Waits, Richard Price, William Burroughs, and Tony Kornheiser, to name a few.) Stew was a proudly left-wing guy, but from the fun-loving ex-Yippie side of the antiwar spectrum, as opposed to the violent Weatherman sector. By 1973, he had a bad ticker, and was pretty much retired from any organized political activity.
Continue reading to find out what happened to Stew as well as more background on COINTELPRO.
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