1967-1975: Project MINARET Illegally Monitors American ‘Subversives’

US intelligence agencies, including the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, run a clandestine and highly illegal surveillance operation called Project MINARET that uses “watch lists” to electronically and physically spy on “subversive” activities by civil rights and antiwar leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Jane Fonda, Malcolm X, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Joan Baez—all members of Richard Nixon’s infamous “enemies list.” [Patrick S. Poole, 8/15/2000; Pensito Review, 5/13/2006] MINARET operates in tandem with a much more extensive electronic surveillance operation, SHAMROCK, run by the NSA (see 1945-1975). Almost 6,000 foreigners and nearly 1,700 organizations and US citizens are monitored as part of MINARET. In August 1975, NSA director Lew Allen testifies before the Senate’s investigative commission on US intelligence activities, the Church Committee (see April, 1976), that the NSA has issued over 3,900 reports on the US citizens on MINARET’s watch lists, and the NSA’s Office of Security Services has maintained reports on at least 75,000 citizens between 1952 and 1975, reports that later became part of MINARET’s operations. MINARET, like SHAMROCK, will be terminated shortly after the Church Committee goes public with its information about the illegal surveillance program. [Bamford, 1983; Pensito Review, 5/13/2006]