In the 1970s and 1980s, my father, Sam Merrill, had an interview segment on a local radio show in New York City: Direct News. When he passed away, he left a crate full of vinyl records, each with a radio show on it. I’m digitizing and archiving his interview segments here.
In this segment, my dad interviews J Wallace LaPrade, an ex-New York FBI director who was fired for wiretapping radical groups, including The Weather Underground and the Socialist Workers Party.
This is conversation feels quaint in a post-Patriot Act, post-Snowden world. I believe LaPrade when he says the techniques he was fired for using were widely used. As we know, they’re still widely used today. Was he a scapegoat? Or was he fired for using illegal techniques? The answer is probably “yes.”
What stands out to me the most about this conversation is how normal it seems for law enforcement to surveil private citizens for their political activities. As far as I can tell, no one was fired over the recent Section 702 controversies.
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