During the Vietnam War era the NSA conducted surveillance on a number of high profile Americans with the knowledge of President Nixon; he wanted to know if they were receiving aid from abroad. Those spied on included Martin Luther King Jr, Muhammad Ali, Sen Frank Church, Sen Howard Baker and Art Buchwald and Tom Wicker. What is odd about this list is that Baker was a supporter of the war in Vietnam while the others opposed it. It is also disturbing that the last two on the list where journalists, and a intelligence historian noted, "since when did journalists become legitimate intelligence targets". The spying went on from 1967 to 1973 and included some 1800 names. This article notes that spying of ths nature is not something new to our political world. The CIA and the Army were involved at some point, and the FBI provided some names. The program was called "Minaret".
(Source: "NSA snooped on MLK, Ali, Buchwald, other critics" by Richard Leiby of the Washington Post. In The Virginian Pilot on 9/29/13.
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