What a friend we have in Hoover
Freedom has no truer friend
Is your thinking left of center?
He will get you in the end
Does your telephone sound funny?
Is some stranger standing by?
Do not bother your repairman
Take it to the FBI
Are you now or have you ever
Been a member of a cell?
Are you running short of comrades?
Things aren't going very well?
Is the Daily Worker falt'ring?
Has your treasury gone dry?
Half your comrades know the answer:
Take it to the FBI
It's purely for investigation
As all its records plainly show
And that it has no further powers
Dillinger should only know
If you're bombed in Mississippi
And the cops ride gaily by
Just find the sheriff's closest buddy
Just take it to the FBI
Martin Luther King's a liar
His movement's full of shady guys
The nobel people must be crazy
They went and handed him a prize
It's wrong to criticize the Bureau
And any patriotic guy
Would round up Warren's whole Committee
And take it to the FBI.
Freedom has no truer friend
Is your thinking left of center?
He will get you in the end
Does your telephone sound funny?
Is some stranger standing by?
Do not bother your repairman
Take it to the FBI
Are you now or have you ever
Been a member of a cell?
Are you running short of comrades?
Things aren't going very well?
Is the Daily Worker falt'ring?
Has your treasury gone dry?
Half your comrades know the answer:
Take it to the FBI
It's purely for investigation
As all its records plainly show
And that it has no further powers
Dillinger should only know
If you're bombed in Mississippi
And the cops ride gaily by
Just find the sheriff's closest buddy
Just take it to the FBI
Martin Luther King's a liar
His movement's full of shady guys
The nobel people must be crazy
They went and handed him a prize
It's wrong to criticize the Bureau
And any patriotic guy
Would round up Warren's whole Committee
And take it to the FBI.
Contributed by Alessandro - 2009/6/8 - 15:57
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Scritta da Tom Paxton sul motivo dell’inno cristiano "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" composto da Joseph M. Scriven nel 1855.
Canzone pubblicata su Broadside Magazine n.54 del gennaio 1965.
Benchè possa essere considerato il padre delle moderne tecniche investigative, Hoover usò illecitamente il proprio enorme potere, creando banche dati segrete sui leader politici, raccogliendo prove con metodi illegali e, in generale, facendo vessare dagli agenti federali tutti coloro che non si riconoscevano nel classico “God & Country” o che semplicemente pensavano ad una società più giusta, più equa, più aperta.
A partire dalla sconda metà degli anni ’50, Hoover ideò un programma di operazioni coperte, denominato COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), volto a smantellare tutte le organizzazioni politiche dissidenti, dal Partito Comunista al Black Panther Party, dalla Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) di Martin Luther King al Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), dalla Weather Underground Organization ai vari gruppi di opposizione alla guerra in Vietnam. Solo una parte marginale dell’”attenzione” di Hoover fu rivolta ai gruppi del suprematismo e neonazismo americano.
Benchè il COINTELPRO sia stato ufficialmente interrotto nel 1971, ci sono evidenze che esso sia proseguito anche dopo, fino agli anni della presidenza Reagan.