0xvMSFuB1kGbgTVxZ1au68Inz1CgQldZX1XhQm0QtWXgyVDzut 41Sn6ZiTLkBvPEfpppwUbAuAvieuzW1ilesdxMnknGyCC4GKhH jG

* "LIBRARY SPY HUNT IS CURBED BY FBI", By Herbert Mitgang, NYT, 11/11/1988
*
* Bowing to pressure from a House subcommittee and continued resistance from
* librarians, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has set limits on its
* program seeking the help of librarians in "detecting Soviet spies."
*
* Under the Library Awareness Program. which the FBI says has been in exist-
* ence for years, librarians have been asked to report suspicious-looking
* people who might be Soviet spies, to be alert to which books and periodi-
* cals such people read or check out and to disclose the names and informa-
* tion about book borrowers suspected of using libraries for espionage
* purposes or recruiting library users for espionage [what???].
*
* FBI Director William S. Sessions said the bureau would continue to contact
* public, university and corporate libraries in the New York City area about
* "hostile intelligence service activities at libraries." [fuh-gedda-boutit]

Of course, they know all the books you've ever bought using credit cards.

Fear, loathing, hysteria, and a loosening of the rules for "national security":

* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
* After the Oklahoma City bombing, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick
* and FBI Director Freeh announced that they had decided to reinterpret
* twenty-year-old Justice Department guidelines originally put in place to
* restrain the FBI from violating the constitutional rights of political
* dissidents.
*
* "If those guidelines are interpreted broadly and p