Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation committed widespread acts of unauthorized lawlessness including the burning of automobiles, assaults and illegal wiretapping, while conducting internal security investigations in the last five years, law enforcement sources said. Militant antiwar activists at Queens College in Flushing were one target of illegal and unauthorized electronic surveillance. Agents placed illegal wildcat" telephone taps and electronic bugs, the sources said, ... because these were often the best methods of getting intelligence on militant leftist activity. Agents would disguise the source of the information in their reports to make it appear that it came from live informants. One source said, however, that he believed that supervisory F.B.I. personnel were "aware" that information was coming from taps but did nothing about it. Car burnings and assaults upon individuals in the radical left were efforts to disrupt antiwar activity. The cars were set afire with "Molotov cocktails" made from glass bottles filled with gasoline. This was done in such a manner as to appear to have been an attack by another extremist group. Cars were also disabled to strand suspects during a surveillance. Agents, the sources said, from time to time "roughed up" radical antiwar figures to frighten them or to disrupt a demonstration or protest activity. At least one radical was kidnapped for the same reason. One source said that the victim of a beating was never seriously hurt because agents did not want to create a situation that might be traced to the bureau. The victim, this source said, would not know he was attacked by bureau men.
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