Released in 1971, The Anderson Tapes starring Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, and a very young Christopher Walken revolves around an intricately planned heist and a vast network of government and private surveillance that fails to prevent the crime.
Take at look at the original trailer and you will see that although the technology at the time was primitive by today's standards, it was still pervasive. Afterall, Richard Nixon had been in office since 1969 and J. Edgar Hoover had been Director of the FBI since 1924.
By 1971, Hoover's secret COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) had been in place since 1956. The program was exposed the same year that The Anderson Tapes was released.
Hoover targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, the NAACP, and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups. FBI tactics included IRS audits, smear campaigns, and agent provocateurs. The FBI coordinated with other agencies such as the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Defense.
COINTELPRO was exposed when the leftist activist group, Citizens' Commission to Investigate, the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and mailed incriminating documents anonymously to several US newspapers.
In 1976, The Church Committee found that...
The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens.
...
Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.
Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
These are facts, but now back to the fiction of
The Anderson Tapes below the fold.
SPOILER ALERT
Sean Connery portrays Duke Anderson, who just released from ten years in prison, begins planning the robbery of a high-class apartment building. Duke moves in with his old girlfriend Iris (Dyan Cannon) who lives in the building.
As Duke assembles his team, he unknowingly chooses men who are under surveillance of several government entities, including the Bureau of Narcotics, the FBI, and the IRS. Iris is also being watched by a private investigator hired by the sugar daddy who put her up in the post digs while Duke was in prison.
The plan evolves as the team is being surveilled. Scenes show various agents watching the gang and recording their every move, but each agency is unaware of the others and oblivious to the planned heist.
This is Hollywood, so of course the bad guys have to get caught, and they do... but not by any of the investigators.
.
You see, the crooks left the paraplegic and asthmatic son of an apartment resident alone in his sick-bed. The boy was a ham radio buff and alerted the local police who surrounded and breached the building.
In the final scene, the government agencies, still unaware of each other, become aware that the crime has been foiled by reading the newspaper, and instruct the various field agents with the identical command regarding the tapes.
1st Agency: "Did you see the papers? Didn't we have a Duke Anderson on those Angelo tapes? Well, erase them."
The camera then shows a finger pressing a glowing red erase button.
2nd Agency: "We're the government for crying out loud. We can't risk anybody stumbling across those tapes. They're illegal. Erase them."
Again, the erase button is pushed.
3rd Agency: "The police will trace every move Anderson made, and we can get caught with illegal tapes. Erase them."
A finger is shown pressing the erase button followed by a shot of a reel-to-reel tape recorder spinning at high speed until it slows to a halt and the credit roll
Fast forward to the present
Now that government spying on Americans is, according to the government, legal and all of the various agencies are coordinated through the NSA, the bad guys don't have a chance. But, who determines just who the bad guys are? The government, of course.
General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency says that the surveillance disrupted or is “contributing to disrupt” dozens of of terrorist attacks, but the public doesn’t have full knowledge of the privacy controls and oversight mechanisms the NSA follows.
Alexander, who also heads the U.S. Cyber Command, added, “We operate in a way that ensures we keep the trust of the American people because that trust is a sacred requirement.” And that may be all well and good with this administration (or not), but what about the next?
Now is the time to ask yourself the question, "Would you have trusted Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover to have your email password?" How about Ted Cruz or Darrell Issa? And, don't forget Michele Bachmann. She was appointed by Speaker John Boehner to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, giving her a role as overseer of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community.
I think I'd rather just give the combination of the safe containing the family jewels to Duke Anderson and his gang.
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