By Nicholas F. Benton

The New York Times reported Sunday that critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy have sued the government to learn how their names ended up on a "no fly" list used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding planes.

This latest politically-motivated abuse of power by the Bush administration, in particular Attorney General John Ashcroft, is only the beginning.

The outrageous assaults to date on the civil liberties of law abiding U.S. citizens by Ashcroft's abuse of the USA Patriot Act and assignment of new, intrusive investigative powers to his FBI are but a foretaste of more to come.

We are witnessing the mere onset of the most out-of-control right wing sanctioned government repression of dissent since the early 1950s McCarthy Era, even worse than when Attorney General John Mitchell, in the Nixon administration, drew up the administration's "Enemies List" with the help of the notorious J. Edgar Hoover.

Now it's being done with the aid of computers that can "sweep up" thousands into an FBI net with a single keystroke.

This is the first time Republicans have controlled both houses of the Congress and the White House, all at once, since Sen. McCarthy drove the nation into a witch hunting frenzy of paranoia in 1952, and those who've seethed with anger at the curtailing of that and similar forms of repression ever since have now been unleashed with new fury.

In the name of fighting terrorism, just as McCarthy and Mitchell justified their excesses on fighting communism, Ashcroft has set loose the FBI to conduct extraordinary financial record searches, permitted under the Patriot Act, of 4,261 records where there was no suspected of terrorist activity involved. Michael Isikoff's article, "Show Me the Money: Patriot Act Helps the Feds in Cases With No Ties to Terror," in this week's Newsweek, documents that no terrorism was suspected in over two thirds of the cases the FBI has utilized extraordinary Patriot Act powers to investigate.

"The Patriot Act allows the Feds to search every financial institution in the country for the records of anybody they have suspicions about," Isikoff writes. "The very definition, critics say, of a fishing expedition."

This is "something," he adds, "most members of Congress never anticipated," and it's extended to apply against public officials in the recent "Operation G-String" case in Nevada. Regarding that case, Isikoff quotes Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, who complained to the local FBI. "She says she was told the agents were only `using the tools that Congress gave them.' The conversation left Berkley unsettled. In the urgent push to pass the Patriot Act, she says, `never...did the FBI say we needed additional tools to keep this nation safe from strip-club operators.'"

Ashcroft has also reversed internal regulations limiting the ability of the FBI to spy on U.S. citizens, put into place in the 1970s after the excesses under Nixon, known as Cointelpro, led to the formation of Mitchell's "Enemies List" of anti-Nixon politicians, protesters and activists.

Sunday's News York Times reports that the FBI has returned to spying and gathering intelligence on persons attending anti-Bush rallies and protests. A front-page article by Eric Lichtblau reports, "FBI Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies," and documents a wide array of FBI investigative activities surrounding demonstrations.

While the FBI claims these investigations are directed only against potential "anarchists and extremist elements plotting violence," civil libertarians are justifiably concerned that they are aimed at stiffing the First Amendment right to free speech.

For example, according to Lichtblau, "Critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy have sued the government to learn how their names ended up on a `no fly' list used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding planes."

And, he writes, "the New York Police Department this year questioned many of those arrested at demonstrations about their political affiliations, before halting the practice and expunging the data in the face of public criticism."

But the primary impact of FBI infiltration and spying at anti-Bush rallies is the intimidation factor. People are reluctant to do anything that might bring them under the scrutiny of the FBI, even if they have nothing to hide. They tend to "steer clear."

Then comes last week's round of GOP attack television ads, suggesting that all who disagree with Bush are unpatriotic and un-American.

Those of us active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war struggles of the late 1960s and early 1970s, who felt the stultifying repressive atmosphere of Mitchell's "Enemies List" despite engaging in no illegal activity, are experiencing the same all over again. It's been 30 years, but you can never forget what that kind of grip of intimidation feels like. You can, that is, until you start sensing it anew.

The irony is that by invading a defenseless nation and unleashing the FBI on law-abiding political dissidents, the Bush administration is failing miserably in the real war on terrorism. All the military and law enforcement firepower amassed by this administration has been so badly misdirected that it's hard to imagine how it could all be accidental.