In 1956, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover created the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to infiltrate and cripple extremist political groups, such as the Black Panthers and other African-American political groups. In the Cleveland Free Times, Daniel Gray-Kontar looks at the renewed crackdown on African-American street organizations across the nation in the post Sept. 11 world and finds that many black leaders feel the new Patriot Act is the infamous COINTELRPO with a different name.
E&P's Lucia Moses looks at a batch of new daily-owned youth market publications in the works, from Gannett in Lansing, Mich., and Boise, Idaho, and from the Tribune Co., in Chicago and on Long Island. Reaching young readers is a delicate art, as alternative weeklies can attest. "The 'new generation' is newly minted every year," Chicago Newcity President Brian Hieggelke tells E&P. "Those of us who are writing about them ... the older we get, the less we should trust our instincts."
Six men accused of having sex in the "video-viewing" backrooms of a porn shop are the reluctant crusaders to reform sex laws in Missouri, one of only four states that still bans gay sex. Missouri would just as soon they went away. One of the accused says the prosecutors told him, "Look, if you cooperate, it will go away. ... If you don't cooperate, we're going to parade you and your family and everybody through the media and make your life a living hell." They're ready for hell, writes Bruce Rushton in the Riverfront Times.
Earlier this year a Philadelphia City Paper writer received e-mails from one "Mr. Fantastic" offering information and pictures from within one of the Army's top-secret facilities, Editor Howard Altman writes. Now Maurice Threats, 21, an Army MP, has been indicted on charges of espionage and bribery. "This case came from calls that City Paper placed to us," Martin Carlson, assistant U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Pennsylvania, tells Altman. However, federal prosecutors won't confirm that Threats and "Mr. Fantastic" are the same person. [This is an updated version of last week's story.]
