by Nat Hentoff

About the author: Nat Hentoff often writes on civil liberties issues in his weekly Village Voice column. His work also appears in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Republic, Commonweal, the Atlantic and the New Yorker.

As usual, television—broadcast and cable—got it wrong. The thrust of what they call reporting on the reorganization of the FBI focused on the 900 or so new agents, the primacy of intelligence gathering over law enforcement, and the presence of CIA supervisors within the bosom of the FBI. (It used to be illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans within our borders.)

A Secret War Against Americans

But the poisonous core of this reorganization is its return to the time of J. Edgar Hoover and...