Former CSUEB professor reacts to being spied on by NSA

When former California State University, East Bay professor Agha Saeed first learned he was being spied on by the National Security Agency, he said he wasn’t that surprised.

“The US spy agencies were not leaving anything to one’s imagination,” said Saeed.

It all started in 2005, when someone broke into Saeed’s car and stole a bag that contained student papers. The thief was arrested the same day, and the bag was recovered he said “without ‘apparently’ anything ‘missing’.”

Newark police kept the bag for three days, said Saeed. Upon receiving it back from the police he said he was informally interrogated. “Looks like you travel a lot,” the officer stated, referring to the airline invoices he had stored in his bag.

Saeed claims a source in the Newark city government told him that police departments, as directed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, photocopy all the contents to send to the FBI, regardless of whether a Muslim was the offender or the victim in the situation. Moreover, the original versions of all documentation would not be returned until given clearance by the FBI.

The Newark Police Department denied the allegations. “That is not the case,” said Commander Mike Carroll of the Newark Police Department. “[The accusation] is absolutely 100 percent false. The FBI has no control over the police department, they can only advise us.”

“There would have to be more,” said Carroll. “It would require a reason or need to know beyond a certain ethnicity or religion.”

Saeed is the founder of the American Muslim Alliance, a civil rights organization that works to get “qualified American Muslims elected to the U.S. Congress” and “all levels in the American Political System.”

He taught communication and political science at CSUEB from 1994 to 2012, when he retired due to the onset of Parkinson’s. He also previously taught at UC Berkeley from 1994 to 2004.

“Personally, [the police situation] was an affirmation that Muslim American[s] are the current targets of the COINTELPRO,” said Saeed.

COINTELPRO, which stands for Counterintelligence Program, is an FBI conducted program which began in 1956. The program initially targeted alleged Communists, but in the 1960s was expanded to other domestic groups. In 1971 operations were ended due to being criticized by Congress and the public, according to the FBI website. COINTELPRO spied on important activists throughout the 1960s, including Martin Luther King, Jr., for alleged ties to communism, according to NPR.

Glenn Greenwald’s news agency The Intercept released a report earlier this month identifying five Muslim American leaders, including Saeed, who have had their emails monitored by the NSA. The article states Saeed was being watched by the NSA “began in June 2007 and was still sustained as of May 2008.”

Saeed believes he was watched for several reasons, among these include his support for Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation by all means, including armed resistance, his opposition to US-supported dictators including former leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Gen. Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi of Egypt, as well his friendships with controversial imprisoned activists Dr. Sami Al-Arian, Imam Jamil Al-Ameen, and Kashmiri activist Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai.

In “California Under Corporate Rule”, Peter Camejo, one of the founders of the Green Party USA, identifies Agha Saeed as an activist speaking out against the US support for the Islamist mujahideen in during the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

“In the early 1980s [Saeed] spoke out against the US support for mujahedeen, including Osama bin Laden, as a misguided step; because of this,” writes Camejo, “the FBI visited him to try to pressure him to stay in line with US foreign policy.”

Critics of Saeed are suspicious primarily of his friendships, including with Al-Arian. Conservative news website Breitbart wrote, “Saeed once testified on behalf of Sami Al-Arian, the U.S. leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, which has murdered countless Israeli Jews.”

Breitbart continued by saying, “Saeed said of Al-Arian during his criminal trial, “I believe that Prof. Arian had used the word ‘jihad’ to induce a spirit of self-purification and public benefit among the community members.”

In 2000 the New York Daily News criticized a $50,000 donation made to Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaign by the AMA. They cited Saeed’s support of Palestinians using armed resistance against Israel. In response, Clinton condemned the remarks and declined the donation. Her opponents referred to the donation as “blood money,” according to The Intercept.

Today, Saeed alleges he has been identified as a “senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” a claim he says to be false. He suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease, but continues to be active politically, most recently advocating for Palestinian rights.

With the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act in 2013, Saeed believes that US domestic policies are becoming more like those of the Soviet Union. The NDAA is controversially known for allowing the US military to detain American citizens indefinitely without due process or trial.

“The US is fast becoming a Post-Democratic Society,” he said. “All of these slow and gradual erosions of civil liberties have led to the slow, subtle, yet unmistakable evisceration of democracy.”