Almost thirty years ago, Rees helped to form the Western Goals Foundation with conservative icon Congressman Larry McDonald. This "privatized" the domestic spying restricted in the aftermath of the Church Hearings. Rees ran a network of spies infiltrating groups on the left and spinning their findings to law enforcement and conservative networks to feed their paranoia. Abramoff’s College Republicans, YAFers (Young Americans for Freedom) and other conservative youth groups would supply Rees with spies and information.
In 1983 the operation was exposed in Los Angeles, The 2004 ACLU Report on Surveillance (PDF) provides a quick synopsis of the case:
The Western Goals Foundation. In Los Angeles, thousands of files on activists of all kinds were ordered destroyed in the wake of the revelations of domestic spying in the 1970s. But in 1983 these raw intelligence files were discovered hidden away in the garage of an LAPD detective, who had been sharing them with the Western Goals Foundation, a Cold War anti-communist group that used the files to build private dossiers on progressive political activists around the nation. Western Goals acted as a private "clearinghouse" of dossiers on political activists from police agencies in different states – collecting, disseminating and "laundering" the sources of that information. The group circulated information – much of it false and defamatory – about those activists not only to local police departments, but also to numerous federal police agencies including the Secret Service, the FBI, the State Department and the CIA.
The death of Larry McDonald combined with the exposure in LA spelled the end of the Western Goals Foundation as a viable domestic spying operation. No matter. Rees and company just renamed the operation and continued.
For a while they became the Mid-Atlantic Research Associates and continued where the Western Goals Foundation left off. Rees and company were involved in spying on groups opposed to the Reagan agenda of covert wars in Central America, South America and Africa. Their "research" would find its way into the rhetoric, myths and talking points of the conservative movement.
For example, the myth that the Nuclear Freeze Movement was a "Soviet plot" could be traced back to the writings and research of Rees and his wing-nut spies for hire. Not surprisingly, Reagan would cite Rees’ spin as he attack progressive movements of the day. And then there was the concerted effort to attack and destroy CISPES, (the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador).
By the mid-eighties—with funding by Richard Mellon Scaife—the spy network became a "think tank" with the non-descript name: The Maldon Institute. Ever since, they have been in on various efforts to infiltrate and smear progressive movement and anybody who would protest the effort to establish One-Party Rule in the United States or their corporate masters.
Rees and the Maldon Institute played a significant role in the Great Philly Puppet Raid, but they’ve also been active in many other cases. Some have been exposed. Most have stayed in the shadows.
For example, Rees and his spies had a hand in the recently disclosed decades of spying on the National Lawyers Guild.
And you can be certain that their research and rumors were a factor in the 1999 WTO Protests in Seattle. Gangs, Hooligans, and Anarchists—The Vanguard of Netwar in the Streets, a Rand Report (PDF) cited the work of the Maldon Institute’s December 1999 report, Battle in Seattle: Strategy and Tactics Behind the WTO Protests and the Maldon Institute is named in the documents collected by the Seattle City Clerk's Office during their WTO Accountability Review Committee examination of the police riot. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Rees and his gang moved their focus onto environmental groups, animal rights groups and—of course—unions. Anybody who had a complaint against Rees' corporate masters was a threat.
In the aftermath of 9-11, it was information from the Maldon Institute that banded some of these groups as terrorist threats. Martha Powers has long been one of the key people on Rees’s team and this was her speaker’s bio in a 2003 program for the 11th Annual Terrorism Trends & Forecasts Symposium:
Martha Powers. is a professional journalist, has been associated with The Maldon Institute in various roles since its formation in 1985. Today she heads this international risk analysis group as its president and chief executive officer. She is also managing editor of the bi-monthly publication The International Reports: Early Warning.
Initially, Ms. Powers specialized in reporting on political and economic issues in the developing world with emphasis on Africa and U.N. peacekeeping activities. She subsequently developed expertise in the fields of domestic and international terrorism and has been the author of numerous communications regarding the organization and activities of these groups.
Due to the spread of violent civil disorder across national borders caused by anti-globalization/IMF/World and organizations and their supporters, Ms. Powers helped establish a new Maldon section focused on the analysis of civil unrest, adverse action and violence perpetrated against corporations. This information is used to prevent or mitigate damage that can be caused by those groups.
The Maldon Institute specializes in putting a spin on their research. They specialize in fear mongering and over-statement. They send bulletins, reports and newsletters about emerging threats to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. They infiltrate progressive groups and tie them to real, imagined and perceived threats in these missives. They present themselves as a credible source and law enforcement resources are deployed to counter these threats. And the next thing you know you have a police riot in Seattle or a raid on a puppet warehouse in Philly.
One can only imagine what they have in mind for this summer.
