The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry has been under surveillance by the FBI almost from the day it was founded 15 years ago, the SSSJ reported today. The organization, which has militantly pressed the cause of Soviet Jewry for emigration and civil rights but eschews violence, said it received a 100-page Xeroxed copy of its FBI dossier six months after requesting it under the Freedom of Information Act.
“The file shows that FBI surveillance commenced May 1, 1964, four days after the SSSJ was founded when it ran its first demonstration, a protest at the Soviet UN Mission. Over the years, the SSSJ has been listed under ‘nationalistic tendencies’ and ‘infernal security’,” the SSSJ said.
It said that “Although there are several FBI references to the SSSJ as a peaceful movement, the FBI has periodically linked it in reports to the Jewish Defense League. The G-men seem to have gone even further astray when they inserted in the SSSJ file flyers distributed by a Ukrainian group at a demonstration at a Soviet performance in Seattle,” the organization said.
According to the SSSJ, 41 pages of the dossier “have material blacked out and there are other references to pages completely deleted from the file or given to other agencies such as the State Department.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
