Are librarians among the top professions being watched by the FBI?
Frank Wilkinson, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, said "yes" when he spoke to library and information science students Monday afternoon in the library.
He has fought violations of First Amendment rights and has worked against the FBI Library Awareness program since its inception.
The program, started in 1973, has FBI special agents going to libraries across the country to get library employees to report on foreigners using the research facilities, Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson quoted William Sessions, FBI director, as to why this program was needed.
"Sessions said `If we know what books they are reading, we know if they are planning any terrorist acts,'" Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson talked about the best example of the program.
"FBI agents approached a worker in a Brooklyn, New York, public library and said to . . . check on two foreign men. They stated that it's between you and the FBI," Wilkinson said.
But instead of staying quiet, the worker called a librarian, who then called the American Library Association.
This prompted 266 librarians to write to Sessions, protesting the program.
The librarians who wrote letters are now being monitored due to terrorist actions, Wilkinson said.
The FBI also wanted certain books removed and banned from libraries, he said.
Among the authors targeted include John Steinbeck, Carl Sandberg and Ernest Hemingway.
Wilkinson also has a past with the FBI.
When he became the manager of the first integrated-housing complex in the Los Angeles district of Watts, the FBI, then led by J. Edgar Hoover, put Wilkinson on an FBI list.
Laura Hibbert, a student in the School of Library and Information Science, said she found Wilkinson's speech enlightening.
"You know about the things that happened historically, but it's nice to hear from someone who actually lived in it," Hibbert said.
Danny Wallace, director of the School of Library and Information Science, said he believes Wilkinson's speech was true to life and that this might not be the last of programs like this.
"When you think these things have gone away, they come right back," Wallace said.