by Patrick J. Buchanan – June 12, 2002

“J. Edgar Hoover is Back: FBI Wages Secret War Against U.S. Citizens.” So runs the alarmist headline over Monday’s column in The Washington Times by civil libertarian Nat Hentoff.

What agitates Hentoff is John Ashcroft’s decision to let the FBI “send its disguised agents into religious institutions, libraries and meetings of citizens critical of government policy – without a previous complaint, or reason to believe that a crime has been committed.”