"The F.B.I.’s surveillance of [John] Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose."

"What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics. At the time of the John Sinclair rally, there was talk that Lennon would join a national concert tour aimed at encouraging young people to get involved in politics — and at defeating President Nixon, who was running for re-election. There were plans to end the tour with a huge rally at the Republican National Convention. The F.B.I.’s timing is noteworthy. Lennon had been involved in high-profile antiwar activities going back to 1969, but the bureau did not formally open its investigation until January 1972 — the year of Nixon’s re-election campaign. In March, just as the presidential campaign was heating up, the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to renew Lennon’s visa, and began deportation proceedings. Nixon was re-elected in November, and a month later, the F.B.I. closed its investigation. If Lennon was considering actively opposing Nixon’s re-election, the spying and the threat of deportation had their intended effect. In May, he announced that he would not be part of any protest activities at the Republican National Convention, and he did not actively participate in the presidential campaign. After revelations about the many domestic SPYING abuses of the 1960’s and 1970’s — including the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. — new restrictions were put in place. But these protections are being eroded today, with the president’s claim of sweeping new authority to pursue the war on terror...."

From "While Nixon Campaigned, the F.B.I. Watched John Lennon," published in The New York Times in 2006. I wanted to reach outside of the Trump Era for something to help people think about William Barr's statement, yesterday, that the FBI spied on Donald Trump's campaign in 2016.

Here's the Wikipedia article on the John Sinclair rally. Lots of video of the event on YouTube.

The rally took place in December 1971, under President Nixon, who was facing reelection in 1972. The NYT piece, which uses the term "domestic spying" as a matter of course, was published during the Bush administration, when there was a high level of vigilance about domestic surveillance. The alleged surveillance of the Donald Trump campaign took place under President Obama, who, obviously, deserves the same degree of scrutiny as any other President.

ADDED: Also from the NYT in 2006, there's "F.B.I. Struggling to Reinvent Itself to Fight Terror":

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks spurred a new mission, F.B.I. culture still respects door-kicking investigators more than deskbound analysts sifting through tidbits of data. The uneasy transition into a spy organization has prompted criticism from those who believe that the bureau cannot competently gather domestic intelligence, and others, including some insiders, who fear that it can....

[I]f making arrests is no longer the top priority, many agents fear that an ill-defined quest for domestic intelligence is likely to lead to political trouble, as the hunt for Communists in the 1960’s led to surveillance on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon. Michael Rolince, a veteran F.B.I. counterterrorism official who retired last year, said the attorney general’s investigative guidelines, first imposed as a reform in 1976, “are absolutely necessary to keep F.B.I. agents out of trouble.”....

Mr. Mudd said he knew that concern about civil liberties was “in the DNA” at the F.B.I., and he recently read a biography of J. Edgar Hoover, whose long tenure as director was marred by abuses, to recall the dangers of uncontrolled domestic spying. Still, he said, “I do bristle a bit at people saying, ‘You want to just go back to the 60’s and 70’s.’ ”...

ALSO: Now, I'm looking at today's New York Times and see a gigantic set of articles on the surveillance of private citizens. There are at least 12 articles collected under the heading "The Privacy Project," introduced like this:

Companies and governments are gaining new powers to follow people across the internet and around the world, and even to peer into their genomes. The benefits of such advances have been apparent for years; the costs — in anonymity, even autonomy — are now becoming clearer. The boundaries of privacy are in dispute, and its future is in doubt. Citizens, politicians and business leaders are asking if societies are making the wisest tradeoffs. The Times is embarking on this months long project to explore the technology and where it’s taking us, and to convene debate about how it can best help realize human potential.

The collected articles are not new. They include "The Domestic Spying Trap," an editorial from 2003:

The Central Intelligence Agency's supporters in Congress recently made a quiet effort to give it broad new powers to engage in domestic spying....

Intelligence gathering has long been divided between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose jurisdiction is domestic, and the C.I.A., which operates overseas. The C.I.A. charter, a federal statute, prohibits it from engaging in ''law enforcement'' and ''internal security functions'' -- and from exercising subpoena power. But at the direction of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the C.I.A. engaged in illegal spying against domestic targets, including antiwar protesters.

The F.B.I. engaged in its own abuses by spying on antiwar groups and civil rights leaders, but it now operates under guidelines governing its agents' actions. Because its goal is to collect evidence that can be used in court, it has an interest in following the law....