(Ken Silva, Headline USA) “You are a cunning, evil man, who knows full well what he is up to,” an unnamed American citizen wrote to then-CIA director William Colby in March 1976. “Kindly add my name to your blacklist. You may open a file on me.”
The American had his request granted. The Secret Service and FBI launched a probe to find out who wrote Colby the “threatening” letter, according to FBI records released by the bureau this week.
The American citizen, whose name was redacted, was writing Colby in response to the news that the CIA had spied on then-Rep. Bella Abzug, D-N.Y.
The CIA’s file on Azbug reportedly dated back 20 years, to when she represented a client at the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953.
“The CIA also acknowledged that it had opened some of the mail of the Manhattan Democrat and had retained copies of her letters in its files,” the New York Times reported at the time.
Responding to these revealtions, the letter-writer, apparently an Abzug supporter, criticized Colby for being “un-American.”
“That a no-good skunk like you, with the mentality of a rattlesnake, could pursue a respected figure like Mrs. Abzug so relentlessly is an indictment of you, not her,” the letter-writer told Colby.
“You ought to be shot, you son of a bitch!”
Colby apparently took the comment about being shot as a threat, and got the Secret Service and FBI involved.
For some reason, the FBI opened an investigation into “extortion,” according to an April 1975 memo, which said that the three-page letter was being examined by the bureau’s laboratory and identification divisions.
Records indicate that the FBI determined that the letter came from someone living in New Jersey.
The records indicate that the federal investigation was still ongoing as of February 1976, but its unclear how the matter was resolved. Nothing in the letter to Colby appears criminal, so it’s possible that the Justice Department chose not to pursue the matter.
If such an incident happened today, it might turn out much differently.
For instance, the FBI’s investigation of Utah man Craig Robertson for threatening Joe Biden ended in Robertson’s death.
Robertson had posted via Facebook that he was planning to clean “the dust off the M24 sniper rifle” because Biden was visiting Utah. He also noted that “perhaps Utah will become famous this week as the place a sniper took out Biden the Marxist.”
Robertson, however, was old, handicapped and essentially confined to his home. According to reports from neighbors, the FBI attacked between 6:00 and 6:30 AM Wednesday morning.
What followed was a barrage of gunshots, after which authorities were seen carrying the elderly man out of his house—leaving his bloody corpose on the curb for hours, according to a neighbor.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
