Operation Boulder surveilled thousands of Arab students and deported activists
Evidence
Arabs learned firsthand that American individual freedoms were circumscribed by race, religion, and international politics. After members of Black September, a Palestinian resistance organization, killed Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972, the Nixon administration launched Operation Boulder. The FBI spied on Arab communities, tapped their phones, and gathered intelligence on their political activities. The Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism established by President Richard Nixon in 1972 oversaw FBI surveillance of Fatah, Black September, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine operatives in the United States with a particular interest in their suspected infiltration of Arab American organizations. The three-year program led to the screening of at least 3,500 Arab students and visitors and the deportation of hundreds of Arab immigrant activists on technical immigration irregularities. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 654
Categorization
- XREF: Parallels the post-9/11 special registration and surveillance programs described in later chapters, showing a recurring pattern in US national security policy. — connects to: Operation Boulder redeployed COINTELPRO counterinsurgency methods to racialize Arab Americans — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 249
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 654