AA'ers
From Plastic Tub
Revision as of 16:42, 26 Feb 2005
Participants in the AA. The term was originally used in Field Agent Smedley Wissock's report to his supeiors at the FBI dated October 4, 1968: Internal Report 27a, 1967: The AA and Satellite Organs, Threat Factors and Subversive Tendencies.
As part of the notorious COINTELPRO in the late Sixties, Wissock was assigned "to unravel the baffling enigma of the AA." Having infiltrated the movement over the period of several years, Wissock always managed to remain a background figure, a functionary of sorts. As part of his official cover, he posed as a go-between the AA and the International Fund for Social Relief, a supposedly non-partisan organization dedicated to helping feed children in underveloped parts of the world. Stimes Addisson had been approached by a an earnest young Wissock sometime in 1966 for a benefit concert and reading to be held in New York City. Addisson, no bleeding heart by any standard, agreed to lend a hand after the impassioned sales pitch by Wissock left him impressed by the rhetorical flourish he added at the end: "Whaddaya say?"
Unknown to Addisson, the IFSR was a money-laundering front for the FBI, an ingenious scheme that allowed the parties under observation to pay for their own surveillance with tax-free contributions. Wissock appeared to have a favorable opinion of most og the AA circle, but couldn't help but note that "strange doings are underfoot that cannot be ignored."
This information was released to Guileess Maccabee under the Freedom of Information act in 2001.
