FOCUS | FBI Builds Huge File on Antiwar, Rights Groups

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FOCUS | FBI Builds Huge File on Antiwar, Rights Groups

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 06:32:53 -0700

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOCUS | FBI Builds Huge File on Antiwar, Rights Groups

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805Z.shtml

 

 

 

Large Volume of FBI Files Alarms US Activist Groups

By Eric Lichtblau

The New York Times

 

Monday 18 July 2005

 

Washington - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at

least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a

handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups

charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush

administration.

 

The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on

the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush

administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on

Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil

disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the

Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal

court in Washington.

 

The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of

Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain

that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance

against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of

documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the

interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding

the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.

 

F.B.I. and Justice Department officials declined to say what was

in the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But

they stressed that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have

not sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups

and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political

protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at

demonstrations, not to quell free speech. They said there might be an

innocuous explanation for the large volume of files on the A.C.L.U.

and Greenpeace, like preserving requests from or complaints about the

groups in agency files.

 

But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the

disclosure.

 

" I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us, " said

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. " Why would the

F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization

engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other

than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities? "

 

Protest groups charge that F.B.I. counterterrorism officials have

used their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line

between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist

activity in what they liken to F.B.I. political surveillance of the

1960's. The debate became particularly heated during protests over the

war in Iraq and the run-up to the Republican National Convention in

New York City last year, with the disclosures that the F.B.I. had

collected extensive information on plans for protests.

 

In all, the A.C.L.U. is seeking F.B.I. records since 2001 or

earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush

administration's policies on the Iraq war and other matters.

 

The Justice Department is opposing the A.C.L.U.'s request to

expedite the review of material it is seeking under the Freedom of

Information Act, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public

interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in

the thousands of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for

Greenpeace and the A.C.L.U alone. The A.C.L.U., which went to court in

a separate case to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the

government's detention and interrogation practices, said the F.B.I.

records on the dozens of protest groups could total tens of thousands

of pages by the time the request is completed.

 

The much smaller files that the F.B.I. has already turned over in

recent weeks center on two other groups that were involved in

political protests in the last few years, and those files point to

previously undisclosed communications by bureau counterterrorism

officials regarding activity at protests.

 

Six pages of internal F.B.I. documents on a group called United

for Peace and Justice, which led wide-scale protests over the Iraq

war, discuss the group's role in 2003 in preparing protests for the

Republican National Convention.

 

A memorandum by counterterrorism personnel in the F.B.I.'s Los

Angeles office circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New

York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington makes passing reference to

possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for

disruptions but also quotes at much greater length from more benign

statements protesters had released on the Internet and elsewhere to

prepare for the Republican convention.

 

One section of the F.B.I. memo, for instance, quotes from a

statement put out by protesters to rally support for convention

protests: " Imagine: A million people on the street, representing the

diversity of New York, and the multiplicity of this nation - community

organizers, black radicals, unions, anarchists, church groups, queers,

grandmas for peace, AIDS activists, youth organizers,

environmentalists, people of color contingents, global justice

organizers, those united for peace and justice, veterans, and everyone

who is maligned by Bush's malicious agenda - on the street - en masse. "

 

A second file turned over by the F.B.I. on the American Indian

Movement of Colorado includes seven pages of internal documents and

press clippings related to protests and possible disruptions in the

Denver area in connection with Columbus Day. In that case, a 2002

memorandum distributed to F.B.I. counterterrorism officials from

agents in Denver said that " although the majority of demonstrators at

the Columbus Day events will be peaceful, a small fraction of

individuals intent on causing violence and property damage can be

expected. "

 

An agent in Denver requested that the F.B.I. open a preliminary

investigation " to allow for identification and investigation of

individuals planning criminal activity during Columbus Day, October

2002, " the memorandum said. The file does not indicate what came of

the request.

 

The documents are similar in tone to a controversial bulletin

distributed among F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in October 2003

that analyzed the tactics, training and organization of antiwar

demonstrators who were then planning protests in Washington and San

Francisco.

 

The 2003 memo led to an internal Justice Department inquiry after

an F.B.I. employee charged that it improperly blurred the line between

lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice

Department's Office of Legal Counsel found that the bulletin raised no

legal problems and that any First Amendment impact posed by the

F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and

constitutional.

 

Still, the debate over the F.B.I.'s practices intensified last

year during the presidential campaign. The F.B.I. questioned numerous

political protesters, and issued subpoenas for some to appear before

grand juries, in an effort to head off what officials said they feared

could be violent and disruptive convention protests. And the Justice

Department opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed records

regarding Internet messages posted by critics of the Bush

administration that listed the names of delegates to the Republican

convention.

 

Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and

Justice, a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups, said she was

particularly concerned that the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division was

discussing the coalition's operations. " We always assumed the F.B.I.

was monitoring us, but to see the counterterrorism people looking at

us like this is pretty jarring, " she said.

 

At Greenpeace, which has protested both the Bush administration's

environmental record and its policies in Iraq, John Passacantando,

executive director of the group's United States operation, said he too

was troubled by what he had learned.

 

" If the F.B.I. has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of

information on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful

activity for 34 years, it suggests they're just attempting to stifle

the voices of their critics, " Mr. Passacantando said.

 

Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the Justice

Department in a highly unusual prosecution in 2003 after two of its

protesters went aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner.

A federal judge in Miami threw out the case last year.

 

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