:Mystery still shrouds FBI's eye in the sky

December 29, 2005

In late winter of 2003, an FBI plane kept Bloomington's peace activists on their toes and in a state of nervous tension. The Cessna 182 was buzzing the college town, home to Indiana University's 37,800 students and various alternative-type groups -- forest folk, PETA people, socialists, peaceniks and advocates of straw-bale housing, among others. Some Bloomingtonites were convinced the aircraft was monitoring weekly anti-war activities in the city square, a line of thinking seemingly justified by the plane's very

visible flyover at one rally. The plane was seen in the skies for about 10 days or so before disappearing. So what was that all about? We may never know -- but some activists say it's nothing unfamiliar. "When you live in a college town like this, and they have their own FBI office, what do you expect?" said Sean "Steps to Freedom" Bagley, 42, founder of the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition. That explanation doesn't cut it for the American Civil Liberties Union, which in December 2004 -- inspired by just such activities as the flyovers -- filed a Freedom of Information Act to get hundreds of FBI documents involving hundreds of intelligence-gathering activities. As a result of those reports, released just last week, we do know now that the FBI has been spying on Americans in unprecedented ways, according to the ACLU. We know that PETA, The

Catholic Workers group and Greenpeace are among those in its cross hairs. And we know that in the spring of 2003, the FBI was bearing down hard on the Vegan Community Project in Bloomington. Was the FBI plane focused on the vegans? Or was it targeting the peace movement? Or was it on an unrelated mission? "We have no idea," said Fran Quigley, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. "We will never know, because so much being done by the federal government now is shrouded in secrecy." The files obtained from the FBI on the vegan project, he said, were 99 percent redacted. Truthfully, it's hard to come up with a more innocuous-sounding bunch than the Vegan Community Project. Somehow it lacks the authoritative ring of enemy of the state. If it waged war, would asparagus stalks be the weapon of

choice? We do know the group hosted a meeting in April 2003 at the IU Memorial Union. The guest speaker was Gary Yourofsky, a national lecturer with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). He talked about vegetarianism and easing the suffering of animals, said Jeff Kerr, counsel to PETA. The FBI had planned a surveillance of the meeting. FBI counsel Drew Northern, Indianapolis, said the planned vegan surveillance never took place. "The FBI does not investigate any public interest or advocacy group based on that group's lawful activities or political beliefs," he said. "Investigations . . . are always predicated on specific information about a potential criminal act or terrorist threat." Asparagus spear, anyone? Ruth Holladay's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. You can

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