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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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