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FBI monitors activists, court documents show
(Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, July 18, 2005)
The FBI has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and anti-war protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration. . . . The FBI has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's anti-terror 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 earlier this month in federal court in Washington. . . . The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the ACLU and other groups that maintain that the FBI has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. . . . "Why would the FBI 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?" said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. . . . Protest groups charge that FBI 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 FBI political surveillance of the 1960s. . . . In all, the ACLU is now seeking FBI 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 ACLU's request, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest . . . Six pages of internal FBI 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 last year's Republican National Convention. . . . A memo by counterterrorism personnel in the FBI's Los Angeles office circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington makes reference to possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions but also quotes from more benign statements protesters had released on the Internet and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention.

[COMMENT by Lorenzo: In case you don't remember the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, here are a few examples of what the U.S. government did to its own people: Illegal wiretaps of American citizens . . . paying informants and agitators to infiltrate community groups (including churches and schools) . . . attempting to incite peaceful groups to violence . . . engaging in disinformation campaigns about individuals and groups to confuse the public, create an atmosphere of fear and to isolate sectors of the community committed to change . . . seeking ways to create internal dissension between members and an atmosphere of fear within social activist communities . . . committing criminal acts of violence, fire-bombings and arson against U.S. citizens.

And in an ironic twist of history, one of only two FBI officials to go to jail for these crimes was none other than the infamous Deep Throat whose identity was recently revealed.]

posted by LoZo 5:48 AM