The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and raiding the homes of several anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and possibly a couple other Midwest cities. Members of the FBI's "Joint Terrorism Task Force" spent a few hours at each Minneapolis residence, seizing personal photographs and papers, computers and cell phones as well as serving Federal Grand Jury subpoenas on the various activists.
Obviously the scathing review of post 9-11 FBI "terrorism investigations" targeting various peace and social justice groups completed by the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) and just issued four days ago gave no pause to the FBI to reflect before continuing to do more of the same. Nor did accompanying media revelations about the FBI having improperly conducted surveillances of an antiwar rally in Pittsburgh; the Catholic Worker peace magazine; a Quaker activist, the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, of members of the environmental group Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and of a small student group of anti-war activists in Iowa City, Iowa who were targeted for 9 months in 2008.
National news stories revealed that in one of the investigations, FBI Director Robert Mueller inadvertently providing a fabricated justification for the surveillance of an antiwar rally. From The Boston Globe's article "Red-Baiting, Circa 2002 - 2006":
The Justice Department's Inspector General report released this week pulled few punches in admonishing the FBI for targeting anti-war groups and advocacy organizations with no apparent justification, and for placing non-violent activists in those groups on terrorist watch lists. The report chastised the bureau for having a "weak'' rationale for some of its investigations; investigating where there was "little indication of any possible federal crimes''; and extending "the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis.'' The agency was also taken to task for improperly retaining information about the targeted groups in its files and for classifying investigations of peace groups "under its 'Acts of Terrorism' classification.''
These are serious abuses. Using anti-terrorism laws to target domestic protest organizations is redolent of the actions of the Justice Department against law-abiding protesters during World War I and the Vietnam War -- actions that are rightly remembered as disgraceful.FBI Director Robert Mueller was misled by subordinates into telling Congress, falsely, that surveillance of a peaceful 2002 anti-war rally was "an outgrowth of an FBI investigation.'' In fact, it was the product of an agent receiving a "make-work'' assignment on a "slow day.''
But perhaps what is more important here than a "let's make work on a slow day" is the perverse career incentives that serve to pressure FBI counter-terrorism agents to produce "stats" (statistics). An agent gains "stats" for serving subpoenas, national security letters for records, executing search warrants, contacting confidential sources, etc., whether or not any relevant evidence is obtained via this "work" and whether or not it leads to prosecution or preventing a crime. It is a well known fact that nearly 1,000 people were rounded up and detained (mostly in New York City) immediately after 9-11. None of those detained were ever identified as "terrorists" but that's when these career enhancing "stats" began to be awarded for each detention, arrest, subpoena, search warrant, etc.
The IG, however, has only reviewed FBI "terrorism" investigations thus far from 2002 to 2006. What happened in Iowa City in 2008 shows the FBI did not cease its improper investigations after 2006. Documents obtained through FOIA showed the FBI and its local law enforcement partners targeted students and anti-war activists in Iowa City, following them to parks, food co-ops, libraries, bars and restaurants, etc., over a 9 month period with little factual justification other than the allegation that the group was plotting to protest the Republican National Convention. The FBI even managed to secretly search the anti-war members' personal trash.
It would therefore seem that someone should quickly contact the IG and ask for review of those cases since 2006. Additionally "whistleblower complaints" can be made concerning fraud, waste, abuse and illegality by citizens to the Office of Special Counsel.
Friday's raids in Minneapolis occurred after the prior Attorney General Guidelines were erased that used to require a level of factual justification before domestic groups could be spied on. Additionally, the Patriot Act and an earlier 1996 law broadly prohibiting "material support to terrorism" were allowed to stand even though these laws make speech advocating human rights a terrorist crime. The final problem is the law enforcement mindset first seen back in 2003 from a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) who was forced to defend his agency's unjustified targeting of anti-war protesters without any factual evidence. CATIC Spokesman Van Winkle, apparently without thinking too hard, reasoned that evidence wasn't needed to issue warnings on war protesters. "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest)," said Van Winkle, "You can almost argue that a protest against (the "war on terror") is a terrorist act."
This insane Orwellian dynamic--the pretext that has allowed the FBI to turn its resources from real criminals to harass U.S. citizens--was best summarized by one guy's small sign: "FBI: Stop clowning around. Find Bin Laden instead."
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I was a CISPES member in Seattle in 1983 and 1984 when it was infiltrated by the FBI. The undercover agents they sent posed as real CISPES members but caused utter chaos. These individuals caused the group to split into two factions - twice - and finally our chapter folded in 1985 because there was too much constant chaos. They continued to harass some of us after CISPES folded, especially those who became involved in the campaign to create an African American Museum. I write about this in my recent memoir THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE (www.stuartbramhall.com). I currently live "in exile" in New Zealand.
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This is for all the posters here who feel that the change in the regulations would be a benign thing that wouldn't affect anyone's civil rights and is being proposed as an anti-terrorist measure. Historically, there has been event after event where everyone's guarantees under the Constitution have been thrown out the window under a vengeful or petty president. This sort of behavior has been going in high gear since the beginnings of the Cold War.
Yes, we have a terrorist threat, and perhaps the de-encryption tool is useful. But what else will the feds do with this power? There are documented cases of the CIA helping US corporations conduct industrial espionage--information that never resulted in sanctions or prosecutions for any of the players. Our intelligence gathering capabilities are already producing too much data to properly evaluate.
And again, even if we trust THIS president, why should we open this Pandora's box? Do we trust everyone the American electorate puts into the Oval office going forward?
The IG has limited resources to investigate but even so, he has uncovered numerous violations by the FBI involving indiscriminate use of its authority to issue National Security Letters as well as its targeting of various peace and social justice groups. It's very important that everyone contact Glenn Fine right now and ask him to PLEASE CONTINUE to exercise his oversight role: http://www.justice.gov/oig/FOIA/hotline.htm
“Homegrown Terrorists”: http://wp.me/phRi4-1y
During the Orwellian labeling, fear, and panic incitements of the Bush administration, All of us understood an overt message: You Are Under Suspicion/We Are Watching You. ‘All of us’ included the millions who spoke out or dissented, peacefully & patriotically, against . . . the highest levels of Executive abuses. Those oppressive & regressive measures which [purposely] made average activists feel as if they could be arrested at any time, solely because the President viewed their protests (clarified in the Constitution/Bill of Rights) as “unpatriotic” expressions possibly worthy of an ‘Enemy Combatant’ designation, served, without a doubt, to enhance certain senses: Our guaranteed Freedoms & Rights are only illusionary &/or temporary (depending on who is in power/what agenda currently prevails).
HUAC, in the present: through modern scales & methods: “The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continue[s] full steam”: Secret Evidence. Secret Accusers. Secret Locations. Secret (Tortured Confession) Methods. Secret Sentences. Secrets of the State.
And one has to wonder--if the FBI is involved in this sort of thing, what about the NSA or the CIA? How many millions have been spent monitoring church groups like Pax Christi or CISPES or Abolition 2000?
Nope. The FBI didn't have the resources to stop the 19 guys with box cutters, but you can rest assured--had those same 19 had joined a prayer circle in Lafayette Park on a regular basis and lit candles in prayerful protest against US bombing in Serbia, the FBI would have had a phone books' worth of files.
Yes, there's a lot of denial going on in this thread, and I don't think people here have any understanding of what happens when the state widens the net to look for 'terrorists'. I've been disparaged here for my 'paranoia'. But it's not paranoia if it's happened.
First, there is nothing new in this--in the 1980's, an FBI Director by the name of John Ryan was ordered to begin surveillance on peace groups in the Plowshares movement and their allies in the Catholic Worker. Ryan reported that there was nothing being done that was illegal, and the FBI responded by firing him. This sort of thing was justified in the past by Cold War rhetoric--which isn't available or pertinent now.
Second--it tells us that as usual, the FBI is far more concerned about thought-crimes of questioning the US ' continuing reliance on military options than it is about home-grown terrorism. Remember the right-wing outrage about the Janet Napolitano terrorism report that cited militia threats and right-wing extremism? Apparently, the lesson was learned. While the FBI is chasing priests and nuns, another Timothy McVeigh puts together bombs in a basement laboratory, undisturbed.
If this is how the FBI uses its anti-terrorism resources, perhaps Congress needs to re-think its budget requests.
Second:
The head of Scotland Yard is a magistrate, not just some senior cop. We have no qualifications for the head of the FBI.
So my idea is we pass a law that the head of the FBI have been a Federal judge for at least 5 years. Then, at least, we will have a take on his slant on the law.
This kind of incentive is dangerous.
The FBI were involved in assassinations of Black panthers amongst others during the 60's and the 70's. The kind of behaviour reported here seems like a precursor to the FBI becoming totally unaccountable, and once again engaging in extra-legal murder.
FAIL!