Home > Documents Obtained by ACLU Expose FBI and Police Targeting of Political Groups

Documents Obtained by ACLU Expose FBI and Police Targeting of Political Groups

by Open-Publishing - Friday 20 May 2005
2 comments

Police - Repression Democracy USA

The American Civil Liberties Union charged today that the FBI and local police are engaging in intimidation based on political association and are improperly investigating law-abiding human rights and advocacy groups, according to documents obtained through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. ACLU affiliates today filed FOIA requests seeking similar documents in ten states.

ACLU Files Federal Lawsuit and FOIA Requests to Uncover More Files

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union charged today that the FBI and local police are engaging in intimidation based on political association and are improperly investigating law-abiding human rights and advocacy groups, according to documents obtained through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. ACLU affiliates today filed FOIA requests seeking similar documents in ten states.

"Since when did feeding the homeless become a terrorist activity?" asked ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "When the FBI and local law enforcement target groups like Food Not Bombs under the guise of fighting terrorism, many Americans who oppose government policies will be discouraged from speaking out and exercising their rights."

In response to widespread complaints from students and political activists who said they were questioned by FBI agents in the months leading up to last summer?s political conventions, the ACLU filed FOIA requests in six states and the District of Columbia in December 2004 on behalf of more than 100 groups and individuals. To date, the ACLU has received fewer than 20 pages in response to the FOIAs.

The ACLU charged that the FBI is wrongfully withholding thousands of pages of documents, and today filed a lawsuit in federal court to compel the FBI to comply with the FOIA requests. The complaint seeks files kept by the FBI on the ACLU, as well as Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

The ACLU said that the few documents received to date through the December FOIA requests shed light on the FBI?s misuse of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to engage in political surveillance. In Colorado, one memo indicates an ongoing federal interest in Food Not Bombs, a group that provides free vegetarian food to hungry people and protests war and poverty.

The same memo suggests that an FBI interview of Sarah Bardwell and call to Scott Silber prior to last fall?s political conventions were intended as a means of intimidation. The FBI notes that although they did not obtain information about criminal activity from either student, it was unnecessary to contact others in the area as the "purpose of the interviews was served."

"The FBI is taking tax dollars and resources established to fight terrorism and instead spying on innocent Americans who have done nothing more than speak out or practice their faith," Beeson said. "By recruiting the local police into these activities, they are also sowing dissent and suspicion in communities around the country."

The FOIA requests filed today include requests from individuals and groups in Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. The FOIAs seek two kinds of information: the actual FBI files of groups and individuals targeted for speaking out; and information about how the practices and funding structure of the task forces, known as JTTFs, may be encouraging rampant and unwarranted spying.

The ACLU?s clients comprise a Who’s Who of national and local advocates for well-known causes, including the environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, grassroots politics, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties. Requests also were filed on behalf of numerous individuals.

Reverend Raymond Payne, a United Methodist Minister from Russell, Kentucky is among the individuals seeking FBI documents. Last October, Canadian border officials interrogated Reverend Payne for more than an hour as he attempted to enter Canada for a vacation with his wife. According to Reverend Payne, the officials informed him that the interrogation was triggered because he is the subject of an FBI file. Reverend Payne has never been arrested, been charged with a crime, or even participated in a protest.

The controversial FBI-led task forces came under scrutiny last month after Portland, Oregon became the first city in the nation to withdraw local law enforcement participation from the JTTFs rather than allow them to participate without proper oversight. The JTTF partnerships between the FBI and local police, in which local officers are "deputized" as federal agents, are intended to identify and monitor individuals and groups implicated in terrorism. But the ACLU charges that these task forces are allowing local police officers to target peaceful political and religious groups with no connection to terrorism.

The documents obtained by the ACLU are not the only evidence that the FBI is building files on activists, Beeson said. A classified FBI intelligence memorandum disclosed publicly in November 2003 revealed that the FBI has actually directed police to target and monitor lawful political demonstrations under the rubric of fighting terrorism. This memo is available at http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=14450&c=206.

For details and legal papers regarding the FOIA requests filed today by ACLU affiliates around the country, including a list of clients, go to www.aclu.org/spyfiles.

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=18258&c=282

http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1291114.htm

Forum posts

  • FBI to Fire Dissident Agent

    The FBI has moved to fire a veteran agent who alleged that the bureau had mishandled domestic investigations of the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, the Palestinian group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

    On Thursday, Robert Wright was ordered by superiors at an FBI counterterrorism command office in Washington to hand over his badge and weapon, was suspended and was told he would be fired within 30 days, said an official with Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group whose attorneys represent Wright. Wright was told he was being dismissed for, among other things, publicly discussing sensitive FBI matters in 2003, the official said.

    An FBI spokesman declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of bureau personnel matters.

    John Vincent, a former FBI agent who is the Midwest representative of Judicial Watch, said Wright was informed he was being suspended in part for public statements he made at a news conference in Washington in 2003, when he criticized the FBI’s "pathetic" counterterrorism work.

    Wright, who had investigated Hamas activities in this country as an agent in Chicago, had stated publicly as early as 2002 that he believed the FBI should prosecute Hamas activists in the United States, rather than simply keeping tabs on them in "intelligence" probes. In the last year, the Justice Department has filed criminal charges against some of those alleged Hamas associates.

    Wright has been under disciplinary investigation for almost three years. He has two lawsuits pending against the FBI. One alleges that the FBI improperly released confidential information from his personnel file, and the other accuses the bureau of violating his rights of free expression by blocking him from discussing certain subjects in a book.

    Yesterday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) sent FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III a letter repeating their support for Wright and expressing concern that the FBI was retaliating against him for his public statements.

    For those of you who, like me, still cling to the hope that most
    people join the machine hoping to make things better.

    When I first read in 1997 that the FBI were concerned that "foreign-born" terrorists were
    training at U.S. flight schools including secure military bases, because they believed
    that some of those students were part of a plot to hijack planes and fly them into the WTC
    and Pentagon, I wondered why the FBI would comment on an ongoing investigation. Whoever
    they were, the leakers either jeopardized the investigation or believed there wouldn’t be
    one.

    I have wondered ever since why those agents spoke up. In light of what has happened to
    Robert Wright I believe the leakers feared correctly that there wouldn’t be an
    investigation. It occurs to me I’ve been too hard on the spooks and LEOs of this world,
    because once in a while when they disobey orders they are capable of doing great things.
    This was one of those times.

    What’s a lot harder to deal with is the fact that thousands of people can read a story
    like that, never think through what it means, and blithely accept the lie years later that
    no one could ever have imagined a gambit like 9/11.

    In case you never caught the stories from the Yousef trial, here’s what they meant to me:
    the leakers believed that someone was counting on catching NORAD off guard, and reasoned
    correctly that the plot could not succeed if NORAD were prepared.

    That’s when it occurred to me the plotters felt certain NORAD would not respond. They
    thought it was an inside job. They were training on secure U.S. military bases. They
    were in a position to know.

    No matter who you think was behind 9/11, there is no denying the Feds had ample warning of
    the targets and could have defended them. The night before the attacks, Shrub’s hotel was
    surrounded by surface-to-air missile batteries and overflown by an AWACS. The Pentagon
    advised Italian defense forces to use the same measures to protect the G8 summit in Genoa
    at the end of July.

    No matter who you think was behind 9/11, there is no denying that the plotters got exactly
    what they were counting on all along: a free pass from U.S. air defenses. Today you can
    buy a dozen books detailing what how the FBI learned about the plot in 1995, but what is
    rarely mentioned is that the details of the plot were published for all to read during the
    Yousef trial, when the judge declined to include the testimony.

    That is why I have waited since 1997 to see who would come forward from within the FBI and
    try to expose the truth about government involvement. One of my best pals in high school
    decided to join the CIA, believing she could help spread democracy. For those of you who,
    like her, believe you can work within the system, consider what happened to Special Agent
    Robert Wright and Sibel Edmonds

    http://tinyurl.com/8ctj4

  • The ACLU is a subversive organization, that is going to eventually be exposed for harboring rats and moles like Lynn Stewart and Ramsey Clarke (both Democrats), who despise this country and want it
    punished.

    As far as NORAD, we were admittedly asleep at the switch on 9/11. Can you imagine a USAF fighter pilot shooting down ;a civilian airliner with US citizens on board? It has NEVER happened in our history, and there was just mass confusion on that terrible day. You the conspiracy theorists will never believe that, but so be it. We cannot prove it to you.

    I’m sick and tired of the JEWISH liberal Democrat press (I>E< New York Times) trying to besmirch this country over and over again.