tryt
"Bill Case" <Billc548@Hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OupUc.24879$9Y6.23758@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Wherever you are politically, just remember that whatever these assholes
can
do to others today, they can do to you tomorrow. And whatever they get
away
with today, they will increase tomorrow.
Interrogating the Protesters NY Times: August 17, 2004
For several weeks, starting before the Democratic convention, F.B.I.
officers have been questioning potential political demonstrators, and
their
friends and families, about their plans to protest at the two national
conventions. These heavy-handed inquiries are intimidating, and they
threaten to chill freedom of expression. They also appear to be a
spectacularly poor use of limited law-enforcement resources. The F.B.I.
should redirect its efforts to focus more directly on real threats.
Six investigators recently descended on Sarah Bardwell, a 21-year-old
intern
with a Denver antiwar group, who quite reasonably took away the message
that
the government was watching her closely. In Missouri, three men in their
early 20's said they had been followed by federal investigators for days,
then subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. They ended up canceling
their
plans to show up for the Democratic and Republican conventions.
The F.B.I. is going forward with the blessing of the Justice Department's
Office of Legal Counsel - the same outfit that recently approved the use
of
torture against terrorism suspects. In the Justice Department's opinion,
the
chilling effect of the investigations is "quite minimal," and
"substantially
outweighed by the public interest in maintaining safety and order." But
this
analysis gets the balance wrong. When protesters are made to feel like
criminal suspects, the chilling effect is potentially quite serious. And
the
chances of gaining any information that would be useful in stopping
violence
are quite small.
The knock on the door from government investigators asking about political
activities is the stuff of totalitarian regimes. It is intimidating to be
visited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, particularly by
investigator
s who warn that withholding information about anyone with plans to create
a
disruption is a crime.
And few people would want the F.B.I. to cross-examine their friends and
family about them. If engaging in constitutionally protected speech means
subjecting yourself to this kind of government monitoring, many Americans
may decide - as the men from Missouri did - that the cost is too high.
Meanwhile, history suggests that the way to find out what potentially
violent protesters are planning is not to send F.B.I. officers bearing
questionnaires to the doorsteps of potential demonstrators. As became
clear
in the 1960's, F.B.I. monitoring of youthful dissenters is notoriously
unreliable. The files that were created in the past often proved to be
laughably inaccurate.
The F.B.I.'s questioning of protesters is part of a larger campaign
against
political dissent that has increased sharply since the start of the war on
terror.
At the Democratic convention, protesters were sent to a depressing
barbed-wire camp under the subway tracks. And at a recent Bush-Cheney
campaign event, audience members were required to sign a pledge to support
President Bush before they were admitted.
F.B.I. officials insist that the people they interview are free to "close
the door in our faces," but by then the damage may already have been done.
The government must not be allowed to turn a war against foreign enemies
into a campaign against critics at home.
.
