FBI Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times
Getty Images
Protesters from across the nation march past the White House in Washington
D.C., October 25.
WASHINGTON (Nov. 22) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected
extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar
demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any
suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to
interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.
The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last
month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco,
detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for
demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against
tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting
demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to
get into a secured site.
F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was
aimed at identifying anarchists and "extremist elements" plotting violence, not
at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.
The initiative has won the support of some local police, who view it as a
critical way to maintain order at large-scale demonstrations. Indeed, some law
enforcement officials said they believed the F.B.I.'s approach had helped to
ensure that nationwide antiwar demonstrations in recent months, drawing
hundreds of thousands of protesters, remained largely free of violence and
disruption.
But some civil rights advocates and legal scholars said the monitoring program
could signal a return to the abuses of the 1960's and 1970's, when J. Edgar
Hoover was the F.B.I. director and agents routinely spied on political
protesters like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more
than lawful protest and dissent," said Anthony Romero, executive director of
the American Civil Liberties Union. "The line between terrorism and legitimate
civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're
going back to the days of Hoover."
Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University who has
written about F.B.I. history, said collecting intelligence at demonstrations is
probably legal.
But he added: "As a matter of principle, it has a very serious chilling effect
on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, `We're going to
ferret out information on demonstrations,' that deters people. People don't
want their names and pictures in F.B.I. files."
The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass
and discredit Hoover's political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro,
led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities.
Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General
John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political
rallies, mosques and any event "open to the public."
Mr. Ashcroft said the Sept. 11 attacks made it essential that the F.B.I. be
allowed to investigate terrorism more aggressively. The bureau's recent
strategy in policing demonstrations is an outgrowth of that policy, officials
said.
"We're not concerned with individuals who are exercising their constitutional
rights," one F.B.I. official said. "But it's obvious that there are individuals
capable of violence at these events. We know that there are anarchists that are
actively involved in trying to sabotage and commit acts of violence at these
different events, and we also know that these large gatherings would be a prime
target for terrorist groups."
Civil rights advocates, relying largely on anecdotal evidence, have complained
for months that federal officials have surreptitiously sought to suppress the
First Amendment rights of antiwar demonstrators.
Critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, for instance, have sued the
government to learn how their names ended up on a "no fly" list used to stop
suspected terrorists from boarding planes. Civil rights advocates have accused
federal and local authorities in Denver and Fresno, Calif., of spying on
antiwar demonstrators or infiltrating planning meetings. And the New York
Police Department this year questioned many of those arrested at demonstrations
about their political affiliations, before halting the practice and expunging
the data in the face of public criticism.
The F.B.I. memorandum, however, appears to offer the first corroboration of a
coordinated, nationwide effort to collect intelligence regarding
demonstrations.
The memorandum, circulated on Oct. 15 -- just 10 days before many thousands
gathered in Washington and San Francisco to protest the American occupation of
Iraq -- noted that the bureau "possesses no information indicating that violent
or terrorist activities are being planned as part of these protests" and that
"most protests are peaceful events."
But it pointed to violence at protests against the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank as evidence of potential disruption. Law enforcement
officials said in interviews that they had become particularly concerned about
the ability of antigovernment groups to exploit demonstrations and promote a
violent agenda. "What a great opportunity for an act of terrorism, when all
your resources are dedicated to some big event and you let your guard down," a
law enforcement official involved in securing recent demonstrations said. "What
would the public say if we didn't look for criminal activity and intelligence
at these events?"
The memorandum urged local law enforcement officials "to be alert to these
possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal
acts" to counterterrorism task forces run by the F.B.I. It warned about an
array of threats, including homemade bombs and the formation of human chains.
The memorandum discussed demonstrators' "innovative strategies," like the
videotaping of arrests as a means of "intimidation" against the police. And it
noted that protesters "often use the Internet to recruit, raise funds and
coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations."
"Activists may also make use of training camps to rehearse tactics and
counter-strategies for dealing with the police and to resolve any logistical
issues," the memorandum continued. It also noted that protesters may raise
money to help pay for lawyers for those arrested.
F.B.I. counterterrorism officials developed the intelligence cited in the
memorandum through firsthand observation, informants, public sources like the
Internet and other methods, officials said.
Officials said the F.B.I. treats demonstrations no differently than other
large-scale and vulnerable gatherings. The aim, they said, was not to monitor
protesters but to gather intelligence.
Critics said they remained worried. "What the F.B.I. regards as potential
terrorism," Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said, "strikes me as civil
disobedience."
Charles Nemo
http://members.aol.com/ChasNemo/index.html
"Nemo is the Wal-Mart of the dark side, the one-stop superstore for everything
ugly, from Satanism to Nazi occultism to serial killers."
~Forbidden Internet Magazine #1 (May 2001)
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