Re: Well, well, well, Whaddya know,...the FBI

I wonder how big their file on YOU is kathleen?

I hear the CT FBI office had to rent space to handle your file.




kathleen wrote:
> The New York Times
> July 18, 2005
> Large Volume of F.B.I. Files Alarms U.S. Activist Groups
> By ERIC LICHTBLAU
>
> WASHINGTON, July 17 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected
> at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on
> a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups
> charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush
> administration.
>
> The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the
> American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush
> administration's antiterrorism 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 this month in a federal court in
> Washington.
>
> The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information
> Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the
> F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against
> critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents
> already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of
> F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war
> and last year's Republican National Convention.
>
> F.B.I. and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the
> A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they
> stressed that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not
> sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and
> that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political
> protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at
> demonstrations, not to quell free speech. They said there might be an
> innocuous explanation for the large volume of files on the A.C.L.U. and
> Greenpeace, like preserving requests from or complaints about the
> groups in agency files.
>
> But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the
> disclosure.
>
> "I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us," said
> Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. "Why would the
> F.B.I. 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?"
>
> Protest groups charge that F.B.I. 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 F.B.I. political surveillance of the 1960's. The
> debate became particularly heated during protests over the war in Iraq
> and the run-up to the Republican National Convention in New York City
> last year, with the disclosures that the F.B.I. had collected extensive
> information on plans for protests.
>
> In all, the A.C.L.U. is seeking F.B.I. 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 A.C.L.U.'s request to expedite
> the review of material it is seeking under the Freedom of Information
> Act, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and
> department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in the thousands
> of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and
> the A.C.L.U alone. The A.C.L.U., which went to court in a separate case
> to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the government's detention
> and interrogation practices, said the F.B.I. records on the dozens of
> protest groups could total tens of thousands of pages by the time the
> request is completed.
>
> The much smaller files that the F.B.I. has already turned over in
> recent weeks center on two other groups that were involved in political
> protests in the last few years, and those files point to previously
> undisclosed communications by bureau counterterrorism officials
> regarding activity at protests.
>
> Six pages of internal F.B.I. 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 the
> Republican National Convention.
>
> A memorandum by counterterrorism personnel in the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles
> office circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New York,
> Boston, Los Angeles and Washington makes passing reference to possible
> anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for
> disruptions but also quotes at much greater length from more benign
> statements protesters had released on the Internet and elsewhere to
> prepare for the Republican convention.
>
> One section of the F.B.I. memo, for instance, quotes from a statement
> put out by protesters to rally support for convention protests:
> "Imagine: A million people on the street, representing the diversity of
> New York, and the multiplicity of this nation - community organizers,
> black radicals, unions, anarchists, church groups, queers, grandmas for
> peace, AIDS activists, youth organizers, environmentalists, people of
> color contingents, global justice organizers, those united for peace
> and justice, veterans, and everyone who is maligned by Bush's malicious
> agenda - on the street - en masse."
>
> A second file turned over by the F.B.I. on the American Indian Movement
> of Colorado includes seven pages of internal documents and press
> clippings related to protests and possible disruptions in the Denver
> area in connection with Columbus Day. In that case, a 2002 memorandum
> distributed to F.B.I. counterterrorism officials from agents in Denver
> said that "although the majority of demonstrators at the Columbus Day
> events will be peaceful, a small fraction of individuals intent on
> causing violence and property damage can be expected."
>
> An agent in Denver requested that the F.B.I. open a preliminary
> investigation "to allow for identification and investigation of
> individuals planning criminal activity during Columbus Day, October
> 2002," the memorandum said. The file does not indicate what came of the
> request.
>
> The documents are similar in tone to a controversial bulletin
> distributed among F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in October 2003
> that analyzed the tactics, training and organization of antiwar
> demonstrators who were then planning protests in Washington and San
> Francisco.
>
> The 2003 memo led to an internal Justice Department inquiry after an
> F.B.I. employee charged that it improperly blurred the line between
> lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice
> Department's Office of Legal Counsel found that the bulletin raised no
> legal problems and that any First Amendment impact posed by the
> F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and
> constitutional.
>
> Still, the debate over the F.B.I.'s practices intensified last year
> during the presidential campaign. The F.B.I. questioned numerous
> political protesters, and issued subpoenas for some to appear before
> grand juries, in an effort to head off what officials said they feared
> could be violent and disruptive convention protests. And the Justice
> Department opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed records
> regarding Internet messages posted by critics of the Bush
> administration that listed the names of delegates to the Republican
> convention.
>
> Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and
> Justice, a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups, said she was
> particularly concerned that the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division was
> discussing the coalition's operations. "We always assumed the F.B.I.
> was monitoring us, but to see the counterterrorism people looking at us
> like this is pretty jarring," she said.
>
> At Greenpeace, which has protested both the Bush administration's
> environmental record and its policies in Iraq, John Passacantando,
> executive director of the group's United States operation, said he too
> was troubled by what he had learned.
>
> "If the F.B.I. has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of information
> on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful activity for
> 34 years, it suggests they're just attempting to stifle the voices of
> their critics," Mr. Passacantando said.
>
> Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the Justice Department in
> a highly unusual prosecution in 2003 after two of its protesters went
> aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner. A federal judge
> in Miami threw out the case last year.
>
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