F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/politics/campaign/16fbi.html?ei=5006&en=8d05fea38f5e978c&ex=1093320000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times

August 16, 2004

F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been
questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases
even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials
say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National
Convention in New York.

 F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for
information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other
coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people
who they think may have information about possible violence. They say the
inquiries, which began last month before the Democratic convention in
Boston, are focused solely on possible crimes, not on dissent, at major
political events.

 But some people contacted by the F.B.I. say they are mystified by the
bureau's interest and felt harassed by questions about their political
plans.

 "The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a
Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago,
"was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests
and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' ''

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously
undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used
last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report
suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to
counterterrorism squads. The F.B.I. bulletins that relayed the request for
help detailed tactics used by demonstrators - everything from violent
resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment.

In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins
improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal
activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in a
five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed.

 The office, which also made headlines in June in an opinion - since
disavowed - that authorized the use of torture against terrorism suspects
in some circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed by the
F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and
constitutional.

 The opinion said: "Given the limited nature of such public monitoring, any
possible 'chilling' effect caused by the bulletins would be quite minimal
and substantially outweighed by the public interest in maintaining safety
and order during large-scale demonstrations."

 Those same concerns are now central to the vigorous efforts by the F.B.I.
to identify possible disruptions by anarchists, violent demonstrators and
others at the Republican National Convention, which begins Aug. 30 and is
expected to draw hundreds of thousands of protesters.

 In the last few weeks, beginning before the Democratic convention, F.B.I.
counterterrorism agents and other federal and local officers have sought to
interview dozens of people in at least six states, including past
protesters and their friends and family members, about possible violence at
the two conventions. In addition, three young men in Missouri said they
were trailed by federal agents for several days and subpoenaed to testify
before a federal grand jury last month, forcing them to cancel their trip
to Boston to take part in a protest there that same day.

 Interrogations have generally covered the same three questions, according
to some of those questioned and their lawyers: were demonstrators planning
violence or other disruptions, did they know anyone who was, and did they
realize it was a crime to withhold such information.

A handful of protesters at the Boston convention were arrested but there
were no major disruptions. Concerns have risen for the Republican
convention, however, because of antiwar demonstrations directed at
President Bush and because of New York City's global prominence.

 With the F.B.I. given more authority after the Sept. 11 attacks to monitor
public events, the tensions over the convention protests, coupled with the
Justice Department's own legal analysis of such monitoring, reflect the
fine line between protecting national security in an age of terrorism and
discouraging political expression.

F.B.I. officials, mindful of the bureau's abuses in the 1960's and 1970's
monitoring political dissidents like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
say they are confident their agents have not crossed that line in the
lead-up to the conventions.

 "The F.B.I. isn't in the business of chilling anyone's First Amendment
rights," said Joe Parris, a bureau spokesman in Washington. "But criminal
behavior isn't covered by the First Amendment. What we're concerned about
are injuries to convention participants, injuries to citizens, injuries to
police and first responders."

 F.B.I. officials would not say how many people had been interviewed in
recent weeks, how they were identified or what spurred the bureau's
interest.

 They said the initiative was part of a broader, nationwide effort to
follow any leads pointing to possible violence or illegal disruptions in
connection with the political conventions, presidential debates or the
November election, which come at a time of heightened concern about a
possible terrorist attack.

 F.B.I. officials in Washington have urged field offices around the country
in recent weeks to redouble their efforts to interview sources and gather
information that might help to detect criminal plots. The only lead to
emerge publicly resulted in a warning to authorities before the Boston
convention that anarchists or other domestic groups might bomb news vans
there. It is not clear whether there was an actual plot.

 The individuals visited in recent weeks "are people that we identified
that could reasonably be expected to have knowledge of such plans and plots
if they existed," Mr. Parris said.

 "We vetted down a list and went out and knocked on doors and had a laundry
list of questions to ask about possible criminal behavior," he added. "No
one was dragged from their homes and put under bright lights. The
interviewees were free to talk to us or close the door in our faces."

 But civil rights advocates argued that the visits amounted to harassment.
They said they saw the interrogations as part of a pattern of increasingly
aggressive tactics by federal investigators in combating domestic
terrorism. In an episode in February in Iowa, federal prosecutors
subpoenaed Drake University for records on the sponsor of a campus antiwar
forum. The demand was dropped after a community outcry.

 Protest leaders and civil rights advocates who have monitored the recent
interrogations said they believed at least 40 or 50 people, and perhaps
many more, had been contacted by federal agents about demonstration plans
and possible violence surrounding the conventions and other political
events.

"This kind of pressure has a real chilling effect on perfectly legitimate
political activity," said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American
Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, where two groups of political activists
in Denver and a third in Fort Collins were visited by the F.B.I. "People
are going to be afraid to go to a demonstration or even sign a petition if
they justifiably believe that will result in your having an F.B.I. file
opened on you."

The issue is a particularly sensitive one in Denver, where the police
agreed last year to restrictions on local intelligence-gathering operations
after it was disclosed that the police had kept files on some 3,000 people
and 200 groups involved in protests.

But the inquiries have stirred opposition elsewhere as well.

In New York, federal agents recently questioned a man whose neighbor
reported he had made threatening comments against the president. He and a
lawyer, Jeffrey Fogel, agreed to talk to the Secret Service, denying the
accusation and blaming it on a feud with the neighbor. But when agents
started to question the man about his political affiliations and whether he
planned to attend convention protests, "that's when I said no, no, no,
we're not going to answer those kinds of questions," said Mr. Fogel, who is
legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

 In the case of the three young men subpoenaed in Missouri, Denise
Lieberman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in St.
Louis, which is representing them, said they scrapped plans to attend both
the Boston and the New York conventions after they were questioned about
possible violence.

The men are all in their early 20's, Ms. Lieberman said, but she would not
identify them.

 All three have taken part in past protests over American foreign policy
and in planning meetings for convention demonstrations. She said two of
them were arrested before on misdemeanor charges for what she described as
minor civil disobedience at protests.

 Prosecutors have now informed the men that they are targets of a domestic
terrorism investigation, Ms. Lieberman said, but have not disclosed the
basis for their suspicions. "They won't tell me," she said.

Federal officials in St. Louis and Washington declined to comment on the
case. Ms. Lieberman insisted that the men "didn't have any plans to
participate in the violence, but what's so disturbing about all this is the
pre-emptive nature - stopping them from participating in a protest before
anything even happened."

 The three men "were really shaken and frightened by all this," she said,
"and they got the message loud and clear that if you make plans to go to a
protest, you could be subject to arrest or a visit from the F.B.I."

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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