Ellington

The New York Times reports Monday:

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.

Previous Comments

ID

87442

Comment

The Washington Post has picked up on the same story. FBI agents monitored Web sites calling for protests against the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism unit, according to FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The American Civil Liberties Union pointed to the documents as evidence that the Bush administration has reacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States by blurring the distinction between terrorism and political protest. FBI officials defended the involvement of counterterrorism agents in providing security for the Republican and Democratic conventions as an administrative convenience. The documents were released by the FBI in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil rights, animal rights and environmental groups that say they have been subjected to scrutiny by task forces set up to combat terrorism. The FBI has denied targeting the groups because of their political views. The FBI is also intersted in your library habits. Oops, better get back into my "Free Speech Zone" before I speak out.

Author

Count No Account

Date

2005-07-18T11:48:38-06:00

ID

87443

Comment

Why the F.B.I. watches the Left: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20050720.shtml

Author

PUDDINTANG

Date

2005-07-20T07:24:28-06:00

ID

87444

Comment

Ah, Michelle Malkin. She consistently does her best to give ultra right wing neo- fascist whack jobs a bad name. This is the same troll who writes that "The left-wing Kumbaya crowd is quietly grooming a generation of pushovers in the public schools" by "indoctrinating students with saccharine-sticky lessons on "non-violent conflict resolution" and "promoting constructive dialogues." Link Of course, if you oppose the war, you are a moonbat by her reckoning. Don't forget her defense of the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. It's a real corker.

Author

Count No Account

Date

2005-07-20T23:44:08-06:00

ID

87445

Comment

To saving space, I will quote only the first and last parts of each section responded to. The full story is found at Pudís link. Malkin: In March 2003, I reported on a manifesto disseminated across the Internet by infamous eco-radical Craig Rosebraugh (The six steps of Rosebraughís manifesto as relayed by Malkin, supposedly calling for rioting and violence; plus antiwar protesters blocking shipments of arms, ammunition, and other military supplies to ships docked in the San Francisco Bay area, and even a humanitarian aid vessel) Philip: These certainly are illegal actions, but hardly violent. Not even Malkim claims that people were killed, deliberately injured, or in any way violent during these blockades. This is more akin to civil disobedience than actually giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Itís enough to say that for every example of the antiwar movement Malkin brings up, I can offer a good counterexample from the antiabortion movement and their fringeoids. Malkin: In August 2004, radical guerrilla activists from the "Black Bloc" group publicized plans to disrupt the GOP convention by attempting to distract police dogs, halt trains in New York City and spur the evacuation of Madison Square Garden. Source: http://www.infoshop.org/blackbloc.html Philip: To say Black Bloc (an anarchist group) and the bulk of antiwar protesters mutually support each other is like saying parents who support school prayer and a hypothetical Taliban-like Christian movement mutually support each other. Malkin: In January 2005, the anti-war extremists of Code Pink traveled to the Jordan-Iraq border and doled out $600,000 in aid to "the other side." Philip: Itís hard to find any non-ideological site about this one, but hereís what commondreams.org On this trip to Jordan, the American group brought money and medicine ---- a combination Evans said was worth some $600,000 ---- for displaced Iraqis, particularly those from the war-torn city of Fallujah, which was devastated by fighting last year. About $100,000 of that money was collected through donations solicited on the Internet and other sources, according to a statement Evans sent out prior to the trip. The humanitarian groups known as Middle East Children's Alliance and Operation USA contributed $500,000 worth of medical supplies, according to Evans. What specific hard evidence successfully counteracts the commondreams claim? Malkin:(Account of two people: one conspiring to aid terrorists, the other advocating killing of military officers in Iraq). The FBI's job is to Ö has threatened enough lives already. Philip: Again, Malkin attributes to the whole the actions of a few. Thatís no different from saying anti-abortion activists as a whole are like Eric Rudolph.

Author

Philip

Date

2005-07-21T05:45:13-06:00

ID

87446

Comment

P.S.: My Phrase The six steps of Rosebraughís manifesto as relayed by Malkin, supposedly calling for rioting and violence. The underlined phrase is the operative phrase, not the violence or the manifesto. A quick websearch turns up many sites claiming that Rosebraugh did not advocate violence in a 2003 speech regardless of what he may or may not have done in the past.

Author

Philip

Date

2005-07-21T05:51:26-06:00