[News] Exposed: FBI Surveillance of School of the Americas Watch

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Exposed: FBI Surveillance of School of the Americas Watch*
/by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund/

*FBI used counter-terrorism authority to track pacifist human rights 
group for 10 years*

For a decade, the FBI, flagrantly abused its counter-terrorism authority 
to conduct a widespread surveillance and monitoring operation of School 
of Americas Watch (SOAW), a nonviolent activist organization founded by 
pacifists with the aim of closing the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas 
(now renamed) and ending the U.S. role in the militarization of Latin 
America.

Hundreds of pages of documents 
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZW2aAV9EhSQe3vEtvvE%2Fze%2FQ0EhaEj3m> 
obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, on behalf of SOAW, 
once again reveal the FBI’s functioning as a political surveillance and 
intelligence operation and its use of its domestic terrorism authority 
against peaceful protest in the United States.

SOAW organizes annual protests in Fort Benning, Ga., the site where the 
U.S. Army has trained many of the military leaders and dictators in 
Latin America who were responsible for massacres of opposition forces 
and the creation of torture centers, among other crimes against 
humanity. The training at the SOA is ongoing and the graduates of the 
institute continue to engage in extrajudicial executions and the 
repression of social movements in countries like Chile, Colombia, 
Honduras and Mexico.

SOAW’s mission and proven track record are peaceful. Yet the FBI 
deployed its “domestic terrorism” resources, reported to the 
“Counterterrorism Unit” and reached out to the Miami Domestic 
Intelligence Terrorism Squad. It used confidential informants inside the 
movement to collect information. The FBI’s headquarters and 
counter-terrorism units were requested to provide the FBI’s Field Office 
in Atlanta with “all intelligence relevant to the SOA, so that this 
information can be provided to local/military law enforcement agencies.”
*
Tracked despite 'peaceful intentions'*

A review of 10 years of redacted documents obtained under the Freedom of 
Information Act by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on behalf of 
the SOAW show that, year after year, the FBI acknowledged that the 
organizers and the activities of the group were peaceful. And year after 
year, the FBI continued to keep its case open with claims that it was 
possible that there could be “more aggressive protest participants” or 
“factions of a radical cell” or other such pretextual alarmist warnings 
to justify its spying on protected First Amendment political activity.
/
The documents have been made public and are searchable at 
//http://www.justiceonline.org/soaw/ 
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=xtjcTIJT9b8VJbWKQx9M2%2B%2FQ0EhaEj3m>/./

In 2005, FBI reports admitted “the peaceful intentions” of the SOA Watch 
leaders but justified its work on the basis that “a militant group would 
infiltrate the protestors and use of the cover of the crowd to create 
problems.” Yet they admitted that “At this time, there are no specific 
or known threats to this event.”

The vague, unspecified threat of future violence functioned as the 
annual excuse for the surveillance of peaceful dissent. Under this logic 
of counter-terrorism law enforcement activity, all constitutionally 
protected peaceful protest carries the seed of potential terrorism — we 
are all potential terrorists.
This pattern of significant surveillance, allusions to violence and then 
reports of peaceful activity after the fact continued for years.

*Mass arrests and Confidential Informants*

The protests for many years involved thousands of people, and included 
arrests for peaceful, organized, nonviolent civil disobedience. Law 
enforcement described the mass arrests of 1,700 protesters in November 
2000 as arrests for “acting in an overt manner.” This included “wearing 
masks, coffins, puppets or pouring the red substance upon themselves."

In 2006, Confidential Informants provided information about planning 
events in Massachusetts, and the numbers of buses coming from around the 
country. The FBI obtained shelters and command centers "at no cost" from 
real estate companies to work on logistics for the protest, which was 
again labeled an FBI “Special Events Readiness Level.” Later they 
reviewed the 2006 protest as “uneventful” and came to a similar 
assessment for 2007.

In 2008, undercover FBI agents traveled with protesters to the event to 
follow the activities of several “subjects of FBI-Minneapolis” although 
they had “never expressed or exhibited a propensity for violence.”

The FBI used Confidential Informants who dutifully reported on the 
planned schedule of activities for the protests, the names of 
organizers, including a person “who is or was a Maryknoll nun,” and the 
name of a legal advisor to SOAW. The legal advisor, whose name was 
redacted but is otherwise identified with Loyola University, is 
evidently renowned human rights lawyer Bill Quigley.

By 2009, after 10 years of surveillance, the FBI admitted “there has 
never been any significant incidents of violence or widespread property 
damage.” Describing the demonstrations more as a “street festival,” they 
finally closed the case.

*FBI's operating practice of political surveillance*

In 2012, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund uncovered hundreds of 
documents exposing that the FBI was treating the Occupy movement as a 
potential criminal and terrorist threat 
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NrUYx2vPupwtucYdHtDj5e%2FQ0EhaEj3m> 
even though the agency similarly acknowledged in its own reports that 
organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone 
the use of violence.”

The PCJF obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices 
and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance 
against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the 
establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy 
actions around the country.

Other documents obtained and released by the PCJF demonstrated that the 
Department of Homeland Security and the sprawling network of Fusion 
Centers in the United States similarly expended huge resources 
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=1x13cRl2G%2F3DNd0HbY5vS%2B%2FQ0EhaEj3m> 
monitoring, tracking and reporting on peaceful, lawful and 
constitutionally protected protest activities.

The FBI has recently been further exposed as monitoring and tracking, 
including through surveillance aircraft, the activities of the Black 
Lives Matter movement in cities around the United States.

*Unlearned lessons and unfinished work of the Church Committee*

In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee of the United States Senate 
conducted an investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies’ abuse of law 
enforcement authority to target First Amendment activity and peaceful 
organizing through investigations, surveillance and disruption. As a 
result of the disclosures of the Committee, the FBI was required to 
enact restrictions on the use of its intelligence and law enforcement 
powers, prohibiting investigations into non-violent free speech 
activities. While Congress could have enacted binding legislation, the 
U.S. Attorney General was allowed to promulgate guidelines instead — 
guidelines that have been watered down by successive administrations 
over the past 40 years.

These repeated revelations of the FBI unconscionably abusing its 
counter-terrorism authority against peaceful political movements — from 
SOAW to Occupy to Black Lives Matter — make it clear that the FBI cannot 
be its own watchdog or self-regulate. It makes it clear that 
surveillance, monitoring, tracking and infiltration of peaceful social 
justice movements is a programmatic, institutionalized and ongoing 
effort of the FBI. It is time for there to be legislatively enacted 
prohibitions on the FBI’s use of domestic terrorism authority against 
peaceful protest and First Amendment-protected free speech activities in 
the United States.

It is a fundamental right of the people to organize, to assemble, to 
speak and to peacefully demand change in U.S. policies and practices — 
without monitoring and investigation from the government’s domestic 
terrorism agencies. Democracy and the Constitution require no less.

*Converge on Fort Benning from November 20-22*

SOAW activists from across the Americas are not intimidated, and will 
once again take a stand at Fort Benning, Georgia, from November 20-22 
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=im4hy%2BbVr%2BDXNxE%2F5AST5u%2FQ0EhaEj3m> 
to speak out against repressive U.S. policies, and to engage in 
nonviolent direct action. The SOAW Legal Collective will provide legal 
support and monitor police activities, to ensure that the family 
friendly, permitted demonstrations will be safe for everyone.

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