<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi27mar27,0,5815737.story?coll=la-home-headlines">
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi27mar27,0,5815737.story?coll=la-home-headlines<br>
</a><i>From the Los Angeles Times<br><br>
</i></font><h1><b>FBI Keeps Watch on
Activists</b></h1><font size=3>Antiwar, other groups are monitored to
curb violence, not because of ideology, agency says.<br>
By Nicholas Riccardi<br>
Times Staff Writer<br><br>
March 27, 2006<br><br>
DENVER The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism,
has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental
protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless,
the agency's internal memos show.<br><br>
For years, the FBI's definition of terrorism has included violence
against property, such as the window-smashing during the 1999 Seattle
protests against the World Trade Organization. That definition has led
FBI investigations to online discussion boards, organizing meetings and
demonstrations of a wide range of activist groups. Officials say that
international terrorists pose the greatest threat to the nation but that
they cannot ignore crimes committed by some activists.<br><br>
"It's one thing to express an idea or such, but when you commit acts
of violence in support of that activity, that's where our interest comes
in," said FBI spokesman Bill Carter in Washington.<br><br>
He stressed that the agency targeted individuals who committed crimes and
did not single out groups for ideological reasons. He cited the recent
arrest of environmental activists accused of firebombing an unfinished
ski resort in Vail. "People can get hurt," Carter said.
"Businesses can be ruined."<br><br>
The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of
documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the
Freedom of Information Act after agents visited several activists before
the 2004 political conventions. Details have steadily trickled out over
the last year, but newly released documents provide a fuller view of some
FBI probes.<br><br>
"Any definition of terrorism that would include someone throwing a
bottle or rock through a window during an antiwar demonstration is
dangerously overbroad," ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner said.
"The FBI will have its hands full pursuing antiwar groups instead of
truly dangerous organizations."<br><br>
ACLU attorneys say most violence during demonstrations is minor and is
better handled by local police than federal counterterrorism agents. They
say the FBI, which spied on antiwar and civil rights leaders during the
1960s, appears to be investigating activists solely for opposing the
government.<br><br>
"They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending
money watching people like me," said environmental activist Kirsten
Atkins. Her license plate number showed up in an FBI terrorism file after
she attended a protest against the lumber industry in Colorado Springs in
2002.<br><br>
ACLU attorneys acknowledge that the FBI memos are heavily redacted and
contain incomplete portraits of some cases. Still, the attorneys say, the
documents show that the FBI has monitored groups that were not suspected
of any crime.<br><br>
"It certainly seems they're casting a net much more widely than
would be necessary to thwart something like the blowing up of the
Oklahoma City federal building," said Mark Silverstein, legal
director of the ACLU of Colorado.<br><br>
FBI officials respond that there is nothing improper about agents
attending a meeting or demonstration.<br><br>
"We have to be able to go out and look at things; we have to be able
to conduct an investigation," said William J. Crowley, a spokesman
for the FBI in Pittsburgh. His field office filed a report released by
the ACLU this month in which an agent described photographing
Pittsburgh activists who were handing out fliers for a war protest. The
report mentioned no potential violence or crimes.<br><br>
Crowley said his office had been looking for a certain person in that
case and had closed the file when it realized the suspect was not among
those handing out the leaflets.<br><br>
The murky connection that the federal government makes between some
left-wing activist groups and terrorism was illustrated in a Justice
Department presentation to a college law class this month.<br><br>
An FBI counterterrorism official showed the class, at the University of
Texas in Austin, 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamist groups.
Senior Special Agent Charles Rasner said one slide, labeled
"Anarchism," was a federal analyst's list of groups that people
intent on terrorism might associate with.<br><br>
The list included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to
homeless people, and with a question mark next to it Indymedia, a
collective that publishes what it calls radical journalism online. Both
groups are among the numerous organizations affiliated with anarchists
and anti-globalization protests, where there has been some
violence.<br><br>
Elizabeth Wagoner said she was one of the few students who objected to
the groups' inclusion on the list. "My friends do Indymedia,"
she said. "My friends aren't terrorists."<br><br>
Rasner said that he'd never heard of the two groups before and didn't
mean to condemn them. But he added that it made sense to worry about
violent people emerging from anarchist networks "Any group can
have somebody that goes south."<br><br>
Denver, where the ACLU fought a lengthy court battle with local police
over its spying on political groups, has the most extensive records of
encounters between the FBI and activists. Documents obtained by the ACLU
there revealed how agents monitored the lumber industry demonstration, an
antiwar march and an anarchist group that activists say was never
formed.<br><br>
In June 2002, environmental activists protested the annual meeting of the
North American Wholesale Lumber Assn. in Colorado Springs. An FBI memo
justified opening an inquiry into the protest because an activist
training camp was to be held on "nonviolent methods of forest
defense … security culture, street theater and banner
making."<br><br>
About 30 to 40 people attended the protest; three were arrested for
trespassing while hanging a political banner. Colorado Springs police
faxed the FBI a three-page list of demonstrators' license plate
numbers.<br><br>
In a recent interview, Denver FBI spokeswoman Monique R. Kelso first said
the training camp and protest would not have been enough to merit an
anti-terrorism inquiry. But later she said that she wasn't familiar with
the details of the case and that the FBI opened cases when there was
possible criminal activity.<br><br>
The FBI's Denver office also monitored a February 2003 antiwar
demonstration in Colorado Springs. A bureau memo said that activists
planned to block streets and an Air Force base entrance, and that a more
"radical" faction had announced online that it would meet near
the demonstration but break away for unspecified purposes. The memo said
an agent would watch the breakaway group and report to local police and
FBI agents monitoring the march. <br><br>
FBI officials say there was additional information, which they cannot
disclose, that justified a terrorism investigation of that protest. They
stress that they have to be aggressive in investigating terrorism in the
post-Sept. 11 world.<br><br>
"There's a lot of responsibility on the FBI," said Joe Airey,
head of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver. "We have a
real obligation to make sure there are no additional terrorist acts on
this soil."<br><br>
Denver-area activists said that since the surveillance documents became
public, there had been a subtle chill, with some people avoiding protests
for fear of ending up in an FBI file. Some activists think the FBI has
been watching their groups to intimidate them.<br><br>
"We've kind of gathered up our skirts and pulled in," said
Sarah Bardwell, who works for the American Friends Service Committee, a
Quaker group. Along with some activist roommates, she has also
volunteered for Food Not Bombs. <br><br>
"In our house, we don't talk about politics anymore," Bardwell
said. "There's been a toning down of everything we do."
<br><br>
That change came after six FBI agents and Denver police officers visited
her house in July 2004.<br><br>
Months earlier, the FBI had obtained a flier advertising a meeting near
Bardwell's house to form a chapter of Anarchist Black Cross. That
movement has two wings; one, according to the FBI, has been associated
with "some of the most violent left-wing groups of the past 40
years."<br><br>
The organizer of the meeting, Dawn Rewolinski, said the prospective
chapter would have been part of the movement's other wing, which writes
letters to prisoners. The chapter was never established, Rewolinski said.
"All we did is eat some cookies and talk about various prisoners and
realize we didn't have enough money for a P.O. box."<br><br>
Nonetheless, FBI investigators believed a Denver chapter had been
launched. They discovered that Anarchist Black Cross was affiliated with
Food Not Bombs, and authorities ended up on Bardwell's doorstep, asking
about the anarchists' plans for protests at the upcoming Democratic and
Republican national conventions.<br><br>
Kelso, the FBI spokeswoman, said there were documents that could not be
released to the ACLU that showed good reasons for the government's
concern. She dismissed the idea that agents were spying on activists for
political reasons.<br><br>
"We don't have enough agents," Kelso said, "to go out
there to monitor and surveil innocent people." <br><br>
<br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>