[mgj-discuss] FBI Keeps Watch on Activists - LA Times

[Morrigan Phillips]

FBI Keeps Watch on Activists
Antiwar, other groups are monitored to curb violence, not because of  
ideology, agency says.
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer

March 27, 2006

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.

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.

"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.

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."

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.

"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."

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

FBI officials respond that there is nothing improper about agents  
attending a meeting or demonstration.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

"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.

"In our house, we don't talk about politics anymore," Bardwell said.  
"There's been a toning down of everything we do."

That change came after six FBI agents and Denver police officers  
visited her house in July 2004.

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."

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."

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.

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.

"We don't have enough agents," Kelso said, "to go out there to monitor  
and surveil innocent people."

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