monitor this

Groups say Bush is trying to stifle political opponents

- Eric Lichtblau, New York Times
Monday, July 18, 2005

Washington -- The FBI has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and anti-war protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.

The FBI has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's anti-terror 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 earlier this month in federal court in Washington.

The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the ACLU and other groups that maintain that the FBI 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 FBI counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.

FBI and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the ACLU and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they emphasized 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 designed to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not quell free speech. They said there may be an innocuous explanation for the large volume of files, like preserving requests from or complaints about the groups in agency files.

But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the disclosure.

"Why would the FBI collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?" said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU.

Protest groups charge that FBI counterterrorism officials have used their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist activity in what they liken to FBI political surveillance of the 1960s.

In all, the ACLU is now seeking FBI records since 2001 or earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war and other matters.

The Justice Department is opposing the ACLU's request, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material will take them eight to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the ACLU alone.

The files that the FBI has already turned over in recent weeks center on two other groups that were involved in political protests in the last few years, and those files point to previously undisclosed communications by bureau counterterrorism officials regarding activity at protests.

Six pages of internal FBI documents on a group called United for Peace and Justice, which led wide-scale protests over the Iraq war, discuss the group's role in 2003 in preparing protests for last year's Republican National Convention.

A memo by counterterrorism personnel in the FBI's Los Angeles office circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington makes reference to possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions but also quotes from more benign statements protesters had released on the Internet and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention.

A second file turned over by the FBI on the group American Indian Movement of Colorado includes seven pages of internal documents and press clippings related to protests and possible disruptions in the Denver area in connection with Columbus Day.