The New Black, the Color of Anarchy

The Washington Post reports on the FBI's involvement in the detention and questioning of anti-war protesters in 2002 in DC, Police Log Confirms FBI Role In Arrests. Despite their denials over the years:

A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.

For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.

* * * *

The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van? They were wearing black -- a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.

FBI agents dressed in street clothes separated members to question them one by one about protests they attended, whom they had spent time with recently, what political views they espoused and the significance of their tattoos and slogans, according to interviews and court records.

The revelations, combined with protester accounts, provide the first public evidence that Washington-based FBI personnel used their intelligence-gathering powers in the District to collect purely political intelligence. Ultimately, the protesters were not prosecuted because there wasn't sufficient evidence of trespassing, and their arrest records were expunged.

When we were discussing attending the anti-war rallies in Philly (both in the run up to the war and after), my husband Dave expressed his concern that the FBI would be spying on the protesters. I honestly didn't believe him. After all, public sentiment was still in favor of Bush (and the war) at that time. Patriotism was the order of the day. Who cared about a few protesters? He said I was naive to think that the Bush Administration wouldn't pull a Nixon and spy on its "enemies."

The article continues:

The plaintiffs argue that the newly released police logs make clear that the FBI, working hand in hand with local police, is engaged in a concerted effort to spy on and intimidate U.S. citizens who are lawfully exercising their free-speech rights. They contend that this is a national effort that abuses the FBI's broad counterterrorism powers and equates political speech with a risk to national security.

"It really is a secret police: This is an effort to suppress political dissent," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice. "If this was happening in another country that the U.S. was targeting, U.S. officials at the highest levels would be decrying this as a violation of human rights."

See also, Mayor Defends Spying by Police Before G.O.P. Convention.

In Is Pacifism a Felony? and Smile, You're on Candid Camera, I discussed the issue of government spying on anti-war activities. As I noted then:

As though we needed another example why warrantless wiretapping should never be permitted by the government. The Washington Post reports that the FBI Took Photos of Antiwar Activists in 2002. The article reports that "[a]n FBI report from November 2002 indicates that an agent photographed members of the Thomas Merton Center [in Pittsburgh] as they handed out leaflets opposing the impending war in Iraq. The report called the group a 'left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism.'"

Just another example of the abuse the government is capable of when not monitored.

More channeling of Nixon by Bush.

Tags: Civil Liberties, Law, Spying