Treacherous Groups Targeted By FBI
We have known for quite a while now about the FBI's surveillance of anti-war protesters and environmental activists, but today's Los Angeles Times reports on several other shadowy groups that the feds are spying on. One stands out as particularly suspicious.
It is people who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless.
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...
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.
It is interesting that the feds target groups opposed to war. The logic there must be that groups that dislike official violence may embrace non-official violence as psychological compensation. Or something like that.
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...
"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."
The bottom line is that if and when any future terrorist attacks occur in the U.S., the investigative agencies will have to explain how wasting manpower on crap like this helped to detect the plot that they will have just missed.
It is people who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless.
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...
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.
It is interesting that the feds target groups opposed to war. The logic there must be that groups that dislike official violence may embrace non-official violence as psychological compensation. Or something like that.
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...
"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."
The bottom line is that if and when any future terrorist attacks occur in the U.S., the investigative agencies will have to explain how wasting manpower on crap like this helped to detect the plot that they will have just missed.
posted by Effwit at 9:41 AM
6 Comments:
LMAO.
This just reminds me of a great story I have on this exact topic.
Spying on vegans can't exactly be the most prestigous, or romantic for that matter, of duties for folks titulating their 9 to 5 heroics as counter-terrorist experts while chasing ass during happy hour at singles bars.
M1:
I'm sure "our heroes" spice up the story a bit for the pick-up scene.
At least they have the good sense to go to singles bars where normal chicks hang out.
Those Birkenstock wearing vegans wouldn't do it for your average FBI-type, methinks.
;-)
There was a real crisis in the security forces around the West when it was apparent the Cold War was deader than a door knob. That's when Vegans got to be terorists, cyberwarfare got hot, Quakers became scary..... These people have been targeted for at least 10 years...andI'm talking bad ass stakeouts and intrusive surveillance. AndI always thought, "How God damn unsexy for them. Bet they wished they could've gotten into med or beauty school instead".
M1:
I remember the campaign against Earth First.
And the other environmentalist vegan types.
Agents Provocateurs. Bombing attacks on radicals (then blaming them for the bombs).
It was pretty grim.
But the security elements needed enemies.
True. They needed new enemies. Unfortunately (for the enemy-needers), the vegans and tree huggers didn't require much in the way of military spending to combat. No. In order to really ratchet up the war machine, they needed some bonafide enemies to fight. But with the original evil empire, the USSR, gone to never-never-land, what was a PNACer to do?
I think we all know the answer to that.
DrewL:
Good point.
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