About
We are coming together in response to the FBI raids on seven homes and an anti-war office on Friday, September 24, 2010. The FBI also handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to fourteen activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. These activists are involved in many groups, including the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists and many others came together to organize the 2008 anti-war marches during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. In December, 2010, 9 Palestine solidarity activists in Chicago were also subpoenaed.
Across the country organizations and individuals are standing together to protest the United States government’s attempt to silence and criminalize anti-war and international solidarity activists. We see the raids and subpoenas as an attack on anti-war and other progressive movements. It is an attack on our freedom to speak, our freedom to assemble with like-minded people, and our freedom to tell the government that their actions and policies are wrong. It is an attempt to clear the way for more wars and occupations of other countries by the U.S. military.
We Demand:
- Stop the repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists.
- Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc
- End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.
Comments
This is a very good summary
This is a very good summary of the situation from the Desert Peace blog.
October 10, 2010 at 09:59
Raids on Activists May Indicate FBI Abuse of Power
by: Yana Kunichoff
On the heels of a series of FBI raids on anti-war activists, an FBI whistleblower and constitutional rights groups are calling out the agency for overstepping its bounds, fearing that its increased powers could infringe on First Amendment rights and silence dissent.
Agents searched the homes of anti-war activists in Chicago, Minneapolis, Michigan and Durham, North Carolina in the last two weeks of September, along with the offices of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, confiscating computers, cell phones, large amounts of paper and financial records, according to the activists and their attorneys.
“The FBI raids seem to reflect the latest actions by a recidivist agency that has lost sight of its mission to protect public safety,” Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution told Truthout.
According to the subpoenas, the activists, who were involved in labor causes, the anti-war movement and the Arab American Action Network, are being investigated for contact they may have had with members of Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The spokesman for the FBI in Minneapolis said, “the warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”
All the individuals involved in the raids denied their connections to terrorist organizations, and said any meetings or contact they may have had with the groups were perfectly legal.
Jess Sundin, of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, noted that when she met FARC rebels in Colombia in 2000, the Colombian government was holding peace talks with the rebels at a public forum, where she met them. Sundin said she has had no contact with FARC since.
The FBI has come under attack recently from a string of reports and investigations that showcase an unfair targeting of activists.
Just days before the raids of activists in the Midwest and North Carolina, the Department of Justice released a report finding that between 2001 and 2006, the FBI kept tabs on activists affiliated with Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Catholic Workers and Quakers. According to the report, the agency improperly placed these individuals on terrorist watch lists, and gave inaccurate and misleading information to Congress and the public about its activities.
“The Bureau’s standard for undercover activities is known neither by the public nor Congress,” Buttar wrote in an op-ed in Truthout earlier this year. “Intelligence agencies may justifiably pursue clandestine activities, but should not operate according to secret rules – at least not in countries that claim to lead the free world.”
The FBI disclosed part of its policy following a Freedom of Information Act request made by Buttar, but the section on undercover infiltration has remained secret.
A two-year Washington Post investigation, “Top Secret America,” detailed the extent of domestic spying and found that the web it wove was so widespread it had become entirely unwieldy: “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”
James R. Clapper, then undersecretary of defense for intelligence and now director of national intelligence, told the investigators in June 2010, “There’s only one entity in the entire universe that has visibility on all SAPs [Special Access Programs] – that’s God.”
Colleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and whistleblower, told Truthout it was “breathtaking to recognize the irony” of the raids on individuals involved in left-leaning, domestic, advocacy groups only days after the flurry of criticism against the agency’s mode of operation.
Rowley, who left the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency, said the blunders were part of a wider change in FBI rules and the ways it evaluates success.
Quantitative rather than qualitative evaluation now means that individual agents are under increased pressure to meet targets, Rowley said, which is evidenced by recent reports of FBI cheating on internal tests.
On September 27, 2010, an internal FBI investigation found widespread cheating on a test related to Bush-era guidelines on justification needed to target a domestic group. The investigators “found test-taking conduct that constituted cheating and abuse, such as the use of answer sheets when taking the exam,” which Rowley considers further justification of the response: “Oh my gosh, how can they be continuing after this!”
The 2001 Patriot Act loosened restrictions on domestic information gathering by law enforcement agencies, but even these powers have been exploited by the FBI, notes Buttar – three separate reports in 2007, 2008 and 2010 document abuse of the powers extended by President George W. Bush after the attacks on 9/11.
Both Buttar and Rowley said that the erosion of FBI constraints reached a new level in 2008 – the Mukasey Guidelines, meant to provide consolidated standards for agents to follow, effectively switched the presumption of one of proving guilt to proving innocence.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that FBI agents could not exercise surveillance in the absence of “suspicion,” but later amended his statement in a note to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). In his note, according to The Associated Press, Mueller said that the FBI “must have a proper purpose before conducting surveillance, but suspicion of wrongdoing is not required.”
Much of the FBI’s abuses have been painted as overhangs of the Bush era, but Rowley notes that current president Barack Obama is a constitutional lawyer, and a Supreme Court case that she calls “the most recent nail in the coffin” was put through under the Obama administration.
The legal prohibitions in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project make it a crime to provide support, including humanitarian aid, literature distribution and political advocacy, to any groups that the United States government has designated as a “terrorist” group. The 12-year case, a challenge to the material support statute, was concluded this summer with the Supreme Court voting 6-to-3 that the statute’s prohibitions on expert advice, training, service and personnel were not vague and did not violate speech rights.
But Buttar, Rowley and William Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the loose definition of “material support” could criminalize political speech and humanitarian aid, and by extension, the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Quigley noted that the raids on anti-war activists “would have been thought totally ridiculous before the Supreme Court case.”
“It is still ridiculous, but now also ominous. Whether this is a policy decision by the Department of Justice and the Obama administration or whether this is just a few over-zealous FBI agents we don’t know yet,” Quigley continued, “but unfortunately the people who are targeted are going to be the guinea pigs for the rest of us to find this out.”
At a grand jury hearing held Tuesday in Chicago, the activists who had their homes raided refused to testify and assist the government investigation of their activities.
For Rowley, the focus of the raids on individuals who have been involved with anti-war movements indicates an extreme illogic in American national security policy – “the mentality to believe that if you are against the war on terror that somehow makes you a terrorist.”
The raids on the homes of activists “did signal that the war on terror,” Rowley said, “has now been turned inward on domestic advocacy groups.”
It's more than this, and in some ways simpler
These attacks on everyone under the sun who isn't gung ho for absolutely everything this corporate government does is simply an extension of Bush's corporate government. Everyone is competing for funding and status, so the more targets they have, the higher their "score" in this game. And the statement, "If you're not with us, you're against us" set the ground rules. The people playing it live and work in an echo chamber; they never see or hear anything outside "the Game." To them, lists like those released by the fusion centers (an obscenity, each one being totally unaccountable) actually make sense, even though they include descriptions like both "looking strange or different," and "looking too ordinary." It won't be long before a statement on a blog like, "America's invasion of Iraq and the distribution of that country's natural resources to the giant oil companies against the will of Iraq's own people was all against U.S. as well as international law," a statement absolutely true in every particular, will be enough to accuse the writer of "materially supporting terrorist organizations." Between the completely unconstitutional - in fact, treasonous - PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act and other legislation, including Executive Orders that are also unconstitutional, pretty much ALL Americans are "legitimate targets" to the increasingly paranoid and sociopathic spy agencies, which are themselves proliferating fungi in a compost heap. Secret laws we're not allowed to even know about but are nonetheless subject to - anathema in a Republic - combine with "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" and over 40,000 Federal Laws that even lawyers don't know , CANNOT know all of, to make sure that Americans HAVE NO RIGHTS. They're all apparently been suspended, at least in the minds of the echo chamber Intel groups, our militarized and brainwashed cops and Bush era federal judges. And of course the Dominionist/Evangelical military leaders, virtually all that remain in the Pentagon and now almost the entire Republican Party, have never liked the idea of Civil Rights anyway.
No one remembers that the oath they all swore was "...TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FROM ENEMIES BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC." It's impossible to protect the Constitution while violating every part of it! We have been cut off from our "right" to assemble in peace, to demand redress from our government - in fact we've been cut off from all real access to government and cocooned in "free speech areas," another obscenity that should apply to the entire country, not to a tiny caged-in area out of ear shot of our "rulers" who are themselves supposed to be public SERVANTS, not public MASTERS. Out intel services, legislators and consumer protection agencies have all been hijacked by the giant multinational corporations, and anyone who gets in the way of the Holy of Holies, PROFITS, is The Enemy, couched in whatever terms that law enforcement, the military or whomever needs to hear in order to consider said obstructionists legitimate targets.
The question now has to be, "How do we change it back to what it was supposed to be?" Even the expressed desire to do so is now, for all practical purposes, illegal and a confession of "homegrown terrorism."
Ian
This is an excellent
This is an excellent summation about the raids and how they fit into the larger picture of federal law enforcement's role after 9-11, posted on the Desert Peace blog
RECAPPING THE FBI RAIDS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS … TWO REPORTS
October 10, 2010 at 09:59
Raids on Activists May Indicate FBI Abuse of Power
by: Yana Kunichoff
On the heels of a series of FBI raids on anti-war activists, an FBI whistleblower and constitutional rights groups are calling out the agency for overstepping its bounds, fearing that its increased powers could infringe on First Amendment rights and silence dissent.
Agents searched the homes of anti-war activists in Chicago, Minneapolis, Michigan and Durham, North Carolina in the last two weeks of September, along with the offices of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, confiscating computers, cell phones, large amounts of paper and financial records, according to the activists and their attorneys.
“The FBI raids seem to reflect the latest actions by a recidivist agency that has lost sight of its mission to protect public safety,” Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the People’s Campaign for the Constitution told Truthout.
According to the subpoenas, the activists, who were involved in labor causes, the anti-war movement and the Arab American Action Network, are being investigated for contact they may have had with members of Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The spokesman for the FBI in Minneapolis said, “the warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”
All the individuals involved in the raids denied their connections to terrorist organizations, and said any meetings or contact they may have had with the groups were perfectly legal.
Jess Sundin, of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, noted that when she met FARC rebels in Colombia in 2000, the Colombian government was holding peace talks with the rebels at a public forum, where she met them. Sundin said she has had no contact with FARC since.
The FBI has come under attack recently from a string of reports and investigations that showcase an unfair targeting of activists.
Just days before the raids of activists in the Midwest and North Carolina, the Department of Justice released a report finding that between 2001 and 2006, the FBI kept tabs on activists affiliated with Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Catholic Workers and Quakers. According to the report, the agency improperly placed these individuals on terrorist watch lists, and gave inaccurate and misleading information to Congress and the public about its activities.
“The Bureau’s standard for undercover activities is known neither by the public nor Congress,” Buttar wrote in an op-ed in Truthout earlier this year. “Intelligence agencies may justifiably pursue clandestine activities, but should not operate according to secret rules – at least not in countries that claim to lead the free world.”
The FBI disclosed part of its policy following a Freedom of Information Act request made by Buttar, but the section on undercover infiltration has remained secret.
A two-year Washington Post investigation, “Top Secret America,” detailed the extent of domestic spying and found that the web it wove was so widespread it had become entirely unwieldy: “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”
James R. Clapper, then undersecretary of defense for intelligence and now director of national intelligence, told the investigators in June 2010, “There’s only one entity in the entire universe that has visibility on all SAPs [Special Access Programs] – that’s God.”
Colleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and whistleblower, told Truthout it was “breathtaking to recognize the irony” of the raids on individuals involved in left-leaning, domestic, advocacy groups only days after the flurry of criticism against the agency’s mode of operation.
Rowley, who left the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency, said the blunders were part of a wider change in FBI rules and the ways it evaluates success.
Quantitative rather than qualitative evaluation now means that individual agents are under increased pressure to meet targets, Rowley said, which is evidenced by recent reports of FBI cheating on internal tests.
On September 27, 2010, an internal FBI investigation found widespread cheating on a test related to Bush-era guidelines on justification needed to target a domestic group. The investigators “found test-taking conduct that constituted cheating and abuse, such as the use of answer sheets when taking the exam,” which Rowley considers further justification of the response: “Oh my gosh, how can they be continuing after this!”
The 2001 Patriot Act loosened restrictions on domestic information gathering by law enforcement agencies, but even these powers have been exploited by the FBI, notes Buttar – three separate reports in 2007, 2008 and 2010 document abuse of the powers extended by President George W. Bush after the attacks on 9/11.
Both Buttar and Rowley said that the erosion of FBI constraints reached a new level in 2008 – the Mukasey Guidelines, meant to provide consolidated standards for agents to follow, effectively switched the presumption of one of proving guilt to proving innocence.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that FBI agents could not exercise surveillance in the absence of “suspicion,” but later amended his statement in a note to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois). In his note, according to The Associated Press, Mueller said that the FBI “must have a proper purpose before conducting surveillance, but suspicion of wrongdoing is not required.”
Much of the FBI’s abuses have been painted as overhangs of the Bush era, but Rowley notes that current president Barack Obama is a constitutional lawyer, and a Supreme Court case that she calls “the most recent nail in the coffin” was put through under the Obama administration.
The legal prohibitions in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project make it a crime to provide support, including humanitarian aid, literature distribution and political advocacy, to any groups that the United States government has designated as a “terrorist” group. The 12-year case, a challenge to the material support statute, was concluded this summer with the Supreme Court voting 6-to-3 that the statute’s prohibitions on expert advice, training, service and personnel were not vague and did not violate speech rights.
But Buttar, Rowley and William Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the loose definition of “material support” could criminalize political speech and humanitarian aid, and by extension, the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Quigley noted that the raids on anti-war activists “would have been thought totally ridiculous before the Supreme Court case.”
“It is still ridiculous, but now also ominous. Whether this is a policy decision by the Department of Justice and the Obama administration or whether this is just a few over-zealous FBI agents we don’t know yet,” Quigley continued, “but unfortunately the people who are targeted are going to be the guinea pigs for the rest of us to find this out.”
At a grand jury hearing held Tuesday in Chicago, the activists who had their homes raided refused to testify and assist the government investigation of their activities.
For Rowley, the focus of the raids on individuals who have been involved with anti-war movements indicates an extreme illogic in American national security policy – “the mentality to believe that if you are against the war on terror that somehow makes you a terrorist.”
The raids on the homes of activists “did signal that the war on terror,” Rowley said, “has now been turned inward on domestic advocacy groups.”
How about a list?
How about a government-provided list of all those groups considered "terrorist" by the Department of Justice? That way, we won't be blindsided if we happen to unwittingly "support" one of them.
If I had known that Obama would uphold and increase the ill-named PATRIOT Act, I would not have voted for him. I fully expected him to rescind it, as well as undo the other serial vicissitudes of the previous administration. No one reckoned on the opposition sucking all the money out of the system just as the new administration was to be sworn in. Even so, Obama has been a let down in many ways.
Rowland Scherman
Orleans MA
List of "terrorist" organizations
There's a couple of lists you can check, although the FBI can more-or-less arbitrarily decide that any group might be supporting "terrorism," so there's still a pretty good chance that you're going to be blindsided. Of course, it's important to ensure that not being "blindsided" doesn't turn into refusing to support an organization, as this would just reinforce the FBI's ability to intimidate people out of supporting a movement simply by listing it on an arbitrary watchlist. Nonetheless, if you want an idea of what organizations the DoJ and other branches of the government consider "terrorist," there's a couple resources.
One is the Department of State's "Terrorist Exclusion List," which is used to further restrict immigration: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/other/des/123086.htm
Another is the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism's "Terrorist Organization Profiles." Some of the profiles on this site, such as "Up the IRS," were actually somewhat hilarious, in a tragedy of the absurd sort of way: http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/
Obviously, we can't see who's on the Consolidated Terrorist Watchlist, which is one of many problems with that particular list. Who knows, maybe WikiLeaks will get us a copy of it...
San Diego Demonstrates in
San Diego Demonstrates in Solidarity
Thursday @ 5pm at the Federal Building
STOP the FBI Witch hunts & 'Terrorism Warrants' against Socialists, Solidarity and Peace Activists!
Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892 - –1984) wrote about the apathy and inactivity of ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power. "They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last Friday, Sept. 24th the FBI raided the homes and offices of more than a dozen activists in 4 states and pursued others in at least 2 other states carting away in one case, 40 boxes of personal, computer and cell phone materials. The AP reported that the FBI served 'terrorism warrants on the accused. The witch hunt of these socialists, peace activists, Colombian and Palestinian solidarity activists should send shivers up our spines. The fact that these domestic solidarity activists are charged with support of "foreign terrorist organizations" for their contact with liberation movements is reminiscent of the FBI's persecution of the Black Panthers and other civil rights activists. This is the most blatant targeting of leftists and socialists since 'Tricky' Dick Nixon launched COINTELPRO red-scares decades ago.
We must stand as one! It should matter not if we agree with the political perspectives of the accused. An Injury to One is an Injury to All! Many peace activists have watched in horror as the Patriot Act and a massive, secret police and 'intelligence' infrastructure arose under the Bush Administration since 911. Now the growth shows no sign of slowing down under Obama. For example, IPS noted that the "New York Times reported this morning that the Barack Obama administration is drawing up legislation to make it easier for U.S .intelligence services to eavesdrop on the Internet, including email exchanges and social networks." Is the repressive power of the state too big to control?
Is our freedom and liberty threatened? Yes, but many of us feel that we are far more threatened by the construction of an INTERNAL police state, than by EXTERNAL enemies. The FBI raids are meant to have the effect of silencing solidarity and peace activists and squelching dissent and opposition to foreign occupations and the wars of aggression.
Your participation in demonstrations in 30+ cities across the country is essential to holding back the tide of repression: so please HELP get the word out quickly.
- Martin Eder for the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice, Activist San Diego and FRSO/OSCL - San Diego
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From www.FreedomRoad.org/
The facts behind the raid and grand jury subpoenas of activists in Minneapolis, Chicago, Michigan and North Carolina, we want to be clear about several things:
* The raid on multiple sites of an organization within our movement should alarm us all. It is part of a growing governmental trend targeting the left.
* The FBI continues to stretch beyond all meaning the designation of "terrorist" in order to make wide sweeps and go on fishing expeditions with seemingly very little hard facts. Too often the designation of “terrorist” has been applied to organizations and movements seeking freedom and independence. For example, the ANC was on the “terrorist” list right up until they won electoral victory in South Africa.
* These raids and arrests have the effect of stifling dissent and foreclosing democratic rights of minority viewpoints. We should be concerned, whether or not we agree with the politics of the targeted organization.
* Although the organization in question has a similar name to ours, we are different organizations. (We are officially Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad (FRSO/OSCL).) We were not targets in these raids.
* We will have more to say about the implications of these raids.
I am a friend of Marcelle
I am a friend of Marcelle Cendrars... whose posting should appear on this site before long. She told me what she wrote about your campaigns to contact the powers that be, and I want to add that not only will the upcoming conference and the emails to those in positions of influence not produce what you want, the demonstrations that are being organized -- while praiseworthy -- are VERY limited in terms of what can be accomplished. Particularly since the mainstream media, obviously, will tweak whatever publicity is generated; tweak it negatively. That's not to discourage readers from participating in such demos, but rather to encourage readers to get with Marcelle as she has a fresh plan for action that would be an excellent supplement to what you have in the works. You can reach Marcelle at bcendra[at ...}yahoo.com OR me at massaciu{aaaaaaaaaaaaaat]ya hoo[dot]com. I hope that breaking up the email address won't be confusing. P.S. Also, please acknowledge (among yourselves) that your meetings and correspondence will be tapped into, infiltrated. Lisa Massaciuccoli
I've been trying to connect
I've been trying to connect with people on your end, so that we can engage in some bottom/up dialogue regarding meaningful (legal, non-violent) action. So far no one has responded. The idea for a conference is admirable, certainly, as are the requests to have people send their "feelings" to Eric Holder. That said, however, neither the conference nor the letter campaign will achieve what you want to achieve. That is what I want to discuss with you, an additional paradigm for action which can be embraced... which might produce the results you want. Please confirm receipt of this ASAP. Readers can contact me directly at bcendra[atatatatatatatatAT]YAHOO. co m. Marcelle Cendrars P.S. I am unlikely to be reading responses posted on this site.
Video report on Chicago
Video report on Chicago protest at FBI HQ on Mon., Sept. 27, 2010
"Raid on A Nation"
To view on YouTube, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g48XX-TCH3M>http://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Just days after FBI raids on peace activists in Minneapolis-St Paul and Chicago, demonstrations at FBI offices around the country began to protest this assault on the 1st Amendment. Among over 30 cities where protest actions took place, In Chicago on Sept. 27, 2010 some 200 activists marched in front of the FBI Headquarters there. Speakers include James Fennerty (National Lawyers Guild - Chicago) and Joe Iosbaker and Stepanie Weiner, the Chicago couple who were targeted by the FBI. After making a powerful statement in defense of political freedoms, Stephanie introduced their teenage son, who was present as witness to having the FBI come into his room and confiscate his poetry. Length: 10:00. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: [email protected], www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat".
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