FBI targets peace activists

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado released documents today that it says confirm that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Denver is targeting peaceful political activists for harassment and building files on constitutionally-protected political activities and associations that have nothing to do with terrorism or other criminal activity. The documents are the first FBI responses to a formal request that the Colorado ACLU filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on behalf of 26 organizations and 10 individuals last December. At the time, the Colorado ACLU presented evidence that the JTTF was collecting information on peaceful advocacy groups whose issues ranged from animal rights, protection of the environment, labor rights, military policy, social and economic justice in Latin America, and the treatment of Native Americans. Six additional ACLU affiliates around the country filed similar requests in December, and ten additional ACLUs filed FOIA requests today.

New documents confirm: FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force targets peaceful activists for harassment, political surveillance
A.C.L.U.


New FBI documents to be released today show that anti-terrorism agents who questioned antiwar protesters last summer in Denver were conducting "pretext interviews" that did not lead to any information about criminal activity. The memos were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of ongoing litigation and provide a glimpse of the FBI's controversial efforts to interview dozens of members of leftist protest groups before the party conventions last year in Boston and New York. (...) But the new memos provide no indication of specific threat information. Instead, one heavily censored memo from the FBI's Denver field office, dated Aug. 2, 2004, characterized the effort as "pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election." Another memo from December 2004 indicated that Sarah Bardwell, one of the Denver activists singled out for interviews, was targeted because she had helped organize an antiwar protest and was a member of a group called Food Not Bombs, which the memo characterized as having a "close association" with a radical anarchist group.

Protesters Subjected To 'Pretext Interviews'
FBI Memo Shows No Specific Threats
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 18, 2005; Page A04