FBI has files on ACLU, Greenpeace, other rights groups
The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department acknowledges.
The organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, are suing for the release of the documents. The organizations contend that the material will show that they have been subjected to scrutiny by FBI task forces set up to combat terrorism.
The FBI has identified 1,173 pages related to the ACLU and 2,383 pages about Greenpeace, but it needs at least until February to process the ACLU files and until June to review the Greenpeace documents, the government said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington. …
“This administration has a history of using its powers against its peaceful critics. If, in fact, the FBI has been deployed to help in that effort, that would be quite shocking,” John Passacantando, Greenpeace’s U.S. executive director, said. …
A memo from Sept. 4, 2003, about Internet sites that were promoting protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York was addressed to counterterrorism units in Boston, Los Angeles and New York.
“Why is this being labeled as counterterrorism when it’s nothing more protests at a political convention, a lawful First Amendment activity?” ACLU’s executive director, Anthony Romero, asked.
ACLU Says FBI Compiling Dossiers on Non-Violent Activist Groups
The document was released in response to an ACLU lawsuit filed two months ago to expedite its FOIA request for FBI surveillance files on the ACLU, Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“The UFPJ [United for Peace and Justice, a national peace organization,] report underscores our concern that the FBI is violating Americans’ right to peacefully assemble and oppose government policies without being branded as terrorist threats,” said Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU. “There is no need to open a counterterrorism file when people are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”
FBI Spy Files
Is the FBI Spying on You?
Spy Agency Targets Bush Critics – Global News on the World Crisis Web by William Fisher
Those who remember recent history will not be surprised to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been amassing files on the American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace and other critics of the George W. Bush administration.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defence and other intelligence agencies had all conspired to engage in widespread spying on ordinary U.S. citizens — and illegal covert operations.
The targets back then were left-wing groups and individuals, civil rights and anti-Vietnam activists and, of course, Pres. Richard Nixon’s “enemies list”. …
But it was the FBI’s spying on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. that ended that era of government snooping. The FBI had used wiretaps and a covert operation, personally directed by Hoover, to unearth derogatory information intended to destroy King as a national civil rights leader.
Today, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the FBI is again armed with expanded powers to collect information on ordinary citizens. And it has been doing so.