F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers

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August 16, 2004

 

F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 - The Federal Bureau of

Investigation has been questioning political

demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases

even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to

forestall what officials say could be violent and

disruptive protests at the Republican National

Convention in New York.

 

F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their

communities for information about planned disruptions

aimed at the convention and other coming political

events, and they say they have developed a list of

people who they think may have information about

possible violence. They say the inquiries, which began

last month before the Democratic convention in Boston,

are focused solely on possible crimes, not dissent, at

major political events.

 

But some people contacted by the F.B.I. say they are

mystified by the bureau's interest and felt harassed

by questions about their political plans.

 

" The message I took from it, " said Sarah Bardwell, 21,

an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by

six investigators a few weeks ago, " was that they were

trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests

and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' ''

 

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice

Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion,

gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last

year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments

to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar

demonstrations.

 

The bulletins that relayed that request detailed

tactics used by demonstrators - everything from

violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and

recruitment.

 

In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged

that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between

lawfully protected speech and illegal activity.

 

But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy,

in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New

York Times, disagreed.

 

The office, which also made headlines in June in an

opinion - since disavowed - that authorized the use of

torture against terrorism suspects in some

circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed

by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests

was negligible and constitutional.

 

The opinion said: " Given the limited nature of such

public monitoring, any possible 'chilling' effect

caused by the bulletins would be quite minimal and

substantially outweighed by the public interest in

maintaining safety and order during large-scale

demonstrations. "

 

Those same concerns are now central to the vigorous

efforts by the F.B.I. to identify possible disruptions

by anarchists, violent demonstrators and others at the

Republican National Convention, which begins Aug. 30

and is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of

protesters.

 

In the last few weeks, beginning before the Democratic

convention, F.B.I. counterterrorism agents and other

federal and local officers have sought to interview

dozens of people in at least six states, including

past protesters and their friends and family members,

about possible violence at the two conventions. In

addition, three young men in Missouri said they were

trailed by federal agents for several days and

subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury last

month, forcing them to cancel their trip to Boston to

take part in a protest there that same day.

 

Interrogations have generally covered the same three

questions, according to some of those questioned and

their lawyers: were demonstrators planning violence or

other disruptions, did they know anyone who was, and

did they realize it was a crime to withhold such

information.

 

A handful of protesters at the Boston convention were

arrested but there were no major disruptions. Concerns

have risen for the Republican convention, however,

because of antiwar demonstrations directed at

President Bush and because of New York City's global

prominence.

 

With the F.B.I. given more authority after the Sept.

11 attacks to monitor public events, the tensions over

the convention protests, coupled with the Justice

Department's own legal analysis of such monitoring,

reflect the fine line between protecting national

security in an age of terrorism and discouraging

political expression.

 

F.B.I. officials, mindful of the bureau's abuses in

the 1960's and 1970's monitoring political dissidents

like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., say they are

confident their agents have not crossed that line in

the lead-up to the conventions.

 

" The F.B.I. isn't in the business of chilling anyone's

First Amendment rights, " said Joe Parris, a bureau

spokesman in Washington. " But criminal behavior isn't

covered by the First Amendment. What we're concerned

about are injuries to convention participants,

injuries to citizens, injuries to police and first

responders. "

 

F.B.I. officials would not say how many people had

been interviewed in recent weeks, how they were

identified or what spurred the bureau's interest.

 

They said the initiative was part of a broader,

nationwide effort to follow any leads pointing to

possible violence or illegal disruptions in connection

with the political conventions, presidential debates

or the November election, which come at a time of

heightened concern about a possible terrorist attack.

 

F.B.I. officials in Washington have urged field

offices around the country in recent weeks to redouble

their efforts to interview sources and gather

information that might help to detect criminal plots.

The only lead to emerge publicly resulted in a warning

to authorities before the Boston convention that

anarchists or other domestic groups might bomb news

vans there. It is not clear whether there was an

actual plot.

 

The individuals visited in recent weeks " are people

that we identified that could reasonably be expected

to have knowledge of such plans and plots if they

existed, " Mr. Parris said.

 

" We vetted down a list and went out and knocked on

doors and had a laundry list of questions to ask about

possible criminal behavior, " he added. " No one was

dragged from their homes and put under bright lights.

The interviewees were free to talk to us or close the

door in our faces. "

 

But civil rights advocates argued that the visits

amounted to harassment. They said they saw the

interrogations as part of a pattern of increasingly

aggressive tactics by federal investigators in

combating domestic terrorism. In an episode in

February in Iowa, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Drake

University for records on the sponsor of a campus

antiwar forum. The demand was dropped after a

community outcry.

 

Protest leaders and civil rights advocates who have

monitored the recent interrogations said they believed

at least 40 or 50 people, and perhaps many more, had

been contacted by federal agents about demonstration

plans and possible violence surrounding the

conventions and other political events.

 

" This kind of pressure has a real chilling effect on

perfectly legitimate political activity, " said Mark

Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil

Liberties Union of Colorado, where two groups of

political activists in Denver and a third in Fort

Collins were visited by the F.B.I. " People are going

to be afraid to go to a demonstration or even sign a

petition if they justifiably believe that will result

in your having an F.B.I. file opened on you. "

 

The issue is a particularly sensitive one in Denver,

where the police agreed last year to restrictions on

local intelligence-gathering operations after it was

disclosed that the police had kept files on some 3,000

people and 200 groups involved in protests.

 

But the inquiries have stirred opposition elsewhere as

well.

 

In New York, federal agents recently questioned a man

whose neighbor reported he had made threatening

comments against the president. He and a lawyer,

Jeffrey Fogel, agreed to talk to the Secret Service,

denying the accusation and blaming it on a feud with

the neighbor. But when agents started to question the

man about his political affiliations and whether he

planned to attend convention protests, " that's when I

said no, no, no, we're not going to answer those kinds

of questions, " said Mr. Fogel, who is legal director

for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

 

In the case of the three young men subpoenaed in

Missouri, Denise Lieberman, legal director for the

American Civil Liberties Union in St. Louis, which is

representing them, said they scrapped plans to attend

both the Boston and the New York conventions after

they were questioned about possible violence.

 

The men are all in their early 20's, Ms. Lieberman

said, but she would not identify them.

 

All three have taken part in past protests over

American foreign policy and in planning meetings for

convention demonstrations. She said two of them were

arrested before on misdemeanor charges for what she

described as minor civil disobedience at protests.

 

Prosecutors have now informed the men that they are

targets of a domestic terrorism investigation, Ms.

Lieberman said, but have not disclosed the basis for

their suspicions. " They won't tell me, " she said.

 

Federal officials in St. Louis and Washington declined

to comment on the case. Ms. Lieberman insisted that

the men " didn't have any plans to participate in the

violence, but what's so disturbing about all this is

the pre-emptive nature - stopping them from

participating in a protest before anything even

happened. "

 

The three men " were really shaken and frightened by

all this, " she said, " and they got the message loud

and clear that if you make plans to go to a protest,

you could be subject to arrest or a visit from the

F.B.I. "

 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company