More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying

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More Groups Than Thought Monitored in Police Spying

Sunday 04 January 2009

 

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by: Lisa Rein and Josh White, The Washington Post

 

 

One of the groups spied on, the DC Anti-war Network were labeled as

white supremacists for no apparent reason. (Photo: Charlie

Archambault / USN & WR)

New documents reveal Maryland program's reach.

 

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far

more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that

troopers monitored - and labeled as terrorists - activists devoted to

such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing

bike lanes.

 

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a

" security threat " because of concerns that members would disrupt the

circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate

increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes

the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without

explanation.

 

One of the possible " crimes " in the file police opened on Amnesty

International, a world-renowned human rights group: " civil rights. "

 

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents,

the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started

in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two

men on death row.

 

The operation has been called a " waste of resources " by the

current police superintendent and " undemocratic " by the governor.

 

Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place

during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. ®,

spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months

infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they

inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their

database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But

the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets

and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007.

 

The surveillance ended with no arrests and no evidence of violent

sedition. Instead, troopers are preparing to purge files and say they

are expecting lawsuits.

 

The effort, made public in July, confirmed the fears of civil

liberties groups that have warned about domestic spying since the

Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Interviews, e-mails, public records and an

independent state review reveal that police in Maryland were motivated

by something far narrower: a query about death penalty activism

directed to a police antiterrorism unit that was searching for a

mission.

 

But some observers say Sept. 11 opened the door. " No one was

thinking this was al-Qaeda, " said Stephen H. Sachs, a former U.S.

attorney and state attorney general appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley

(D) to review the case. " But 9/11 created an atmosphere where cutting

corners was easier. "

 

Maryland has not been alone. The FBI and police departments in

several cities, including Denver in 2002 and New York before the 2004

Republican National Convention, also responded to the threat of

terrorism by spying on activists.

 

Sachs's review, released in October, condemned the Maryland spying

as a severe lapse in judgment. No one has been reprimanded or fired,

and the undercover trooper has been promoted twice.

 

To date, the activists listed as terrorists are not known to have

experienced any related limits in their travel, employment or

financial transactions.

 

State police officials have provided only glimpses of their

intelligence-gathering and have defended some of it as necessary to

ensure public safety at potentially contentious protests. Although

they have provided related documents to the American Civil Liberties

Union and Maryland lawmakers, they have not given the same records to

The Washington Post under the Public Information Act.

 

The department declined to make the officers involved available to

answer questions. Some sources spoke on condition of anonymity because

of the case's sensitivity. Ehrlich also has declined to comment;

senior police officials say he was never briefed on the program. The

newly discovered documents do, however, reveal for the first time the

stated purpose of the operation: " To assess the threat to public

safety by various protest groups, and identify high threat groups for

continued monitoring. "

 

* * *

 

The documents and law enforcement sources say the operation began

in 2005 with a simple request from Maj. Jack Simpson, a field

commander in special operations. In late February, he called Lt. Greg

Mazzella in the intelligence division and asked for a threat

assessment of protests expected before the scheduled execution dates

for two men on Maryland's death row.

 

After trawling the Internet, an analyst reported a " potential for

disruption " at both executions. Mazzella dispatched a corporal who

needed experience in undercover work to the Electrik Maid community

center in Takoma Park, where death penalty foes were organizing

rallies.

 

At a rally to save Vernon Evans Jr. outside the Supermax prison in

Baltimore a few weeks later, the woman who said her name was Lucy

McDonald asked veteran activist Max Obuszewski how she could learn

more about passive resistance and civil disobedience.

 

The activists recall that she had a genial disposition and

refreshing curiosity, and she quickly became a fixture at meetings and

rallies of death penalty opponents and antiwar activists. She used a

laptop computer at meetings, but the activists say no one was alarmed.

" Maybe I wondered what she was typing, " said Mike Stark of Takoma

Park. " But you always check yourself. In our movement it's very

important to be outward and not paranoid. "

 

The trooper provided weekly reports to her bosses, logging at

least 288 hours of investigative time. She did not return phone calls

seeking comment, and The Post is not identifying her because of

concerns about compromising her cover in other possible operations.

 

The logs described silent vigils outside the prison and a ceremony

of poetry and songs to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on

Nagasaki, Japan. The activists pledged nonviolence. Yet she closed

several entries this way: " Due to the above facts, I request that this

case remain open and updated as events warrant. "

 

The woman's bosses considered her surveillance a low-risk training

exercise; it quickly expanded to the antiwar movement as she met

activists whose causes overlapped, police said.

 

Intelligence commanders discussed the spying at their daily

briefings and made Lt. Col. Thomas Coppinger, then the chief of the

intelligence bureau, and Superintendent Timothy Hutchins aware of it,

law enforcement officials said. Coppinger and other officers involved

in the case declined to comment.

 

The program emerged after the antiterrorism squad had been

whittled from almost 65 to a dozen.

 

Hutchins's predecessor, Ed Norris, a hard-charging former

Baltimore police commissioner, had built up the division after the

Sept. 11 attacks to fight terrorist threats.

 

But when Norris was forced out by corruption charges in 2004, the

unit was gutted. Most of the computers and other high-tech equipment

for intelligence troopers were literally ripped out of the walls, law

enforcement sources said.

 

" We concentrated on what we could do best, rather than a little

bit of everything, " Hutchins said.

 

When Simpson called, the unit finally had a mission.

 

Greg Shipley, a police spokesman, said the undercover operation

spanned months as the death penalty cases saw their timelines grow and

the executions delayed.

 

Other intelligence gathering was prompted by planned protests

largely to ensure that no violence occurred, Shipley said.

Investigators had concerns about the potential for " counter-

demonstrations " to planned protests, he said.

 

Current Superintendent Terrence Sheridan said in a Nov. 25 letter

to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery)

that police had a right to monitor activists in public forums.

 

" Presence at a rally, a demonstration, gathering information from

open sources such as the Internet, etc. are all part of the collection

of the knowledge and information crucial " to police work, Sheridan

wrote.

 

* * *

 

The undercover trooper's early moves were sometimes clumsy. She

sent e-mails from a domain linked to the state police that could

easily have been uncovered with an Internet search. She sprinkled

truth across her cover story, once revealing her home county. She

suddenly changed her name to Lucy Shoup and offered a new e-mail

address, claiming a change in marital status. She asked lots of

questions but never shared her thoughts, activists say. She also tried

to use her new friendships to learn more about other groups.

 

Then, with Evans's execution stayed, the woman disappeared. " Lucy

was no more, " Obuszewski recalled.

 

Meanwhile, the intelligence-gathering expanded in other

directions, to activists in New York, Missouri, San Francisco and at

the University of Maryland. Shane Dillingham's primary crime,

according to the six-page file classifying him as a terrorist, was

" anarchism. " Police opened a file on the doctoral student in history a

week after an undercover officer attended a College Park forum

featuring a jailhouse phone conversation with Evans.

 

Investigators also tracked activists protesting weapons

manufactured by defense contractor Lockheed Martin. They watched two

pacifist Catholic nuns from Baltimore. Environmental activists made it

into the database, as did three leaders of Code Pink, a national

women's antiwar group, who do not live in Maryland.

 

PETA was labeled a " security threat group " in April 2005, and by

July police were looking into a tip that the group had learned about a

failing chicken farm in Kent County and planned on " protesting or

stealing the chickens. " A " very casually dressed " undercover trooper

attended a speech by PETA's president that month and waited afterward

to see whether anyone talked about chickens. Nobody did.

 

Police had turned to the database in a low-cost effort to replace

antiquated file cabinets. The Washington High Intensity Drug

Trafficking Area, a regional clearinghouse for drug-related criminal

information, offered its software for free.

 

But the database did not include categories that fit the nature of

the protest-group investigations. So police created " terrorism "

categories to track the activists, according to the state review. Some

information was sent directly to HIDTA's main database as part of an

agreement to share information.

 

Putting the activists into the database was " a function of nothing

more than the insertion of a piece of paper in a paper file in a file

cabinet, " Sheridan wrote. But labeling them " terrorists, " he said was

" incorrect and improper. "

 

The activists fear that they will land on federal watch lists, in

part because the police shared their intelligence information with at

least seven area law enforcement agencies.

 

HIDTA Director Tom Carr said his organization's database became a

dead end for the information because law enforcement agencies cannot

access the data directly. The database instead acts as a " pointer " :

Investigators enter case information and the database indicates

whether another agency has related material and instructs

investigators to contact that agency. The activists were not a match

with any other data, Carr said, and their information has since

purged.

 

" The problem lies in the fact that once [the state police] checked

it out and found it was not accurate, they should have removed it from

the system, " Carr said. " And they did not do that. "

 

* * *

 

The surveillance program became public largely because of

documents released during a trespassing trial for Obuszewski, the nuns

and another activist arrested during an antiwar rally at the National

Security Agency. The documents showed that Baltimore intelligence

officers were tracking them. The American Civil Liberties Union then

filed public records requests with several law enforcement agencies.

When the state police refused to release what they had, the ACLU

sued.

 

O'Malley condemned the monitoring as a politically motivated

mistake and moved quickly to seek answers. He appointed Sachs, who had

prosecuted Catholic activists for raiding a Selective Service office

in 1968.

 

Sachs called the spying a " systemic failure " that violated federal

regulations and said police were oblivious to the activists' rights to

free expression and association.

 

The Maryland State Police have changed their policies and plan to

solicit advice from the ACLU, the General Assembly, prosecutors and

police about regulations that would raise the bar for intelligence-

gathering to " reasonable suspicion " of a crime.

 

Some activists have responded by redoubling their efforts.

 

Pat Elder, a Bethesda advocate who organizes a demonstration on

Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the gates of Lockheed Martin's

headquarters, sent a public message to police last month on a local

Web site.

 

" Did it ever occur to you that we're on the side of the good guys

and you're not? " Elder wrote in an open letter to the NSA, the

Maryland State Police and Montgomery police. " How do you think it

makes us feel to know you're looking over our shoulders this way? "

 

-------

 

Staff researchers Julie Tate and Meg Smith contributed to this

report.

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