Sarah Bardwell worked for the Quakers, not al-Qaeda.
Bardwell, a one-time intern with the American Friends Service Committee, is no terrorist. She just played one in America’s jack-booted stomp on dissent.
I’m sitting here reading the FBI reports on Bardwell that were released this week under a Freedom of Information Act filing by the ACLU.
Sarah Bardwell, they say, is a member of Food Not Bombs. She also hung with the Derailler Bicycle Collective.
All Americans, regardless of viewpoint, share the responsibility that Bardwell takes seriously.
“If I see something I don’t agree with,” she said, “I get up and speak about that and work to create just change.”
That’s why she helped organize a protest by Coloradans Opposing War, another group mentioned in the FBI reports.
Three people at that protest were arrested, two for knocking over newspaper stands, one for plastering a bumper sticker on a police vehicle that said “Axis of Greed: Cheney, Bush, Ashcroft.”
Bardwell was not arrested. But she was listed as a contact for the protest.
The FBI reports suggest the “close association between (Food Not Bombs) and the Anarchist Black Cross movement and the close proximity of the FNB house to 923 Lipan St., the location of the Anarchist Black Cross Denver,” led the Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force to Bardwell.
This is the kind of wasted time and money that let real bad guys run free.
Bardwell, who lives on Lipan Street, has no criminal record. Nor is she associated in any way with Anarchist Black Cross.
“Someone told me they tried to have a meeting three years ago and no one came,” she said of the group.
Bardwell certainly doesn’t remember Anarchist Black Cross at 923 Lipan or anywhere else in Denver.
What she still recalls vividly are the G-men knocking on her door July 22, trying to scare her and others who lived with her. They included FBI agents and Denver police detectives. At least one person wore SWAT gear.
Bardwell said the agents and police threatened her and her friends when they exercised their right not to identify themselves or answer questions about whether they planned to disrupt the Democratic and Republican political conventions.
“The purpose of the interviews was to intimidate,” said the 21-year-old activist, who had no intention of traveling to Boston.
It worked and it didn’t. Bardwell says she’ll continue demonstrating. But she was amazed that the government could associate her with terrorism for belonging to a group that feeds the homeless and one that fixes bicycles.
“I understand we need forms of law enforcement (since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks),” she said. “But I think it’s misdirected. The idea of terrorism is being used to crush dissent.”
She looks at her case as proof, and frankly, it’s hard to argue with her.
There were, according to one FBI report, “several leads for the Denver Division to conduct pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election.”
On Thursday, I asked an FBI spokeswoman about the tips that led to federal agents and local police to Bardwell and her friends.
“Tips?” repeated the spokeswoman. “I don’t know if I’d say that. We obtained information and acted on it.”
She said the task force had no choice.
“We have to follow up,” she explained. “We have no unaddressed work as it concerns terror.”
I, on the other hand, have unaddressed questions about how terrorizing Americans who peacefully disagree with their government makes the country safer.
The FBI says it can’t reveal the source of the intelligence that led the terrorism task force to Bardwell.
One worries that it is the same people who convinced us we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at jspencer@denverpost.com or 303-820-1771.