As George W. Bush explains why he didn’t need court permission to let the National Security Agency wiretap terrorism suspects, mail from the FBI trickles into the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The gathering correspondence makes a better case than the president on whether Americans need judicial oversight of domestic intelligence.
The FBI reports are the fruit of a year-old Freedom of Information Act request by ACLU chapters across the country.
The reports show what sorts of groups and individuals the feds consider potential terrorists.
Police and intelligence agency definitions of terrorists and terrorism become crucial when nobody gets to second- guess them. The ACLU information request gives the best snapshot of how far the feds have pushed the envelope.
Nationally, suspected terrorist organizations include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA likes to put naked volunteers in cages to protest the circus. PETA likes to protest McDonald’s Happy Meals by passing out bloody cartoons to kids. Tasteless? Sure. But terrorists?
According to the FBI records received so far by Colorado ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein, here are the Colorado groups included in investigations of suspected terrorism: Food Not Bombs, Derailer Bicycle Collective, Rocky Mountain Animal Defense, Denver Peace and Justice Committee, Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, American Indian Movement of Colorado, Ancient Forest Rescue, Transform Columbus Day, Dandelion Center, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and Revolutionary Anti-War Response.
Chances are remote that any of these Colorado groups were part of presidentially sanctioned wiretaps by the NSA. But Congress and the president must consider how easily any group can become wiretapped without judicial restraint.
Absent checks and balances to rein them in, police and security agencies will expand secret spying. As the Colorado ACLU has discovered, the definition of domestic terrorism already is broad enough to include a whole lot of people doing nothing to terrify anyone.
In December 2004, Silverstein asked the FBI whether it had files on 16 groups. Today, Silverstein has FBI records that name eight of those groups, plus several others he didn’t ask about. The feds are double-checking on seven more groups for whom they initially found no records. They have not yet reported on an eighth – Citizens for Peace in Space – that Silverstein is certain has been investigated.
Law enforcement shorthand on FBI documents leaves no question why the government was interested in these groups, Silverstein said. Some files contain identification numbers starting with 266, the designation for domestic terrorism, he explained. Others bear a 300 code for “special events management,” part of the counterterrorism mission.
Abbreviations are as follows, Silverstein continued: AOT means acts of terror. DT mean domestic terror. DTO means domestic terror organization.
The numbers and letters are necessary to suggest crime, which is what you’re supposed to suspect to open a terrorist investigation. But there is no crime outside of a little nonviolent protest.
That’s all the FBI reports show so far.
This would be good news if there had been good reason to worry in the first place. Consider instead, this scary intelligence used to justify a domestic terrorism investigation of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace and Rocky Mountain Citizens for Peace and Justice at an anti-war rally in Colorado Springs a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq:
“They are hyping the demonstration,” wrote an FBI agent, “as ‘the biggest peace rally in the history of Colorado.’ … The two groups are advocating committing what they refer to as ‘civil disobedience,’ possibly by blocking vehicular traffic …”
When you stop laughing, think about giving the man or woman who wrote this, or someone like them, the right to tap your phone or intercept your e-mail without a court order.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
