For a moment, when we learned that the American Civil Liberties Union had caught the FBI spying on Colorado peace groups, it was like a flashback to the days of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Alas, in the intervening years, the bureau hasn’t figured out that opposing war is neither criminal nor crazy. In fact, we’d say it’s a sure sign of sanity. Publicly protesting war is as American as apple pie.
Instead, we have “Son of Spy Files.” But rather than Denver cops snooping on pacifist nuns, this production has the FBI stumbling around in their trench coats, snap- brim hats and dark glasses, taking down license plate numbers and watching 40 people gather at the defunct Breakdown Books on Capitol Hill to carpool to a peace rally in Colorado Springs in February 2003. Heavens! How subversive!
It might be funny except that one document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicates the probe was labeled as a domestic terrorism investigation, according to Mark Silverstein, legal director of the Colorado ACLU.
Subjects of the probe were the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, Revolutionary Anti-War Response and Mile High Resistance – which the FBI labeled an “Anti-Global Expansion Environmentalist radical movement.”
The ACLU got into the case after people and groups were questioned about their part in rallies in Colorado Springs in 2003 and at the 2002 Denver Columbus Day parade, an annual target of protesters by all sorts of groups.
One activist was asked about her association with Food Not Bombs and the Anarchist Black Cross. (The latter opposes prisons and writes to prisoners.) Silverstein explains that some Auraria campus students had considered forming a Black Cross chapter, but the idea went nowhere.
“This report raises more questions about the degree to which the FBI is unjustifiably regarding demonstrations and public dissent as potential terrorism,” Silverstein said.
FBI spokeswoman Monique Kelso told a Post reporter that the bureau doesn’t monitor groups unless a criminal act already has occurred.
But Silverstein challenged that, charging that the FBI collects information about people’s political activities “when there is absolutely no criminal predicate.”
We’re troubled that the FBI can’t seem to shake its outmoded suspicions about dissent. Worse, that it squanders resources instead of collaring real terrorists.
