FBI, RNC, NYC

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
FBI, RNC, NYC
12
Tue, 08-17-2004 - 8:18am
Gotta wonder what Bush is so afraid of? The truth getting out? It'd be awfully hard for the media NOT to cover the protests that will take place in NY. Also, can anyone argue that our civil liberties aren't under attack? I'm sure you've seen Ashcroft's plan to use surveillance on the internet now too? I'm too young to remember Nixon, but does this harken back to that time?



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/politics/campaign/16fbi.html



F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: August 16, 2004

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 on 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 to counterterrorism squads. The F.B.I. bulletins that relayed the request for help 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 Counsel, 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.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
In reply to: mnmgla
Thu, 08-19-2004 - 12:15pm
It is the few that give the bad name to the many, which is what I said earlier.

I agree that most of the protest groups do have peaceful gatherings, but as we saw during the Democratic Convention, things can get ugly in a hurry.

Still, as a leader in a given group, I still cannot understand why this woman would not say that she would ask her constituency to keep things peaceful. This tells me that a) she is no leader, and b) she doesnt believe in peaceful protests.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
In reply to: mnmgla
Thu, 08-19-2004 - 12:17pm
Then as a representative who is actually on the payroll of the organization (one of only a few, so that tells me she is a leader), she has the responsibility to speak up about violence during any protest, and to say that she is against it.

Since she did not, she is not credible.

The events leading up to NY stem from what happend during the Democratic Convention when several pockets of violence broke out among different protest groups.

Bloomberg is trying to do his due diligence (although the FBI is taking things a bit far) before things get out of hand in NYC.

Lets remember that NYC has a population of 8 times that of Boston.

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