It's becoming more and more obvious that BushCo has turned into Big
Brother:

FBI monitors activists, court documents show
Groups say Bush is trying to stifle political opponents
Eric Lichtblau, New York Times

Monday, July 18, 2005


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Washington -- The FBI has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal
documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and
anti-war protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to
stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.

The FBI has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the
American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush
administration's anti-terror policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace,
an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in
protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department
disclosed in a court filing earlier this month in federal court in
Washington.

The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information
Act brought by the ACLU and other groups that maintain that the FBI has
engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the
Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over
by the government sheds light on the interest of FBI counterterrorism
officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's
Republican National Convention.

FBI and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the
ACLU and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they
emphasized that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not
sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups, and
that any intelligence- gathering activities related to political
protests are designed to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at
demonstrations, not quell free speech. They said there may be an
innocuous explanation for the large volume of files, like preserving
requests from or complaints about the groups in agency files.

But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the
disclosure.

"Why would the FBI collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights
organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there
be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment
activities?" said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU.

Protest groups charge that FBI counterterrorism officials have used
their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line
between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist activity
in what they liken to FBI political surveillance of the 1960s.

In all, the ACLU is now seeking FBI records since 2001 or earlier on
some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's
policies on the Iraq war and other matters.

The Justice Department is opposing the ACLU's request, saying it does
not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers
say the sheer volume of material will take them eight to 11 months to
process for Greenpeace and the ACLU alone.

The files that the FBI has already turned over in recent weeks center
on two other groups that were involved in political protests in the
last few years, and those files point to previously undisclosed
communications by bureau counterterrorism officials regarding activity
at protests.

Six pages of internal FBI documents on a group called United for Peace
and Justice, which led wide-scale protests over the Iraq war, discuss
the group's role in 2003 in preparing protests for last year's
Republican National Convention.

A memo by counterterrorism personnel in the FBI's Los Angeles office
circulated to other counterterrorism officials in New York, Boston, Los
Angeles and Washington makes reference to possible anarchist
connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions but
also quotes from more benign statements protesters had released on the
Internet and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention.

A second file turned over by the FBI on the group American Indian
Movement of Colorado includes seven pages of internal documents and
press clippings related to protests and possible disruptions in the
Denver area in connection with Columbus Day