No restraints—USA/FBI Homeland raids

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
President Barack Obama continues war-on-civil-liberties precedent

Former FBI special agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley (Minnesota) appeared today on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program. This is some of what she had to say.

The Obama administration two years after the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation of a privacy and civil liberties oversight board has appointed no one to the board's five seats. This is an incredible failure, Rowley said, “in light of what’s gone on — even including the revelations of torture and warrantless monitoring.”

This past Friday in Chicago and Minneapolis U.S. FBI agents raided eight homes and offices of antiwar activists.

The wake of September 11, 2001, brought a sea change, Coleen Rowley said. While this is not the first time you’ve seen "this Orwellian turn of the war on terror onto domestic peace groups and social justice groups… this is shocking and alarming [to have] humanitarian advocacy now being treated as somehow material support to terrorists."

In 2008, "we found out through a Freedom of Information request that there’s 300 pages of—I think it was four or five, six agents trailing a group of students in Iowa City to parks, libraries, bars, restaurants. They even went through their trash.

"This is another reason why peace groups, and certainly law professors, have to be very concerned now about this misinterpretation that says advocacy for human-rights … We have a famous Minnesotan, Greg Mortenson, who wrote Three Cups of Tea; he obviously sets up schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. People like him and Jimmy Carter are even at peril, given this wide discretion now to say that anyone who works in a foreign country — even for peace or humanitarian, anti-torture purposes — could somehow run afoul of the USA PATRIOT Act."

Right after 9/11, the Attorney General said FBI agents could go into mosques and places like that to monitor. That was the beginning. "No longer was there a need to show even factual justification. The presumption is entirely reversed. The FBI needed only to say they were not targeting a group based solely on their exercise of First Amendment rights." The presumption was turned on its head.

"It is incredibly important to get the word to the officials who are in charge of using their discretion that they should use their discretion to look for real terrorists instead of to go after peace groups."



Sources and notes


“FBI Raids Homes of Antiwar and Pro-Palestinian Activists in Chicago and Minneapolis,” September 27, 2010, Democracy now lead in:


“Antiwar activists are gearing up for protests outside FBI offices in cities across the country today and Tuesday after the FBI raided eight homes and offices of antiwar activists in Chicago and Minneapolis Friday. The FBI’s search warrants indicate agents were looking for connections between local antiwar activists and groups in Colombia and the Middle East.”


Guests on this segment of the Democracy Now program were Coleen Rowley and activists targeted by the FBI raids. Jess Sundin is a longtime antiwar activist in Minneapolis and a member of the Anti-War Committee. Her home and offices were raided early Friday morning. Joe Iosbaker is an employee of the University of Illinois in Chicago and a steward for SEIU Local 73 (he had helped coordinate buses from Chicago to protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention). His Chicago home was raided on Friday.


Coleen Rowley is a former FBI special agent and whistleblower based in Minnesota, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/27/fbi_raids_homes_of_anti_war


The Church Committee of the 1970s exposed CIA spying at home. Restrictive guidelines and regulations followed those hearings.

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