{"id":18486,"date":"2013-06-29T08:16:54","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=18486"},"modified":"2026-04-21T22:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:13:08","slug":"editorial-the-wonderful-american-world-of-informers-and-agents-provocateurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/06\/editorial-the-wonderful-american-world-of-informers-and-agents-provocateurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: The Wonderful American World of Informers and Agents Provocateurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"informant-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Todd Gitlin and Tom Engelhardt<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Back in the early 1970s, I worked for Pacific News Service (PNS), a small antiwar media outfit that operated out of the Bay Area Institute (BAI), a progressive think tank in San Francisco.\u00a0 The first story I ever wrote for PNS came about because an upset U.S. Air Force medic wanted someone to know about the American war wounded then pouring in from the invasion of Laos.\u00a0 So he snuck me onto Travis Air Force Base in northern California and into a military hospital to interview wigged-out guys with stumps for limbs who thought the war was a disaster.\u00a0 In some cases, they also thought we should have bombed the Vietnamese \u201cback to the stone age.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a good boy from the 1950s and sneaking onto that base made me nervous indeed.\u00a0 It was also the most illegal act I encountered at either PNS or the institute in those years.\u00a0 We did, of course, regularly have active duty antiwar soldiers and members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War pass through our office, and we had an antiwar GI in Vietnam writing for us under a pseudonym.\u00a0 (At some point, we found out that the Pentagon had actually tracked down and interviewed every soldier in Vietnam with that pseudonymous name in its attempt to uncover our journalist.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, we doggedly researched, reported, wrote, and edited our stories on U.S. war policy, which we syndicated, with modest success, to mainstream newspapers as well as what, in those days, was romantically called \u201cthe underground press.\u201d The only hints of \u201cviolence\u201d you might have stumbled across in our office would have been discussions of the violence of U.S. war policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

So imagine my surprise \u2013 okay, I shouldn\u2019t have been, but I was anyway \u2013 when years later one of my co-workers got his FBI files thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, and it became clear, on reading through those heavily redacted, semi-blacked-out pages, that there had been an informer in our office, spying on us and feeding information to the Bureau.\u00a0 If that was true in a modest place like PNS\/BAI, where wouldn\u2019t there have been such spies in the world of the antiwar movement?\u00a0 In fact, U.S. government informers and sometimes\u00a0agents provocateurs<\/em>\u00a0were, it seems, a widespread phenomenon of those years.\u00a0 It\u2019s a story that has never fully been told, in part obviously because the information to tell it just isn\u2019t fully there.\u00a0 By far the best account I\u2019ve read on the subject, particularly when it comes to\u00a0agents provocateurs \u2013<\/em>government agents sent in to provoke violence \u2013 was a section of Todd Gitlin\u2019s 1980 book<\/span>\u00a0The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Recently, as Edward Snowden\u2019s National Security Agency revelations about the high-tech gathering of global (and domestic) communications of every imaginable sort<\/span>\u00a0began unspooling<\/span><\/a><\/span>, Gitlin\u2019s work came to mind again. I had certainly been aware of how many post-9\/11 \u201cterror\u201d cases against American Muslims rested on the acts and testimony of government informers, who sometimes even provided (fake) weaponry to hapless plotters and the spark to begin plotting in the first place.\u00a0 I began to wonder, however, what we didn\u2019t know about the low-tech side of America\u2019s massive intelligence overreach.\u00a0 So I picked up the phone and called Gitlin.\u00a0 The answer, as his piece today indicates, is one hell of a horrifying lot.\u00a0 Among the few outfits to pay significant attention to spies and informers in the ranks of groups opposed to some aspect of Washington\u2019s policies, the ACLU stands out.\u00a0 In fact, in a map that organization created, \u201c<\/span>Spying on First Amendment Activity \u2013 State by State<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d you can take a Mr. Toad\u2019s wild ride through what\u2019s known of the universe of the twenty-first century American informer.\u00a0 TomDispatch is pleased to follow up with a Mr. Todd\u2019s wild ride through the thickets of American intelligence clearly on the march domestically.\u00a0~\u00a0Tom<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Close Encounters of the Lower-Tech Kind<\/span><\/p>\n

By Todd Gitlin<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Only Martians, by now, are unaware of the phone and online data<\/span>\u00a0scooped up<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0by the National Security Agency (though if it turns out that they\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>aware, the NSA has surely picked up their signals and crunched their metadata).\u00a0 American high-tech surveillance is not, however, the only kind around.\u00a0 There\u2019s also the lower tech, up-close-and-personal kind that involves informers and sometimes government-instigated violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just how much of this is going on and in how coordinated a way no one out here in the spied-upon world knows.\u00a0 The lower-tech stuff gets reported, if at all, only one singular, isolated event at a time \u2013 look over here, look over there, now you see it, now you don\u2019t.\u00a0 What is known about such surveillance as well as the suborning of illegal acts by government agencies, including the FBI, in the name of counterterrorism has not been put together by major news organizations in a way that would give us an overview of the phenomenon.\u00a0 (The<\/span>\u00a0ACLU<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0has done by far the best job of compiling reports on spying on Americans of this sort.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Some intriguing bits about informers and\u00a0agents provocateurs<\/em>\u00a0briefly made it into the public spotlight when Occupy Wall Street was riding high. \u00a0But as always, dots need connecting. \u00a0Here is a preliminary attempt to sort out some patterns behind what could be the next big story about government surveillance and provocation in America.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two Stories from Occupy Wall Street<\/span><\/p>\n

The first is about surveillance. The second is about provocation.<\/span><\/p>\n

On September 17, 2011, Plan A for the New York activists who came to be known as Occupy Wall Street was to march to the territory outside the bank headquarters of JPMorgan Chase. \u00a0Once there, they discovered that the block was entirely fenced in.\u00a0 Many activists came to believe that the police had learned their initial destination from e-mail circulating beforehand.\u00a0 Whereupon they headed for nearby Zuccotti Park and a movement was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

The evening before May Day 2012,<\/span>\u00a0a rump Occupy group<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0marched out of San Francisco\u2019s Dolores Park and into the Mission District, a neighborhood where not so many 1-percenters live, work, or shop.\u00a0 There, they proceeded to trash \u201cmom and pop shops, local boutiques and businesses, and cars,\u201d according to<\/span>\u00a0Scott Rossi<\/span><\/a><\/span>, a medic and eyewitness, who summed his feelings up this way afterward: \u00a0\u201cWe were hijacked.\u201d The people \u201cleading the march tonight,\u201d he added, were<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cclean cut, athletic, commanding, gravitas not borne of charisma but of testosterone and intimidation. They were decked out in outfits typically attributed to those in the \u2018black bloc\u2019 spectrum of tactics, yet their clothes were too new, and something was just off about them. They were very combative and nearly physically violent with the livestreamers on site, and got ignorant with me, a medic, when I intervened\u2026 I didn\u2019t recognize any of these people. Their eyes were too angry, their mouths were too severe. They felt \u2018military\u2019 if that makes sense. Something just wasn\u2019t right about them on too many levels.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He was quick to add, \u201cI\u2019m not one of those tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.\u00a0 I don\u2019t subscribe to those theories that Queen Elizabeth\u2019s Reptilian slave driver masters run the Fed. I\u2019ve read up on agents provocateurs and plants and that sort of thing and I have to say that, without a doubt, I believe 100% that the people that started tonight\u2019s events in the Mission were exactly that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Taken aback,<\/span>\u00a0Occupy San Francisco<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0condemned the sideshow: \u201cWe consider these acts of vandalism and violence a brutal assault on our community and the 99%.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Where does such vandalism and violence come from?\u00a0 We don\u2019t know.\u00a0 There are actual activists who believe that they are doing good this way; and there are government infiltrators; and then there are double agents who don\u2019t know who\u00a0<\/em>they work for, ultimately, but like smashing things or blowing them up.\u00a0 By definition, masked trashers of windows in Oakland or elsewhere are anonymous.\u00a0 In anonymity, they \u2013 and the burners of flags and setters of bombs \u2013 magnify their power.\u00a0 They hijack the media spotlight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In this way, tiny groups \u2013 incendiary, sincere, fraudulent, whoever they are \u2013<\/span>\u00a0seize levers<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that can move the entire world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sting of the Clueless Bee<\/span><\/p>\n

Who casts the first stone?\u00a0 Who smashes the first window?\u00a0 Who teaches bombers to build and plant actual or spurious bombs?\u00a0 The history of the secret police plantingagents provocateurs<\/em>\u00a0in popular movements goes back at least to nineteenth century France and twentieth century Russia.\u00a0 In 1905, for example, the priest who led St. Petersburg\u2019s revolution was some sort of<\/span>\u00a0double agent<\/span><\/a><\/span>, as was the man who<\/span>\u00a0organized<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the assassination of the Czar\u2019s uncle, the Grand Duke.\u00a0 As it happens, the United States has its own surprisingly full history of such planted agents\u00a0<\/em>at work turning small groups or movements in directions that, for better or far more often worse, they weren\u2019t planning on going.\u00a0 One well-documented case is that of \u201c<\/span>Tommy the Traveler<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organizer who after years of trying to arouse violent action<\/span>\u00a0convinced<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0two 19-year-old students to firebomb an ROTC headquarters at Hobart College in upstate New York. The writer John Schultz<\/span>\u00a0reported on<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0likely provocateurs in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention of 1968.\u00a0 How much of this sort of thing went on?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 Many relevant documents molder in unopened archives, or have been heavily redacted or destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the Boston marathon bombing illustrates, there are homegrown terrorists capable of producing the weapons they need and killing Americans without the slightest help from the U.S. government. \u00a0But historically, it\u2019s surprising how relatively often the gendarme is also a ringleader.\u00a0 Just how often is hard to know, since information on the subject is fiendishly hard to pry loose from the secret world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through 2011, 508 defendants in the U.S. were prosecuted in what the Department of Justice calls \u201cterrorism-related cases.\u201d According to<\/span>\u00a0Mother Jones\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Trevor Aaronson<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the FBI ran sting operations that \u201cresulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants\u201d \u2013 about one-third of the total.\u00a0 \u201cOf that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur \u2013 an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.\u00a0 With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Cleveland, on May Day of 2012, in the words of a<\/span>\u00a0Rolling Stone\u00a0<\/em>expos\u00e9<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the FBI \u201cturned five stoner misfits into the world\u2019s most hapless terrorist cell.\u201d To do this, the FBI put a deeply indebted, convicted bank robber and bad-check passer on their payroll, and hooked him up with an arms dealer, also paid by the Bureau.\u00a0 The FBI undercover man then hustled five wacked-out wannabe anarchists into procuring what they thought was enough C4 plastic explosive to build bombs they thought would blow up a bridge.\u00a0 The bombs were, of course, dummies.\u00a0 The five were arrested and await trial.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do such cases mean?\u00a0 What is the FBI up to?\u00a0 Trevor Aaronson offers this appraisal:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe FBI\u2019s goal is to create a hostile environment for terrorist recruiters and operators \u2013 by raising the risk of even the smallest step toward violent action. It\u2019s a form of deterrence\u2026 Advocates insist it has been effective, noting that there hasn\u2019t been a successful large-scale attack against the United States since 9\/11. But what can\u2019t be answered \u2013 as many former and current FBI agents acknowledge \u2013 is how many of the bureau\u2019s targets would have taken the step over the line at all, were it not for an informant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps Aaronson is a bit too\u00a0<\/em>generous.\u00a0 The FBI may, at times, be anything but thoughtful in its provocations.\u00a0 It may, in fact, be flatly dopey.\u00a0 COINTELPRO records released since the 1960s under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that it took FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover until 1968 to discover that there was such a thing as a New Left that might be of interest.\u00a0 Between 1960 and 1968, as the New Left was becoming a formidable force in its own right, the Bureau\u2019s top officials seem to have thought that groups like Students for a Democratic Society were simply covers for the Communist Party, which was like mistaking the fleas for the dog.\u00a0 We have been assured that the FBI of today has learned something since the days of J. Edgar Hoover.\u00a0 But of ignorance and stupidity there is no end.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trivial and Nontrivial Pursuits<\/span><\/p>\n

Entrapment and instigation to commit crimes are in themselves genuine dangers to American liberties, even when the liberties are those of the reckless and wild. But there is another danger to such pursuits: the attention the authorities pay to nonexistent threats (or the creation of such threats) is attention not paid to actual threats.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone concerned about the security of Americans should cast a suspicious eye on the allocation or simply squandering of resources on wild goose chases. Consider some particulars which have recently come to light.\u00a0 Under the Freedom of Information Act, the<\/span>\u00a0Partnership for Civil Justice Fund<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0(PCJF) has unearthed documents showing that, in 2011 and 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies were busy surveilling and worrying about a good number of Occupy groups \u2013 during the very time that they were missing actual warnings about actual terrorist actions.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

From its beginnings, the Occupy movement was of considerable interest to the DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, while true terrorists were slipping past the nets they cast in the wrong places.\u00a0 In the fall of 2011, the DHS specifically<\/span>\u00a0asked<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0its regional affiliates to report on \u201cPeaceful Activist Demonstrations, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and \u2018significant criminal activity.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Aware that Occupy was overwhelmingly peaceful, the federally funded Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of 77 coordination centers known generically as \u201cfusion centers,\u201d was<\/span>\u00a0busy monitoring<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0Occupy Boston daily. \u00a0As the investigative journalist Michael Isikoff<\/span>\u00a0recently reported<\/span><\/a><\/span>, they were not only tracking Occupy-related Facebook pages and websites but \u201cwriting reports on the movement\u2019s potential impact on \u2018commercial and financial sector assets.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was in this period that the FBI received the second of two Russian police warnings about the extremist Islamist activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the future Boston Marathon bomber.\u00a0 That city\u2019s police commissioner later testified that the federal authorities did not pass any information at all about the Tsarnaev brothers on to him, though there\u2019s no point in letting the Boston police off the hook either.\u00a0 The ACLU has uncovered documents showing that, during the same period, they were<\/span>\u00a0paying close attention<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0to the internal workings of\u2026Code Pink and Veterans for Peace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Public Agencies and the \u201cPrivate Sector\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So we know that Boston\u2019s master coordinators \u2013 its Committee on Public Safety, you might say \u2013 were worried about constitutionally protected activity, including its consequences for \u201ccommercial and financial sector assets.\u201d\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, the feds worked closely with Wall Street even before the settling of Zuccotti Park.\u00a0 More surprisingly, in Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, intelligence was not only pooled among public law enforcement agencies, but shared with private corporations \u2013 and vice versa.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nationally, in 2011, the FBI and DHS were, in the words of Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, \u201ctreating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.\u201d \u00a0Last December using FOIA,<\/span>\u00a0PCJF obtained<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0112 pages of documents (heavily redacted) revealing a good deal of evidence for what might otherwise seem like an outlandish charge:<\/em>\u00a0that federal authorities were, in Verheyden-Hilliard\u2019s words, \u201cfunctioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.\u201d\u00a0 Consider these examples from PCJF\u2019s summary of federal agencies working directly not only with local authorities but on behalf of the private sector:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cAs early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn\u2019t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cThe FBI in Albany and the Syracuse Joint Terrorism Task Force disseminated information to\u2026 [22] campus police officials\u2026 A representative of the State University of New York at Oswego contacted the FBI for information on the OWS protests and reported to the FBI on the SUNY-Oswego Occupy encampment made up of students and professors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 An entity called the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), \u201ca strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the private sector,\u201d sent around information regarding Occupy protests at West Coast ports [on Nov. 2, 2011] to \u201craise awareness concerning this type of criminal activity.\u201d The DSAC report contained \u201ca \u2018handling notice\u2019 that the information is \u2018meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel\u2026\u2019 Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) reported to DSAC on the relationship between OWS and organized labor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 DSAC gave tips to its corporate clients on \u201ccivil unrest,\u201d which it defined as running the gamut from \u201csmall, organized rallies to large-scale demonstrations and rioting.\u201d It advised corporate employees to dress conservatively, avoid political discussions and \u201cavoid all large gatherings related to civil issues. Even seemingly peaceful rallies can spur violent activity or be met with resistance by security forces.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 The FBI in Anchorage, Jacksonville, Tampa, Richmond, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Birmingham also gathered information and briefed local officials on wholly peaceful Occupy activities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 In Jackson, Mississippi, FBI agents \u201cattended a meeting with the Bank Security Group in Biloxi, MS with multiple private banks and the Biloxi Police Department, in which they discussed an announced protest for \u2018National Bad Bank Sit-In-Day\u2019 on December 7, 2011.\u201d\u00a0 Also in Jackson, \u201cthe Joint Terrorism Task Force issued a \u2018Counterterrorism Preparedness\u2019 alert\u201d that, despite heavy redactions, notes the need to \u2018document\u2026the Occupy Wall Street Movement.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, \u201cintelligence\u201d moves in the opposite direction \u2013 from\u00a0<\/em>private corporations to\u00a0<\/em>public agencies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Among the collectors of such \u201cintelligence\u201d are entities that, like the various intelligence and law enforcement outfits, do not make distinctions between terrorists and nonviolent protesters.\u00a0 Consider<\/span>\u00a0TransCanada<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the corporation that plans to build the 1,179 mile<\/span>\u00a0Keystone-XL tar sands pipeline<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0across the U. S. and in the process realize its \u201cvision to become the leading energy infrastructure company in North America.\u201c The anti-pipeline group Bold Nebraska filed a successful Freedom of Information Act request with the Nebraska State Patrol and so was able to put<\/span>\u00a0TransCanada\u2019s briefing slideshow<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0up online.<\/span><\/p>\n

So it can be documented in living color that the company lectured federal agents and local police to look into the use of \u201canti-terrorism statutes\u201d against peaceful anti-Keystone activists.\u00a0 TransCanada showed slides that cited as sinister the \u201cattendance\u201d of Bold Nebraska members at public events, noting \u201cSuspicious Vehicles\/Photography.\u201d TransCanada alerted the authorities that Nebraska protesters were guilty of \u201caggressive\/abusive behavior,\u201d citing a local anti-pipeline group that, they said, committed a \u201cslap on the shoulder\u201d at the Merrick County Board Meeting (possessor of said shoulder unspecified).\u00a0 They fingered nonviolent activists by name and photo, paying them the tribute of calling them \u201c\u2019Professionals\u2019 & Organized.\u201d<\/span>Native News Network<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0pointed out that \u201calthough TransCanada\u2019s presentation to authorities contains information about property destruction, sabotage, and booby traps, police in Texas and Oklahoma have never alleged, accused, or charged Tar Sands Blockade activists of any such behaviors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Centers for Fusion, Diffusion, and Confusion<\/span><\/p>\n

After September 11, 2001, government agencies at all levels, suddenly eager to break down information barriers and connect the sort of dots that had gone massively unconnected before the al-Qaida attacks, used Department of Homeland Security funds to start \u201cfusion centers.\u201d\u00a0 These are supposed to coordinate anti-terrorist intelligence gathering and analysis.\u00a0 They are also supposed to \u201cfuse\u201d intelligence reports from federal, state, and local authorities, as well as private companies that conduct intelligence operations.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0According to<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the ACLU, at least 77 fusion centers currently receive federal funds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much is not known about these centers, including just who runs them, by what rules, and which public and private entities are among the fused.\u00a0 There is nothing public about most of them.\u00a0 However, some things are\u00a0<\/em>known about a few.\u00a0 Several fusion center reports that have gone public illustrate a remarkably slapdash approach to what constitutes \u201cterrorist danger\u201d and just what kinds of data are considered relevant for law enforcement.\u00a0 In 2010,<\/span>\u00a0the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0learned, for instance, that the Tennessee Fusion Center was \u201chighlighting on its website map of \u2018Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity\u2019 a recent ACLU-TN letter to school superintendents.\u00a0 The letter encourages schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.\u201d (The map is no longer online.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, the prize for pure fused wordiness goes to a 215-page manual issued in 2009 by the<\/span>\u00a0Virginia Fusion Center<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0(VFC), filled with Keystone Kop-style passages among pages that in their intrusive sweep are anything but funny.\u00a0 The VFC warned, for instance, that \u201cthe Garbage Liberation Front (GLF) is an ecological direct action group that demonstrates the joining of anarchism and environmental movements.\u201d\u00a0 Among GLF\u2019s dangerous activities well worth the watching, the VFC included \u201cdumpster diving, squatting, and train hopping.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a similarly jaw-dropping manner, the manual claimed \u2013 the italics are mine \u2013 that \u201cKatuah Earth First (KEF), based in Asheville, North Carolina, sends activists throughout the region to train and engage in criminal activity.\u00a0KEF has trained local environmentalists in non-violent tactics, including blocking roads and leading demonstrations, at action camps in Virginia.<\/em>\u00a0 While KEF has been primarily involved in protests and university outreach, members have also engaged in vandalism.\u201d\u00a0 Vandalism!\u00a0 Send out an APB!<\/span><\/p>\n

The VFC also warned that, \u201c[a]lthough the anarchist threat to Virginia is assessed as low, these individuals view the government as unnecessary, which could lead to threats or attacks against government figures or establishments.\u201d\u00a0 It singled out the following 2008 incidents as worth notice:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 At the Martinsville Speedway, \u201cA temporary employee called in a bomb threat during a Sprint Cup race\u2026 because he was tired of picking up trash and wanted to go home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 In Missouri, \u201ca mobile security team observed an individual photographing an unspecified oil refinery\u2026 The person abruptly left the scene before he could be questioned.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Somewhere in Virginia, \u201cseven passengers aboard a white pontoon boat dressed in traditional Middle Eastern garments immediately sped away after being sighted in the recreational area, which is in close proximity to\u201d a power plant.<\/span><\/p>\n

What idiot or idiots wrote this script?<\/span><\/p>\n

Given a disturbing lack of evidence of terrorist actions undertaken or in prospect, the authors even warned:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is likely that potential incidents of interest are occurring, but that such incidents are either not recognized by initial responders or simply not reported. The lack of detailed information for Virginia instances of monitored trends should not be construed to represent a lack of occurrence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lest it be thought that Virginia stands alone and shivering on the summit of bureaucratic stupidity, consider an \u201cintelligence report\u201d from the North Central Texas fusion center, which in a 2009 \u201cPrevention Awareness Bulletin\u201d described,\u00a0<\/span>in the ACLU\u2019s words<\/span><\/a><\/span>, \u201ca purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department, and hip hop bands to spread tolerance in the United States, which would \u2018provide an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And those Virginia and Texas fusion centers were hardly alone in expanding the definition of \u201cterrorist\u201d to fit just about anyone who might oppose government policies.\u00a0 According to a 2010 report in the<\/span>\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>,<\/em>\u00a0the Justice Department Inspector General found that \u201cFBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some of their members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be \u2018factually weak.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The Inspector General called \u201ctroubling\u201d what the\u00a0Los Angeles Times\u00a0<\/em>described as \u201csingling out some of the domestic groups for investigations that lasted up to five years, and were extended \u2018without adequate basis.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Subsequently, the FBI continued to maintain investigative files on groups like Greenpeace, the Catholic Worker, and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, cases where (in the politely put words of the Inspector General\u2019s report) \u201cthere was little indication of any possible federal crimes\u2026 In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its \u2018acts of terrorism\u2019 classification.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One of these investigations concerned Greenpeace protests planned for ExxonMobil shareholder meetings.\u00a0 (Note: I was on Greenpeace\u2019s board of directors during three of those years.)\u00a0 The inquiry was kept open \u201cfor over three years, long past the shareholder meetings that the subjects were supposedly planning to disrupt.\u201d\u00a0 The FBI put the names of Greenpeace members on its federal watch list.\u00a0 Around the same time,<\/span>\u00a0an ExxonMobil-funded lobby<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0got the IRS to audit Greenpeace.<\/span><\/p>\n

This counterintelligence archipelago of malfeasance and stupidity is sometimes fused with ass-covering fabrication.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0In Pittsburgh<\/span>,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on the day after Thanksgiving 2002 (\u201ca slow work day\u201d in the Justice Department Inspector General\u2019s estimation), a rookie FBI agent was outfitted with a camera, sent to an antiwar rally, and told to look for terrorism suspects.\u00a0 The \u201cpossibility that any useful information would result from this make-work assignment was remote,\u201d the report added drily.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe agent was unable to identify any terrorism subjects at the event, but he photographed a woman in order to have something to show his supervisor.\u00a0 He told us he had spoken to a woman leafletter at the rally who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, and that she was probably the person he photographed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The sequel was not quite so droll.\u00a0 The Inspector General found that FBI officials, including their chief lawyer in Pittsburgh, manufactured postdated \u201crouting slips\u201d and the rest of a phony paper trail to justify this surveillance retroactively.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, at least one fusion center has involved military intelligence in civilian law enforcement.\u00a0 In 2009, a military operative from Fort Lewis, Washington,<\/span>\u00a0worked undercover<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0collecting information on peace groups in the Northwest. \u00a0In fact, he helped run the Port Militarization Resistance group\u2019s Listserv.\u00a0 Once uncovered, he told activists there were others doing similar work in the Army.\u00a0 How much the military spies on American citizens is unknown and, at the moment at least, unknowable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do we hear an echo from the abyss of the counterintelligence programs of the 1960s and 1970s, when FBI memos \u2013 I have some in my own heavily redacted files obtained through an FOIA request \u2013 were routinely copied to military intelligence units? \u00a0Then, too, military intelligence operatives spied on activists who violated no laws, were not suspected of violating laws, and had they violated laws, would not have been under military jurisdiction in any case.\u00a0 During those years, more than 1,500 Army intelligence agents in plain clothes were spying, undercover, on domestic political groups (according to\u00a0Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, 1967-70,\u00a0<\/em>an unpublished dissertation by former Army intelligence captain Christopher H. Pyle). They posed as students, sometimes growing long hair and beards for the purpose, or as reporters and camera crews.\u00a0 They recorded speeches and conversations on concealed tape recorders. The Army lied about their purposes, claiming they were interested solely in \u201ccivil disturbance planning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Years later, I met one of these agents, now retired, in San Francisco.\u00a0 He knew more about what I was doing in the late 1960s than my mother did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Squaring Circles<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2009, President Obama<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0told the graduating class at the Naval Academy that, \u201cas Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals.\u201d\u00a0 Security and ideals: officially we want both.\u00a0 But how do you square circles, especially in a world in which \u201csecurity\u201d has often enough become a stand-in for whatever intelligence operatives decide to do?<\/span><\/p>\n

The<\/span>\u00a0ACLU\u2019s Tennessee office<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0sums the situation up nicely: \u201cWhile the ostensible purpose of fusion centers, to improve sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence among different levels and arms of government, is legitimate and important, using the centers to monitor protected First Amendment activity clearly crosses the line.\u201d\u00a0 Nationally, the ACLU rightly<\/span>\u00a0worries<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0about who is in charge of fusion centers and by what rules they operate, about what becomes of privacy when private corporations are inserted into the intelligence process, about what the military is doing meddling in civilian law enforcement, about data-mining operations that Federal guidelines encourage, and about the secrecy walls behind which the fusion centers operate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even when fusion centers do their best to square that circle in their own<\/span>\u00a0guidelines<\/span><\/a><\/span>, like the ones obtained by the ACLU from Massachusetts\u2019s Commonwealth Fusion Center (CFC), the knots in which they tie themselves are all over the page.\u00a0 Imagine, then, what happens when you let informers or\u00a0agents provocateurs<\/em>\u00a0loose in actual undercover situations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUndercovers,\u201d writes the Massachusetts CFC, \u201cmay not seek to gain access to private meetings and should not actively participate in meetings\u2026 \u00a0At the preliminary inquiry stage, sources and informants should not be used to cultivate relationships with persons and groups that are the subject of the preliminary inquiry.\u201d\u00a0 So far so good.\u00a0 Then, it adds, \u201cInvestigators may, however, interview, obtain, and accept information known to sources and informants.\u201d\u00a0 By eavesdropping, say?\u00a0 Collecting trash? \u00a0Hacking?\u00a0 All without warrants?\u00a0 Without probable cause?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUndercovers and informants,\u201d the guidelines continue, \u201care strictly prohibited from engaging in any conduct the sole purpose of which is to disrupt the lawful exercise of political activity, from disrupting the lawful operations of an organization, from sowing seeds of distrust between members of an organization involved in lawful activity, or from instigating unlawful acts or engaging in unlawful or unauthorized investigative activities.\u201d\u00a0 Now, go back and note that little, easy-to-miss word \u201csole.\u201d\u00a0 Who knows just what grim circles that tiny word squares?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Massachusetts CFC at least addresses the issue of entrapment: \u201cUndercovers should not become so involved in a group that they are participating in directing the operations of a group, either by accepting a formal position in the hierarchy or by informally establishing the group\u2019s policy and priorities. This does not mean an undercover cannot support a group\u2019s policies and priorities; rather an undercover should not become a driving force behind a group\u2019s unlawful activities.\u201d\u00a0 Did Cleveland\u2019s fusion center have such guidelines?\u00a0 Did they follow them?\u00a0 Do other state fusion centers?\u00a0 We don\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the fog of surveillance, when it comes to informers,\u00a0agents provocateurs<\/em>, and similar matters, four things are clear enough:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Terrorist plots arise, in the United States as elsewhere, with the intent of committing murder and mayhem. Since 2001, in the U.S., these have been almost exclusively the work of freelance Islamist ideologues like the Tsarnaev brothers of Boston. \u00a0None have been connected in any meaningful way with any legitimate organization or movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Government surveillance may in some cases have been helpful in scotching such plots, but there is no evidence that it has been essential.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Even based on the limited information available to us, since September 11, 2001, the net of surveillance has been thrown wide indeed.\u00a0 Tabs have been kept on members of quite a range of suspect populations, including American Muslims, anarchists, and environmentalists, among others \u2013 in situation after situation where there was no probable cause to suspect preparations for a crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 At least on occasion \u2013 we have no way of knowing how often \u2013\u00a0agents provocateurs<\/em>on government payrolls have spurred violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

How much official unintelligence is at work?\u00a0 How many demonstrations are being poked and prodded by undercover agents?\u00a0 How many acts of violence are being suborned?\u00a0 It would be foolish to say we know.\u00a0 At least equally foolish would be to trust the authorities to keep to honest-to-goodness police work when they are so mightily tempted to take the low road into straight-out, unwarranted espionage and instigation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, the chair of the PhD program in communications, and the author of<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left<\/span><\/a>;\u00a0<\/em>The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage<\/span><\/a><\/span>; and<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[Note:\u00a0Thanks to the ACLU\u2019s Michael German and Matt Harwood and TomDispatch\u2019s Nick Turse, for research help on this piece.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on<\/span>\u00a0Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0or<\/span>\u00a0Tumblr<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare<\/em>.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Copyright 2013 Todd Gitlin<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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