Home > Political protesters come under FBI questioning
by Eric Lichtblau
WASHINGTON The FBI 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.
Federal Bureau of Investigation 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 dissent, at major political events.
But some people contacted by the FBI say that they are mystified by the bureau’s interest and that they 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 FBI, like urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations.
In an internal complaint, an FBI employee charged that bulletins that relayed that request for help improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity by suggesting that suspicious activity included everything from violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment. But the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed.
The office said that any First Amendment impact posed by the FBI’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 FBI to identify possible disruptions by anarchists, violent demonstrators and others at the Republican National Convention, which begins in New York Aug. 30 and is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of protesters.
In the last few weeks, beginning before the Democratic convention, FBI 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 were 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 George W. Bush and because of New York City’s global prominence.
With the FBI 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 that monitoring, reflect the fine line between protecting national security in an age of terrorism and discouraging political expression.
FBI officials, mindful of the bureau’s abuses in the 1960s and 1970s monitoring political dissidents like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., say they are confident their agents have not crossed that line in the lead-up to the conventions.
"The FBI isn’t in the business of chilling anyone’s First Amendment rights," said Joe Parris, a bureau spokesman in Washington. "But criminal behavior isn’t covered by the First Amendment. What we’re concerned about are injuries to convention participants, injuries to citizens, injuries to police and first-responders."
FBI officials would not say how many people had been interviewed in recent weeks, how they were identified, or what spurred the bureau’s interest.
They said the initiative was part of a broader, nationwide effort to follow any leads pointing to possible violence or illegal disruptions in connection with the political conventions, presidential debates or the November election, which come at a time of heightened concern about a possible terrorist attack.
"We vetted down a list and went out and knocked on doors and had a laundry list of questions to ask about possible criminal behavior," Parris said. "No one was dragged from their homes and put under bright lights. The interviewees were free to talk to us or close the door in our faces."
Protest leaders and civil rights advocated who have monitored the recent interrogations said they believed at least 40 or 50 people had been contacted by federal agents about demonstration plans and possible violence surrounding the conventions and other political events.
"This kind of pressure has a real chilling effect on perfectly legitimate political activity," said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. "People are going to be afraid to go to a demonstration or even sign a petition if they justifiably believe that will result in your having an FBI file opened on you."
The New York Times