Update January 2007:   The American Civil Liberties Union sent me mail (Larry) today indicating the following: As you know, in spring 2006 the ACLU submitted FOIA requests to the various intelligence units of the U.S. Department of Defense, to see if there were any records indicating domestic spying on eleven peace and anti-war groups from Washington. This letter reports on what we found. The Defense Department originally stated that we would, in effect, have to get in line and wait for documents (perhaps a year or more). The ACLU of Washington joined with other ACLU affiliates to bring a lawsuit in Philadelphia to force the Pentagon to move faster. As a result...relevant documents trickled in. Some of you have received...copies. The good news is that we received no...Department of Defense spying on any peace groups in our state. The bad news is that there was evidence of surveillance elsewhere. The national ACLU has prepared information to be found in       http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/28024prs20070117.html ...ACLU will continue to be vigilant against unjustified law enforcement activities that burden political rights of free speech and assembly. The bad news is...President Bush had issued a signing statement ...retaining the right to open citizen's mail without a warrant, even though Congress had passed a law saying otherwise. The ACLU promptly issued a new round of FOIA requests regarding warrantless opening of U.S. mail since 2001. More information on that request is available at:      http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/28091prs20070122.html. Here in Washington (state), we will be sure to contact you if we learn of any surveillance or spying on any of your groups in Washington (state). ...long-term change comes when people use the information we have gathered through the FOIA process to persuade their elected representatives to exercise proper oversight of law enforcement agencies. Sincerely, Aaron H. Caplan Staff Attorney           SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/263844_spy21ww.html Domestic spying on anti-war groups forces ACLU into action Tuesday, March 21, 2006 By MIKE BARBER P-I REPORTER Monica Zucker and three other members of Seattle's Raging Grannies, a peace group of older women who dress in outrageous hats and sing protest songs, lifted up their voices in response Tuesday to recent Seattle P-I disclosures that they were in federal anti-terrorism files. "Oh, we're a gaggle of grannies, urging you off of your fannies," they sang at a news conference in the downtown Seattle offices of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. Acting on behalf of the Raging Grannies and 10 other peace groups across the state, the ACLU of Washington is demanding to know whether and why federal government anti-terrorism units are spending time and money spying on peace organizations. The local ACLU is using the Freedom of Information Act to seek information on any surveillance from the Defense Department, the FBI and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Task Force. The move was sparked by disclosures in the Seattle P-I last month. The newspaper documented government surveillance on a longtime Quaker peace activist Glen Milner, of Shoreline, and other anti-war activists during U.S. Navy fleet participation in the annual Seafair festival in recent years. "The government should not spy on groups engaging in peaceful political protest. The FBI should focus its efforts on actual threats and not target people because of their political views," said Kathleen Taylor, state ACLU executive director. To those who say domestic spying is a price they are willing to pay for security, Taylor echoed critics, in and out of government, who say too much useless information gums up anti-terrorism intelligence rather than helping it. "You can't find a needle in the haystack by adding more hay," she said. The ACLU filed the request on its own behalf, Seattle Raging Grannies and other nonviolent religious and political anti-war groups statewide: The American Friends Service Committee; Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane; People for Peace, Justice, and Healing; Pierce County Truth in Recruiting; Seattle Peace Chorus; Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War; United for Peace of Pierce County; Vancouver For Peace; Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation; and the Yakima Valley Peace Advocates Network. Several, including the Raging Grannies, were mentioned in federal law enforcement documents acquired by the P-I. Law enforcement wanted to monitor anti-war protest activities surrounding Seafair in 2003 and 2004. Barry Steinhardt, who directs the ACLU's technology and liberty project, is pessimistic that the request will yield much. "Not only is the government resisting current (requests) but it is taking steps to put more limits upon them." Meanwhile, domestic information gathering is increasing. Still, it's important to try, he said. Aside from the chilling effect on political dissent, information finding its way some or all of the glut of new a government information-gathering systems has the potential for misinterpretation, resulting in possible harassment, arrest – even being flagged for airport no-fly lists, he said. Representatives from local peace organizations mentioned in federal law enforcement files said it raises other concerns for them. "In a time of war, when we are told it will be endless war, for my government to be spending to investigate the Peace Chorus is stunning, an incredible waste of money," said Martha Baskin, a member of the Seattle Peace Chorus. Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or michaelbarber@seattlepi.com. © 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer   Published on Tuesday, March 7, 2006 Peace advocates being targeted? By JANE GARGAS YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic The core group of the Yakima Valley Peace Advocates Network stands at the Millennium Plaza in Yakima, where they've held many vigils. They are (front row) Richard Gaulke, left, Gail Pearlman and Larry Breer; (back row) Mike Collins, left, Gene Rupel, Dale Johnson and Jim Leonard. They don't seem all that threatening. They're parents and grandparents. Some, great-grandparents even. Years ago, many went off to war. They quietly served their country, came back home and settled down to raise families. Most went to college, got jobs, paid taxes, did volunteer work. Many are retired. Nonetheless, members of the Yakima Valley Peace Advocates Network might be on the U.S. government's surveillance list. "It's possible," said Larry Breer, a leader of the group that meets monthly in a local church. It was organized here several years ago to protest American war activity. About a week ago, Breer received a phone call from the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, asking if the local group would agree to be included in a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. The ACLU is planning to file the inquiry with the federal government to see if anti-war groups around the state have been watched by government agents. The ACLU's proposed action follows news last month that peace groups in the Seattle area have been under government surveillance. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in late February that FBI files showed that local police and federal agents watched Seattle-area activist groups planning protests during a Seafair celebration several years ago. The files, recently disclosed through an earlier ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, established that agents were looking for evidence of civil disobedience during protests when Navy ships arrived at the annual festival. One Seattle organization they watched is the Raging Grannies, older women who express opposition to war by singing. After discovering that anti-war groups had been spied on in the Seattle area, the ACLU thought there might be more information of interest. "In wake of that (documents outlining surveillance of the Seattle-area groups), we wondered if there was current surveillance of other peace groups," said Doug Honig, communications director of the ACLU of Washington. That's where the Yakima Peace Advocates come in. Breer polled members of his group and received permission for the ACLU to include them in their inquiry. It has yet to be determined from which federal agencies the group will seek information, but the ACLU's Honig did say that obtaining documents can be a lengthy process. Here in Yakima, the prospect that a group of about a dozen men and women, with an average age of 55, may have piqued government interest seems a little far-fetched, said Breer, who is 70. "Frankly, I don't see how you could look at us as traitor material," he said. "Our group is just very concerned about civil liberties and war prevention." A sergeant in the Air Force from 1956 to 1976, Breer described the peace advocates as a group that "doesn't do loud stuff." "Our thing isn't being boisterous," he added. "When you yell, you can't get anyone on your side." So the peace advocates hold peaceful marches and vigils. Not exactly the stuff that warrants domestic spying to protect the country, Breer presumes. Yet, surveillance of the Yakima group can't be totally discounted, said Dale Johnson, a peace advocate member and an infantryman during World War II. "Oh, yes, I think it's possible (we've been watched)," he said. "When we held a candlelight vigil at Millennium Plaza, there was a man in a black suit furiously taking photos of us." That vigil was held a month after the war in Iraq began in April 2003; the group also led a 300-person march before the war, hoping to dissuade the president from invading Iraq. Breer remembers "a pretty heavy surveillance by police" at the march. Member Bev Luby Bartz, who is 67 and has 28 grandchildren, can't imagine that anyone in the group has anything nefarious to hide. She also doesn't think it's likely the government would spend much time spying here. "We're such a small town and so insignificant, I just don't think so," she said. Still, Bartz said the group does try to impart a powerful message: "War is a sign of failure, and we've just made such a mess of things in Iraq," she said. Breer agreed. "War is so outrageously impractical in this age," he said. "I have no idea why we're in Iraq. I have no idea why we've let 2,000 of our citizens be killed. I have no idea why some 80,000 Iraqis have been killed. "What is this for?" Are those the kind of sentiments that possibly raise the suspicion of government agencies? Breer doesn't like to think so. "In my mind, they shouldn't be watching peace groups; they should be watching war groups instead." In light of the revelation earlier this year that the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans for four years, Breer believes Americans' civil liberties are in jeopardy. "This is unprecedented. It's almost like the public is seen as a criminal element," he said. But even if Breer's group has been spied upon, it won't discourage members from partaking in events around the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war later this month. Locally, the peace advocates network is holding a March 18 peace rally, starting at 1 p.m. at Millennium Plaza on Third Street and Walnut Avenue. The group will walk to First Street, then reconvene in the plaza for speeches. That effort coincides with a larger peace march in Seattle on the same day. People will gather at 1 p.m. at Seattle's federal building on Second and Marion streets. Then, on March 19, the local Veterans for Peace group will hold a noon peace vigil at Nob Hill Boulevard and 16th Avenue. "There could be no better time to have a vigil," said Johnson, a retired entomologist, who is a member of both peace groups. Breer finds it a bit unsettling to think that the group may have been monitored by the government. But he emphasized that the best outcome for everyone would be if it turns out to be untrue. "People might think we're hoping the feds did watch us because we'd get some notoriety then," he said. "But that's not so. It would be better to know it didn't happen."

Authorities keep tabs on non-violent Seattle activists in hunt for al-Qaida

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

By MIKE BARBER AND PAUL SHUKOVSKY
P-I REPORTERS

In the post-9/11 world, some unlikely figures have attracted the attention of local police and federal agents: the Raging Grannies, known for musical satire, and Quaker peace activists, known for non-violence.

Recently disclosed FBI files show that in Seattle in recent years, federal agents and local police looked for signs of civil disobedience among activists preparing to protest Navy ships arriving for Seafair:

Authorities argue that they had a duty to protect Navy ships. They don't want to happen in Puget Sound what happened six years ago in Yemen when a small suicide boat blew a hole in a Navy destroyer, killing 17 sailors.

As the Bush administration and Congress argue about how far domestic spying to protect the nation should go, Seattle-area peace activists and constitutional watchdogs are concerned that programs intended to thwart al-Qaida could become a witch-hunt against American political dissenters. Concerns are heightened by the storage of massive amounts of raw information in government databases that have proliferated since 9/11.

One key Pentagon database was piloted here, the Joint Protection Enterprise Network. Its purpose is to share intelligence to safeguard military bases, including seven around Puget Sound. It's controlled by the Pentagon's secretive Counterintelligence Field Activity office. The Pentagon did not return numerous calls for an explanation about the database.

'Threat assessments'

"Surveillance of actual threats might be warranted. Surveillance of known, non-violent activists is not warranted and has a chilling affect on protest or demonstrations against our government," says Glen Milner, 53, an electrician from Shoreline.

Milner, a Quaker peace activist, was watched by local and federal law enforcement who feared his peace fleet protest boats could interfere with Navy ships at Seafair -- or worse be a Trojan horse for terrorists. The Coast Guard charged Milner with intruding into security zones around the Navy ships during the 2004 peace fleet demonstrations. Milner denies it.

Milner's name and those of local peace organizations appear throughout 18 pages of documents about government "threat assessments" of the 2003 and 2004 peace fleet demonstration. The papers were acquired through the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington last year on Milner's behalf.

"This is part of a troubling pattern by the government of spying on peaceful groups," said Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the ACLU of Washington.

Keeping watch on "groups like Raging Grannies doesn't make us safer," she said. "And it interferes with people's right to protest government policies. When government believes that advocacy of peace is a threat, we are going in the wrong direction. The government needs to focus on real threats to public safety rather than to presume that anyone who objects to government action is a safety threat."

Duke University law professor Scott Silliman, executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, sees no legal problem with the actions of Seattle-area police and federal agents surrounding Seafair. The retired Air Force lawyer said agents watching protesters in a public place is not against the law. "It's the same thing as a bunch of cops watching," Silliman said. "It may be intimidating, but it's nothing illegal."

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration responded to its failure to detect the attacks by broadening the rules for the FBI to open a national security investigation.

The old guidelines required that a crime had been committed or was being planned. The new guidelines create a category called "threat assessment," and no crime has to be committed or planned to perform a threat assessment.

Under a threat assessment, a federal criminal justice source said, agents can attend public meetings without identifying themselves and conduct such simple surveillance as watching a protest march.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI acknowledged that their agencies collect and disseminate information on U.S. political activists. But the agencies say that they only gather information on those who either break laws or plan to do so.

The FBI "has no interest in investigating individuals engaged in the exercise of their constitutional rights," said Laura Laughlin, special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Seattle office. "We are interested in individuals or groups who are actively conspiring to commit criminal acts. Our investigations are intelligence-driven and predicated on specific information about potential criminal acts."

Scott Jacobs, former special agent in charge of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Bremerton, agreed. "If I were a citizen protester, I wouldn't want people reporting on me, and we don't. ... Ground Zero has had a regular protest activity at the Bangor (submarine base) front gate. We don't collect on any one of those individuals out there. They are exercising their rights and are peaceful demonstrators," said Jacobs, now chief of anti-terrorism activities at Naval Criminal Investigative Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.

But Jacobs drew a bright line between protesting at the base front gate and launching peace vessels to protest Navy warships.

"If you get within 500 yards of a naval vessel, you're breaking the law," Jacobs said. "If we have information that folks are going to disrupt that flotilla, we would collect information on that specifically. We don't know who is on those demonstrators' boats. They could be a terrorist group trying to get closer to our vessels under the guise of a protest activity."

Getting in the database

It's unclear whether information about local political activists has been collected in the database intended for military installations to use to share intelligence. The Pentagon did not make itself available to answer the question.

The database is fed raw, unclassified information from another government database, said a federal criminal justice source. That second database often contains unverified information about possible threats to military installations. If you get off the wrong exit on Interstate 5, pull up to the Fort Lewis gate, then turn around and leave, guards might enter your license and vehicle description in that database.

In general, "civil disobedience on a federal reservation," such as a military base, could be enough to prompt collecting intelligence on an individual or activist group, said Dave Gomez, the FBI assistant special agent in charge in Seattle.

"We don't investigate people's exercise of First Amendment rights. We investigate criminal activity and the potential for criminal activity."

One of the documents in Milner's FBI file, says the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, mindful of Seattle's violent World Trade Organization confrontations, sent an agent to Eugene, Ore., in July 2000 to gauge anarchists' intentions.

Milner said the peace fleet protests at Seafair have been held since 2000 without incident until 2004 when he was charged with violating the security zone around the Navy ships in his small boat. He believes flawed intelligence was exaggerated and created a confrontational climate that led to the charge.

"Personally, I tend to be one of those people who feels that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you should have nothing to fear. In this case their intelligence was faulty and used against me," he said.

A year earlier, a memo apparently from a police member of the FBI's Washington Joint Analytic Center says: "The Snohomish County Peace Action of Edmonds is a merge between the Lynnwood SNOW and Peace Action of Snohomish County. They support the anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-nuclear, anti-weapons movements."

The memo from an unknown local police agency to the FBI says Milner was the speaker at a May 2003 potluck attended by the Raging Grannies, older women who dress outlandishly and oppose war through humorous song.

Raging Granny Shirley Morrison, 83, of Seattle says it was a Mother's Day potluck. She's not surprised to find that the Grannies are mentioned in FBI files. "Frankly, we've been expecting to be in a database," Morrison said. "We're all going to be investigated under this administration."

An FBI memo dated a few days later says its domestic terrorism squad had opened a "special events investigation" into possible civil disobedience during Seafair's public tours of Navy ships. Other memos from various federal and local agencies in the bureau files discuss demonstration plans of local peace groups including Ground Zero, Not In Our Name and Peace Action of Snohomish County.

Most information in the police and federal investigative agency memos about the 2003 Peace Fleet demonstrations appears to have been gleaned from activist Web sites.

But on July 30, 2003, Peace Fleet activists were watched as they launched their small vessels.

"Yesterday (redacted) conducted surveillance at the boat launch on Alki Beach," said one memo in FBI files. "Two 16-18 foot boats launched at approximately 11:00 a.m. Each boat had three individuals aboard, and each boat was flying a blue flag with 'NO WAR IN IRAQ.' "

The memo cited "uncorroborated information" indicating plans for a sit-in during public tours of the Navy ships, perhaps by an "attempt to secure themselves (via handcuffs or other means) inside the vessels."

It was the FBI, however, that counseled against violating protesters' civil liberties.

"It may be advisable to allow the activist groups to conduct as much exercise of their First Amendment rights as possible and avoid confrontation, only becoming involved in issues of safety and national security," the FBI said.

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