Activists fear they've become FBI targets

By GREGORY D. KESICH, Staff Writer
Press Herald
Oct. 28, 2006

The FBI has released more documents connected to Maine peace groups, leading local activists to say they have been targeted for surveillance for opposing the government.

Last January, a single e-mail from a Canadian anarchist group that had been circulated by Maine peace activists was released by the government in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

Now more e-mails discussing plans for anti-war demonstrations outside the Brunswick Naval Air Station and Bath Iron Works during the summer of 2005 have been declassified and returned to the MCLU. The message originated with members of Peace Action Maine and Maine Veterans for Peace, but it is impossible to tell how they ended up with the FBI.

The FOIA request filed in May 2005 was part of a national effort by the American Civil Liberties Union to gauge the level of domestic surveillance of political dissenters. Similar document requests were filed in 16 states and have uncovered communications from peace and social justice advocates across the country.

There are no secrets in the latest Maine messages. They outline mundane details of organizing a demonstration and were distributed widely to members of the organizations and forwarded repeatedly, both to individual recipients and group e-mail lists.

But the fact that they were collected at all is troubling to MCLU Executive Director Shenna Bellows, who said she is reminded of the FBI's infiltration of civil rights and peace groups during the 1960s, which was later seen as a violation of constitutional rights.

"Since (Sept. 11), national security is being used as an excuse to target peace protesters," Bellows said Wednesday. "And suddenly, the FBI is once again accumulating files on people who have engaged in nothing more than criticizing the policies of their government."

An FBI spokeswoman said Bellows and the peace activists are jumping to conclusions.

"We have absolutely no interest in investigating individuals or groups that are engaging in exercising their constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly," said Nenette Day, who works in the FBI office in Boston.

"They are assuming that if we have a file, there must be an investigation," she said.

"That jump can't be made."

Day said the FBI receives information from a wide variety of sources and by law cannot dispose of them. Documents are rated according to their relevance, and even those relegated to "zero files" are retained.

She said she did not know how the FBI obtained e-mails from Peace Action Maine and Veterans for Peace, but guessed by the number of times they had been forwarded that they could have been found in a public forum.

Sally Breen, a member of Peace Action Maine, said the fact that the FBI collects these documents has a chilling affect on protesters.

Speaking at a press conference in Portland on Wednesday, Breen said she had already heard from people unwilling to attend demonstrations because they might be exposed to attention from the government.

"They are afraid that they'll be targeted," she said. "Fear tactics are not (part of) the America we want to live in."

Jack Bussell, a Veterans for Peace member who wrote one of the original messages, said he is troubled that the FBI also knows the names and e-mail addresses of everyone he contacted.

Bellows said the government should focus on real threats to the country's security rather than political dissenters.

"We want our government to do everything it can to keep us safe from terrorism," she said. "We don't want our government to be monitoring Maine grandmothers who dedicated their lives to peace and Maine grandfathers who fought to defend our liberties."

At the FBI, Day said that Bellows should not be concerned. "Do not believe that you can tell how much time was spent on these documents just by looking at them," she said. "They don't understand our process."