FightBack! News | Jess Sundin speaks out on FBI repression against anti-war activists

Jess Sundin speaking in Minneapolis. (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Fight Back! interviewed Jess Sundin, of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, on the latest developments in the case of the anti-war and international solidarity activists who were raided by the FBI and who received subpoenas to appear in front of the Chicago grand jury headed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Sundin is among those whose home was raided Sept. 24, 2010. The editors of Fight Back! urge our readers to forward this important interview as broadly as possible.

Fight Back!: How has the campaign against FBI repression been going? What has been accomplished to date?

Jess Sundin: We have been very successful building a broad base of support around the anti-war and international solidarity activists who are being targeted by the FBI and U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. We have received almost 300 statements of support from faith, student, immigrant rights and other community organizations, including 32 labor unions. These statements have been backed up with actions – hundreds have come out to protests across the country to demand an end to the government abuses and thousands of signed petitions and made calls demanding the same. This work has resulted in letters of concern from a dozen U.S. Congress people, addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama.

There is no doubt that all of this pressure has kept those resisting the grand jury out of jail. It is still possible that prosecutors could impose immunity and jail some of us for not testifying, but with all of the public support we have, that won’t be easy for them. Around the country, people have signed the pledge to resist this repression, and to join in locally-organized emergency protests to respond if and when there are any indictments or arrests in our case.

Fight Back!: What are the main things that need to be done now in order to push back against the repression?

Sundin: This case took a surprising turn in May, when the Los Angeles home of veteran Chicano activist, Carlos Montes, was raided. Carlos has helped to lead the Committee to Stop FBI Repression in LA since last September, when the search warrant at the Anti-War Committee office listed him as a person of interest in this investigation. It came as a shock when interest turned into action. The FBI initiated a raid on his home, and Carlos is now facing 18 years for trumped up charges. He is the first person in this case to face charges, and the most important thing for us to do is to rally around him and call for the government to drop the charges. Around the country, people came out to protest on his first day in court, and called on the Department of Justice to call off the investigation of all of us. We need to help Carlos beat the charges – we’ve got to contribute to his legal defense and unite the immigrant rights and anti-war movements in rallying around him.

Fight Back!: What do you think is likely to happen in the months ahead?

Sundin: We understand that grand juries serve as indictment machines – that something like 98% give the prosecutors the indictments they ask for. Based on the limited communications we’ve had from the U.S. attorney, there is every indication that they are still pursuing multiple indictments. We will continue our work to bring the grand jury to an end with no indictments, while still preparing for the possibility of indictments. While we have no information on how many indictments are being pursued, or when they might come, we know that in some cases like ours, indictments have a come a year after FBI raids. We need our supporters to stay on alert.

Fight Back!: The government returned your passport for a limited time, what is the significance of that?

Sundin: Most of the property that was seized has still not been returned, and anything that has been returned was certainly copied first. Our attorneys asked for the return of my passport a few months ago, but that request was refused. In May, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and she lives in Australia. We decided to make a second appeal for return of my passport, along with a letter from my mom’s doctor describing how my presence could aid in her treatment and recovery. The U.S. attorney agreed to let me have my passport in order to make a single trip to visit my mother, contingent on my agreeing to give it back to the FBI when I return home. In the conversations to negotiate this, the prosecutor made it clear that indictments are still being pursued, though they won’t likely come out in July, the month when I will travel to support my mom. The ridiculous conditions placed on the temporary return of my passport make it clear that I am still a target of this investigation, and this is not over. We’ve got to stay strong and be ready for whatever the government throws at us next.

AP Exclusive: Chicago activist named in probe insists Palestinian trips had no terror link – latimes.com

CHICAGO (AP) — Four months after the FBI raided homes of anti-war activists in the Midwest, a Palestinian-American named in the probe is calling it a “witch hunt” and insisting in a series of interviews with The Associated Press that he has never given money to terrorist groups.

In this photo taken Jan. 27, 2011, Hatem Abudayyeh poses outside the office of the Arab American Action Network on Chicago's South Side. In his first in-depth interview since agents hauled bank statements, computers and even family photos from his Chicago condominium last year, Abudayyeh tells The Associated Press he believes investigators singled him out because he organized trips for Americans to Palestinian areas. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Charles Rex Arbogast, AP / January 27, 2011)

Hatem Abudayyeh, head of an activist network in Chicago that deals in immigration and discrimination issues, says the trips he helped coordinate to the Palestinian territories were fact-finding and educational visits hosted by a women’s organization and that he knew of no links to groups that could be considered involved in terrorism.

The federal government has divulged almost nothing about the focus of the probe, which included subpoenas demanding Abudayyeh and 22 other activists from Chicago, Minneapolis and Grand Rapids, Mich., appear before a grand jury. A line in one Minneapolis subpoena says agents were looking for evidence of money paid “directly or indirectly” to Abudayyeh.

via AP Exclusive: Chicago activist named in probe insists Palestinian trips had no terror link – latimes.com.

Star Tribune | Coleen Rowley: We’re conflating proper dissent and terrorism

By COLEEN ROWLEY

Last update: January 15, 2011 – 6:22 PM

Commentary

A secretive, unaccountable, post-9/11 homeland security apparatus has increasingly turned inward on American citizens.

The evidence includes everything from controversial airport body scanners to the FBI’s raids last September on antiwar activists’ homes in Minneapolis and Chicago. A federal grand jury investigation in Chicago was recently expanded.

Unless the erosion of proper legal safeguards is halted, we risk a return to Vietnam-era abuses on the part of the FBI and other security agencies.

Agents are now given a green light, for instance, to check off “statistical achievements” by sending well-paid, manipulative informants into mosques and peace groups.

Forgotten are worries about targeting and entrapping people not predisposed to violence.

Continue Reading @ the Star Tribune

Fight Back! News | FBI infiltration of anti-war movement uncovered in Minneapolis

Reprinted from Fight Back! News © 2011

By Staff | January 12, 2011

Minneapolis, MN – At a press conference here, Jan. 12, Jess Sundin of the Twin Cites based Anti-War Committee (AWC)blasted police infiltration of the anti-war and international solidarity movement, stating, “We are here today to express outrage that our democratic rights have been violated by a government operation of spying, infiltration and disruption of our anti-war movement, which was carried out over the course of at least two and half years.”

The exposure of an undercover law enforcement agent in the Twin Cities anti-war movement is linked to the Sept. 24, 2010 FBI raids on peace and international solidarity organizers and the subpoenas that have been served on 23 activists to appear in front of a Chicago Grand Jury.

The infiltrator, who used the name ‘Karen Sullivan,’ joined the AWC in April 2008, and about a year later she joined the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. A statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression notes, “In conversations between our attorneys and the prosecutor’s office in Chicago, we have had confirmation that Karen Sullivan was in fact a law enforcement officer working undercover.”

Sundin said, “In April 2008, law enforcement officer Karen Sullivan joined the Anti-War Committee. In 2008, we were involved in organizing the anti-war marches on the first and last days of the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul. At that time, there was a massive security operation here which included the infiltration of the RNC Welcoming Committee. We now have it confirmed that in this same time period, we too became the subject of government investigation. The difference is that our spy made herself comfortable and decided to stay awhile, posing as a fellow anti-war activist and pretending to befriend us.”

Misty Rowan, of the Anti-War Committee, said, “The AWC played an important role in organizing the permitted march on the Republican National Convention on Sept. 1, 2008 and also organized a rally and march on the fourth day of the convention. We can only assume that this First Amendment protected organizing was the reason that this agent, Karen Sullivan, infiltrated the AWC. It is the same kind of infiltration criticized in the October 2010 Inspector General report and highlighted in the recent release of documents from the Richmond, Virginia, police, where any sort of assembly is defined as a disturbance and threat.”

Sullivan’s spying was local and national in scope. She was present in Detroit, at the 2010 United States Social Forum, where she spoke on Plan Colombia. She was also present at the School of the Americas protests, at Fort Benning, Georgia, where she claimed to have met her partner, who goes by the name ‘Daniela Cardenas.’

Sundin states, “Unfortunately, Officer Sullivan took a special interest in the Anti-War Committee’s coalition work. She represented our committee at meetings of the Iraq Peace Action Coalition and the Coalition for Palestinian Rights. She also represented us in national venues – the Latin America Solidarity Coalition, at the School of the Americas Watch protests and at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit last summer. About a year ago, she also joined Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which is talked about by the government in this case, in a manner reminiscent of the McCarthy era political witch hunts.”

Disrupter

In the summer of 2009, Sullivan signed up to go on a solidarity trip to Palestine. Three members of the delegation were denied entry at the Tel Aviv airport and eventually sent back to the U.S.: Sarah Martin, Katrina Plotz and the agent.

Jess Sundin said, “When I speak of disruption, I am referring to an August 2009 solidarity delegation to Palestine. This delegation was a fact-finding mission, where participants were to witness the conditions for Palestinians living under U.S.-backed occupation, and to express our solidarity in a person-to-person way. Officer Sullivan made public her plans to join this delegation, she helped to promote it and fundraise for it here in our community. At the same time, she was secretly working to sabotage the trip entirely. Through her work, reports were passed onto Israeli authorities, who then barred entry to the two Minneapolis women traveling with Karen Sullivan. Her action, on behalf of the U.S. government, deprived these women of their rights to travel, association and dissent. The government was wrong to disrupt our important and legal work against U.S. aid to Israel.”

Attacking international solidarity

According to reports, it seems that the investigation of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is focused on small donations to the daycare and women’s center projects of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, an NGO registered with the Palestinian Authority, with local offices in towns across the West Bank and Gaza. The Union is a progressive women’s organization that strives to build respect for women’s rights.

“It has become apparent to us that this delegation, and some of the fundraising work done to support it, is of great concern to the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. In order to help fund the travel of the three women from Minneapolis – including Officer Sullivan – and to send a token symbol of solidarity to the Palestinian people, a series of fundraisers were organized. We were very open about our work to support the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, which is an NGO registered with the Palestinian Authority, and which is not illegal under Israeli or international law,” said Sundin.

Sundin continued “The Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees works for women’s equality. Their activities include support for women refugees and women political prisoners, and providing basic social services for women, including several child care centers. These women are right to be working for justice in Palestine and there is no reason we should be criminalized for supporting them. However, that is exactly what has happened.”

Push back against repression

Steff Yorek, of Freedom Road Socialist Organization denounced the infiltration, “We are appalled that we were infiltrated by police agents, targeted for our political organizing and views. This violates our rights to freedom of association and speech.”

Speaking at the press conference, Joe Callahan of the Iraq Peace Action Coalition demanded the “immediate end to government spying” and the removal of all agents from peace groups.

Jess Sundin conluded, “We, the anti-war and international solidarity activists being targeted by Fitzgerald, have the support of every progressive movement in this country – from trade unionists to the immigrant rights movement, from students to people of faith and everyone in between. Opposing war is no crime. International solidarity is not a crime. We are not alone, we have done nothing wrong and we will not be afraid.”

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is planning a National Day of Protest for Jan. 25, in cities across the country. This protest is in solidarity with people refusing to testify at the secret grand jury in Chicago on that day.

Democracy Now! | Government Spy Infiltrated Antiwar Groups Before FBI Raids

Transcript © Democracy Now! 2011 | Headlines for January 13, 2011

There are major new developments in the case of the peace activists targeted by FBI raids last September. Lawyers for the activists in Minnesota and St. Paul have learned a government agent infiltrated their group and conducted extensive spying. Going by the name “Karen Sullivan,” the agent began attending organizing meetings of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention. Sullivan then took an active role in the group, chairing meetings, handling bookkeeping, and communicating with dozens of other organizations. Anti-War Committee activist Jess Sundin spoke to Democracy Now! on Wednesday.

Jess Sundin: “Karen came to weekly meetings. We’re all volunteers, and so we make decisions together at those meetings, and she participated in those discussions, sometimes even chairing the meetings. Karen had a key to our office, a key which she later used—or the FBI used—to raid the office on September 24th and let themselves in. And she also at times assisted with our bookkeeping and had full access to our financial records, our membership lists and everything else we’re involved in.”

Sullivan even accompanied two activists when they tried to visit the Occupied Territories in 2009. But upon landing in Israel, Israeli agents were already aware of their trip and refused to grant them entry. The activists’ attorneys have also learned prosecutors are focusing on a small donation the two activists wanted to give to their host in the Occupied Territories, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. The group is not listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. and is a registered NGO with the Palestinian Authority. Sullivan left the Twin Cities last fall, shortly before the raids of September 24th.

City pages | Secret government informer “Karen Sullivan” infiltrated Minnesota activist groups

By Nick Pinto, Wed., Jan. 12 2011 @ 12:59PM
© City Pages 2011

?The Twin Cities activists who had their homes raided by the FBI last September are starting to learn more about why they’re being investigated by a Chicago grand jury in relation to material support of terrorism.

Lawyers for the activists have learned from prosecutors that the feds sent an undercover law enforcement agent to infiltrate the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee in April 2008, just as the group was planning its licensed protests at the Republican National Convention.

Going by the name “Karen Sullivan,” the agent blended in with the many new faces the Committee was seeing at meetings in the lead-up to the RNC. But she stayed active afterward, attending virtually every meeting.

“She presented herself as a lesbian with a teenage daughter, and said she had a difficult relationship with her daughter’s father, which is one of the reasons she gave us for not being more transparent about her story,” says Jess Sundin, a member of the Anti-War Committee and one of the activists who has received a subpoena from the Chicago grand jury. “It was a sympathetic story for a lot of us.”

Continue Reading @ the City Pages

Undercover FBI Informant Infiltrates Peace Movement

Press release from Minneapolis based Anti-War Committee:

The anti-war and international solidarity activists who are being called before a grand jury in Chicago have learned that beginning a few months before the protests against the Republican National Convention in the 2008 in St. Paul, Minnesota, a law enforcement officer infiltrated the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee (AWC). The infiltrator went by the name Karen Sullivan, joined the AWC in April 2008, and about a year later she joined the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Misty Rowan, of the Anti-War Committee, said, “The AWC played an important role in organizing the permitted march on the Republican National Convention on September 1, 2008, and also organized a rally and march on the fourth day of the convention. We can only assume that this First Amendment protected organizing was the reason that this agent, Karen Sullivan, infiltrated the AWC. It is the same kind of infiltration criticized in the October 2010 inspector general report and highlighted in the recent release of documents from the Richmond, Virginia, police, where any sort of assembly is defined as a disturbance and threat.”

Jess Sundin, of the Anti-War Committee, said; “This professional liar posed as a fellow activist for two and a half years, and acted as if she was our friend. She spent time around my child, and even attended a small BBQ to celebrate my release from the hospital after I survived a near-fatal brain hemorrhage in April of last year. This event had no investigative value. By attending personal events like this, she showed how unprincipled she was.”

In the summer of 2009, the agent signed up to go on a solidarity trip to Palestine. Three members of the delegation were denied entry at the Tel Aviv airport and eventually sent back to the U.S., Sarah Martin, Katrina Plotz and the agent. We have now learned that on the word of this agent, these political activists were prevented from witnessing first-hand what is paid for with U.S. tax dollars in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

In conversations between our attorneys and the prosecutor’s office in Chicago, we have had confirmation that Karen Sullivan was in fact a law enforcement officer working undercover.

It now appears that the investigation of the U.S. Attorney is focused on small donations to the daycare and women’s center projects of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, an NGO registered with the Palestinian Authority with local offices in towns across the the West Bank and Gaza. The Union is a progressive women’s organization that strives to build respect for women’s rights.

Steff Yorek, of Freedom Road Socialist Organization said, “We are appalled that we were infiltrated by police agents, targeted for our political organizing and views. This violates our rights to freedom of association and speech.”

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is planning a National Day of Protest for January 25, in cities across the country. This protest is in solidarity with people refusing to testify at the secret grand jury in Chicago on that day.

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[Show as slideshow]

Double Standards Apply to Peace Activists

BY MARGARET SARFEHJOOYE

January 05, 2011

If you speak out against U.S.-sponsored human rights violations, and you are not rich or powerful, you might get a visit from the FBI. The recent “witch-hunt” against peace activists is expanding, and there are now 24 grand jury subpoenas served to peace activists based mostly in Minneapolis and Chicago. Although there have been no charges, the activists were informed that this investigation is about providing material support for foreign terrorist groups. Material support? I know the activists in Minneapolis, and they are union members, a retired nurse, a high-school teacher, a kitchen worker, a woman on disability–none who have the material means to support a “terrorist group.” The Anti-War Committee, whose office was raided by FBI agents, has a yearly garage sale to meet its meager expenses.

Predicting no political gain for assisting a little-known group of “leftists” who criticize U.S. foreign policy, our senators in Washington have avoided  protecting the activists’ rights, using the excuse that “it is unethical to interfere with an ongoing investigation.”  Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old soldier from Oklahoma, is being investigated by the FBI for providing information to WikiLeaks.  Senator Amy Klobuchar stated on CBS:  “A lot of people believe he could get a prison term for the rest of his life and I think that would be appropriate.”  Wait a minute—isn’t this an ongoing investigation?  Do double standards apply when a senator’s career might be enhanced by spouting the government line?  What about International Law?  The Nuremberg Laws, established after the horrors of WWII, declare that soldiers have a legal obligation to resist war crimes.  Is it more criminal to expose U.S.-sponsored war crimes, as Bradley Manning and the FBI-harassed peace activists have done?

Continue Reading @ The Twin Cities Daily Planet

“Don’t Spy On Us, FBI” Say Minneapolis Activists

It was a declassified FBI document that Lucia Wilkes Smith held up before a crowd of Minneapolis peace activists. It was declassified in name only because nearly every word on the dozen or so pages had been blacked out for national security reasons.

“The first letter I got from the FBI said ‘we don’t have anything on you’, said Wilkes Smith a well-spoken gray-haired woman. She had made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request of the FBI. The American Civil Liberties Union and others had urged her to file the request because the FBI had been spying on anti-war groups in Minnesota prior to and during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

“And then another letter came that said ‘well we got a few pages, but they’re classified’. And then eventually they declassified this and sent it to me.” She held up the dozen or so pages with nearly every word blacked out.

For years, the FBI, Homeland Security and other government agencies have been spying on Wilkes Smith and other outspoken opponents of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The FBI even went so far as to send an undercover agent to a neighborhood anti-war meeting in Northfield, Minnesota.

This past September, the FBI raided the homes and offices of nine Twin Cities peace activists and carted off computer files, phone records and personal possessions. They also delivered subpoenas to the nine. The same day, the FBI raided homes of other peace activists in Chicago and Michigan. A total of 23 were ordered to appear before a Grand Jury to testify and name the Trade Unionists they had they met with in Colombia especially and in Palestine.

Naming names could be a death sentence

Trade Unionists are outlawed in Colombia. The names, if released, could end up on death squad hit list. They kill unionists in Colombia. In Palestine, Israel is always looking for people who have contact with outside activists. The fear is that Colombia or Israel could use the names to cook up more vengeance on activists.

Some peace activists may be asked to testify before the Grand Jury in Chicago as early as January 25th.

Wilkes Smith isn’t one of those subpoenaed, but she knows what it’s like to be watched and is helping her friends fight back. This week at a meeting of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, she urged them to file FOIA requests to find out what evidence the government has against them.

“I’m scared and I’m really angry because I think some of my friends and colleagues, they won’t just be going to jail. They’ll be going to federal prison.”

Military veterans opposed to the war offered solidarity with those targeted by the FBI. Wayne Wittman of Veterans For Peace has his own reasons to be wary of the U.S. Government. He was just 16 when World War II ended. He recalled how Nazi Germany would describe events “exactly opposite of how my government was describing. I soon learned that my government’s description was the truth.”

Wittman said his confidence in the U.S. government was shattered during the Vietnam war. “We now know we were lied to, deceived in that war”.

“Any one of us could be a target”, said Jennie Eisert,an anti-war organizer helping people fill out the FOIA request forms. “Join with us to show that that freedom of speech, freedom of association and fighting for justice is not illegal. Demand a halt to the Grand Jury proceedings.”

According to the Washington Post, Eisert’s words of warning should be heeded by more than those in the room that night. The newspaper says:

* The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain.

* The Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings.

In other words, there is a lot of information being collected that shouldn’t be. Former FBI Agent Coleen Rowley who is also part of the peace movement says that having so much junk information in the system makes it harder to spot the real threats.

© The Uptake // www.theuptake.org // originally posted: 12/23/2010

FBI Expands Probe into Antiwar Activists

© Democracy Now! 2010

Guests:
Maureen Clare Murphy, Chicago journalist and Palestinian solidarity activist.
Tracy Molm, Minneapolis-based peace activist. FBI agents raided her home and seized belongings in September. Prosecutors have now reactivated her subpoena.
Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and whistleblower.
Mike German, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He was an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to the latest developments in the FBI’s widening targeting of antiwar and Palestinian solidarity activists. In late September, FBI agents raided the homes of activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. They seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury were served on 13 people but later withdrawn when the activists asserted their right to remain silent.

But earlier this month, subpoenas were reissued against three of those targeted in the raids. And just this week, a new subpoena was delivered to a Chicago-based activist and journalist involved in Palestinian solidarity work—at least the 23rd person subpoenaed since September.

AMY GOODMAN: All those subpoenaed have been involved with antiwar activism that’s critical of U.S. foreign policy. Details on the grand jury case remain scarce, but the subpoenas cited federal law prohibiting, quote, “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” In June, the Supreme Court rejected a free speech challenge to the material support law from humanitarian aid groups that said some of its provisions put them at risk of being prosecuted for talking to terrorist groups about nonviolent activities.

Maureen Clare Murphy is the Chicago journalist and Palestinian solidarity activist who was issued a subpoena this week. Maureen is also an editor at the website Electronic Intifada, though the site is not being targeted in the FBI probe. In a statement, the Electronic Intifada said, quote, “Although The Electronic Intifada itself has not been a target of any of the subpoenas, we consider the grand jury investigation and all of the subpoenas to be part of a broad attack on the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements and a threat to all of our rights.”

We’re also joined from Minneapolis by Tracy Molm. Her home was among those raided by FBI agents in September. Some of her belongings were seized. She’s one of three activists whose subpoenas were reactivated earlier this month.

And we’ll be speaking with two former FBI agents. Joining us from Washington, D.C., Mike German, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004. And on the line from Iowa City, Coleen Rowley. She worked as an FBI special agent for almost 24 years. In 2002, she was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year after she blew the whistle on pre-9/11 intelligence failures.

Let’s go first, though, to Chicago, to Maureen Clare Murphy, who has just been issued this subpoena. Maureen, tell us what you know and what happened. How were you issued the subpoena?

MAUREEN CLARE MURPHY: So, I was in my home office on Tuesday morning when I got the knock on the door that more than 20 activists around the country have now gotten from the FBI. And so, they rang my buzzer, and when I answered, they identified themselves as the FBI, and they asked me if I would come and speak with them. And when I declined, they said they had a subpoena for me to appear before a grand jury here in Chicago on January 25th.

AMY GOODMAN: And what else does the subpoena say?

MAUREEN CLARE MURPHY: And as you mentioned, my subpoena is—I’m one of 23 who have now been subpoenaed, and the FBI also served subpoenas to three other activists in Chicago on Tuesday throughout the city.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And did they attempt to seize any of your possessions or records or computers?

MAUREEN CLARE MURPHY: No, they did not come into my home. And none of the activists who had been subpoenaed since the September 24th raids, as far as I know, have had their property seized or their houses raided. So, you know, I don’t think that they really need to come into my home and find out what I do, because I’ve always been working within the mass movement, you know, calling for the U.S. government to end U.S. aid to Israel.

And, you know, it’s kind of ironic that we are being subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury, when oftentimes we’re protesting outside of federal buildings, and we’re calling on our legislators and we’re being very vocal and public in our calls for a more just U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. So, I don’t think the government needs to subpoena us to find out what we believe in and what we do. And so, that’s why we think this is really about intimidating our movement and trying to silence our movement, because, you know, they know what we do, and we know what we do is just and peaceful. And what it’s really about is basically trying to silence our very strong and successful movement.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to turn right now to go back to two activists who we spoke to earlier this year. And as we cover this widening net that is ensnaring a number of people, we wanted to remind you of who these people are. Their homes were raided. They told their stories on Democracy Now! We spoke to Joe Iosbaker in Chicago and Jess Sundin in Minneapolis.

JESS SUNDIN: Friday morning, I awoke to a bang at the door, and by the time I was downstairs, there were six or seven federal agents already in my home, where my partner and my six-year-old daughter had already been awake. We were given the search warrant, and they went through the entire house. They spent probably about four hours going through all of our personal belongings, every book, paper, our clothes, and filled several boxes and crates with our computers, our phones, my passport. And when they were done, as I said, they had many crates full of my personal belongings, with which they left my house.

JOE IOSBAKER: It was a nationally coordinated assault on all of these homes. Seven a.m., the pound on the door. I was getting ready for work, came down the stairs, and there were, I think, in the area of 10 agents, you know, of the—they identified themselves as FBI, showed me the search warrant. And I turned to my wife and said, “Stephanie, it’s the Thought Police.”

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Joe Iosbaker and Jess Sundin, who—Jess in Minneapolis. Like them, Tracy Molm’s home was raided by FBI agents in September, some of her belongings seized, one of three activists whose subpoenas now have been reactivated. Tell us what has happened now, Tracy.

TRACY MOLM: Right now, our individual lawyers are being called into meetings with the District Attorney, Fox, in Chicago. They’re essentially trying to scare us into talking, to naming names and giving them a case against the movement and against the people that we have worked with historically to fight for justice for the people of Palestine and the people of Colombia.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, we’re also joined on the phone by Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent who was named by Time Magazine Woman of the Year for her exposure of the problems in intelligence by the FBI pre-9/11. Your reaction to these raids, especially since they all seem to be focused around people who are involved in Palestinian solidarity work and there’s certainly no indication that there’s any terrorist threat to the United States here from the Palestinian movement?

COLEEN ROWLEY: Well, you know, after 9/11, we almost—there was a green light put on, and there was a very big blurring between protest, civil disobedience and terrorism. And you saw this in many ways. The door was open to basically targeting, without any level of factual justification, advocacy groups. And again, this began pretty quickly after 9/11.

It’s gotten to the point now, nine years later—and I wanted to mention the Washington Post is doing a pretty good job of exposing this, this top-secret America, this monitoring. Their most recent article in the Washington Post says there’s a hundred—the FBI has 164,000 suspicious activity reports. Again, these are things that just have no level of factual justification, that people call in, and the FBI is now keeping records on people. So, I think that, you know, this case will just be the start of targeting various groups like this.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to a clip of an interview we did recently when Bruce Nestor came into town, the former head of the National Lawyers Guild in Minneapolis. He’s representing those who have been summoned before the grand jury. Bruce Nestor talked about potential consequences the activists face for defying subpoenas.

BRUCE NESTOR: Three people are now being—looking at reappearing in front of the grand jury and likely being forced with the choice between talking about who they meet with, what the political beliefs of their friends and allies are, or perhaps risking contempt and sitting in jail for 18 months. These are people who are deeply rooted in the progressive community in Chicago and Minneapolis. These are grandmothers, they’re mothers, they’re union activists. They were some of the organizers of the largest antiwar march at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

And so—and they’re being prosecuted under this material support for terrorism law, a law that was really enhanced under the PATRIOT Act and that allows, in the government’s own words, for people to be prosecuted for their speech if they coordinate it with a designated foreign terrorist organization. What you run the risk of there is that even if you state your own independent views about U.S. foreign policy, but those views somehow reflect a group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, you can be accused of coordinating your views and face, if not prosecution, at least investigation, search warrants, being summoned to a grand jury to talk about who your political allies and who your political friends are.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Bruce Nestor, who’s representing some of those being subpoenaed, former head of the Naitonal Lawyers Guild in the Twin Cities. Mike German is joining us from Washington, D.C., National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He was an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism for many years. Mike, talk about your assessment of this widening dragnet and its consequences.

MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think part of the problem is sort of the scope of this investigation and the aggressive tactics that are being used, when there isn’t any public evidence to suggest these people pose a threat. In fact, the FBI spokesman said immediately after the raids that there wasn’t a threat to the community. So, it sort of leads to a question of why there is this nationwide, you know, early morning raids, as if these are Mafia groups, when, you know, it’s clear from the materials that are being seized, the materials that are being requested in the search warrant returns that are public, that a lot of this is associational information that’s being requested—address books, computer records, literature and advocacy materials, First Amendment sort of materials.

So, this creates a huge chill beyond these activists or their associates to the entire advocacy community, where, you know, again, these people, as already stated, have longstanding advocacy histories, you know, are organizers, know a lot of people in the community. So it creates a chill throughout, and it damages our democracy, because people start to be afraid of participating in the political process. And that really is a huge problem beyond the scope of just the individuals involved in this case. And, you know, the fact that the FBI is doing this and using terms like “terrorism” to describe these individuals creates a huge chilling effect that we really have to be concerned about.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike, I wanted to ask you—I don’t know if it’s exactly related, but new details on how the United States has assembled a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. Another Washington Post exposé on this, the FBI operating a massive database known as Guardian with the names and personal information of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents who have never committed a crime but were reported to have acted suspiciously by a local police officer or a fellow citizen, the database containing over 160,000 suspicious activity files. Despite the sweeping size of the database, the Washington Post reports, the FBI says it’s resulted in only five arrests and no convictions. In addition, the Post reveals the FBI is storing 96 million fingerprints in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

And the Post also reports that local law enforcement agencies have begun using surveillance equipment designed for war zones. In Memphis, Tennessee, some police patrol cars now contain military-grade infrared cameras that can snap digital images of one license plate after another, while analyzing each almost instantly.

Mike German, you have worked in counterterrorism for years, before being at the ACLU, from 1988 to 2004. What’s going on here? What are the dangers with this?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, you know, you might remember a program called Total Information Awareness that was started right after 9/11, and the idea was, if we can just grab all the available data that’s out there, somehow we’ll be able to manage it in a way that we’ll know everything that’s happening. And while Congress killed that specific program, that idea never disappeared.

And the FBI appears to be at the center of one of these expansive collection programs called eGuardian, is the new one. Guardian is one that’s been around for a while. But now there’s a new one, eGuardian, that’s part of a nationwide suspicious activity reporting program that encourages state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as the general public, to report behaviors that they describe as inherently suspicious, and these include things like taking notes or drawing diagrams, taking measurements, taking photographs or video. So, of course, these are benign activities that have no inherent suspicion regarding them, so what we’re concerned with is what people will really be reporting is people that, because of their own personal bias, are already suspicious of. You know, it won’t be everybody who’s taking notes; it’s only going to be that person who wears religious garb that they are, you know, religiously biased against or, you know, a person of a specific race or nationality. So, what this allows, this sort of reduction in standards allows the collection of material against people who are not even suspected of being involved in wrongdoing. And that is really an open door to abuse.

And we have Freedom of Information Act requests outstanding for the eGuardian program. We’re interested in a lot of different new FBI programs. There’s a Domain Management program, which purports to allow the FBI to collect racial and ethnic demographic information and map our communities across the nation by race and ethnicity. So, again, this suspicion-less collection information is a huge and growing problem, and all of this data just is being warehoused, literally—I mean, that’s what they call it, the Investigative Data Warehouse—for any kind of abuse that might occur later. And, of course, you know, the ACLU has already documented these types of spying operations being directed against political advocacy in 33 states across the nation. In fact, when the latest Washington Post report came out, one of the intelligence collection operations it focused on was the Tennessee fusion centers. And one of our legal fellows became interested upon reading the article and went to the website, and sure enough, one of the suspicious activities reported on the website was an ACLU advocacy effort regarding the celebration of religious activities in public schools. So, clearly, they’re collecting information about political advocacy, and this is part of the larger problem across the country.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Mike, I’d like to ask you—this is not the first time in U.S. history that we’ve had these problems. I think back—you mentioned Total Information Awareness. But going back even further, several decades ago, the Church Commission uncovered all kinds of spying by the U.S. government on legal dissident groups in the United States. And, of course, back in the 1920s during the Palmer Raids, there was all kinds of government attempts to round up people who were involved in what is normally legal, but opposition, politics of one kind or another. How come there is so little outcry in the general population of these enormous attempts by the government to take away civil liberties and to spy on the citizens?

MIKE GERMAN: You know, you’re exactly right. There is, you know, a long history of abuse of secret domestic intelligence powers. And that’s why after the Church Committee uncovered those abuses in the 1970s, there were guidelines put in place, the Attorney General Guidelines, that required a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing before the FBI could start aggressive investigations. And those were the standards that I operated on, doing domestic terrorism investigations. And I found they were very helpful, that what it did is it helped me focus on people who were actually doing bad things, rather than people who were saying things that I didn’t like or didn’t agree with, and that that helped me use my resources in an efficient way to target the people who were doing bad things. And unfortunately, after 9/11, those standards have been diluted significantly to where now the FBI literally requires no factual predicate to start an investigation.

And as far as the public outrage, a huge part of the problem is, again, these activities are taking place in secret. So it’s hard to know how they’re impacting any particular group or individual. And that’s why we set up a website, the Spy Files website, aclu.org/spyfiles, where we’re collecting a lot of this material. And, you know, it’s not just the FBI that’s spying now; it’s Department of Homeland Security, it’s the Department of Defense, it’s state and local law enforcement agencies that are involved in these activities. So, you know, this Washington Post story, I think, will be a big help to let people know that, you know, your innocence doesn’t protect you anymore, that they can literally start collecting information on anyone.

And, you know, we had a recent case in Maryland where the Maryland state police were spying on political activists. And one of the activists said something very interesting to me. She said, you know, “I was a Vietnam War protester. So when I became a war protester again with the recent conflicts, I kind of assumed that the government would be spying on me. But when I finally got those records back, what scared me more than anything was that much of the information was wrong. They had me at demonstrations I wasn’t at. They had me associated with groups I wasn’t associated with. And that scared me more, because now my doing everything right and not being involved in violence wasn’t going to protect me from their errors, and I could be associated with things that I wasn’t actually doing.” And that’s really a big part of the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds, but I wanted to go back to Coleen Rowley, another former FBI agent, on a related issue, and it’s WikiLeaks. You have signed on, along with a number of other people, like Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of the Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Dan Ellsberg and British intelligence employee Katharine Gun, to a letter that says WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America who thrive on secrecy are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in. As we wrap up this discussion, let’s end up on WikiLeaks, Coleen.

COLEEN ROWLEY: Well, I think there’s a big tie-in between transparency and knowing what your government is doing and what we just heard Mike German mention, which is these infiltrations without factual justification of advocacy groups. The Minneapolis case seems to have stemmed a lot from the lead up to the Republican National Convention and the protests, where they simply targeted protesters. And I think that if we had more transparency and we had ways of people telling the truth about what’s going on, we would not actually see the—I’m very afraid we’re doomed to repeat that terrible history of the COINTELPRO era and the House Un-American Activities.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to have to leave it there. Coleen Rowley and Mike German, both former FBI agents. Coleen Rowley, a whistleblower named Time Person of the Year in 2002, Mike German, now with the ACLU, thanks so much for being with us.