FBI Spies On The Politically Incorrect

Ill: Micah Wright/Propaganda Remix

After years of denying it, D.C. police say they've just found in their records the fact that the FBI participated in questioning of anti-war protesters based on "probable cause" to believe they were anarchists because anarchists wear black & have tattoos, apparently.

"For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.

"The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van? They were wearing black -- a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.

"FBI agents dressed in street clothes separated members to question them one by one about protests they attended, whom they had spent time with recently, what political views they espoused and the significance of their tattoos and slogans, according to interviews and court records.

"The revelations, combined with protester accounts, provide the first public evidence that Washington-based FBI personnel used their intelligence-gathering powers in the District to collect purely political intelligence."

...

"Similar intelligence-gathering operations have been reported in New York, where a local police intelligence unit tried to infiltrate groups planning to protest at the Republican National Convention in 2004, and in Colorado, where records surfaced showing that the FBI collected names and license plates of people protesting timber industry practices at a 2002 industry convention.

"Several federal courts have ruled that intelligence agencies can monitor domestic groups only when there is reason to believe the group is engaged in criminal activity. Experts in police conduct say it is hard to imagine how asking questions about a person's political views would be appropriate in a trespassing case." (Title bar.)

Ah, but they were forgetting that Bushco's World is a brave new one. Thought criminals ~ even as to private industry ~ will be persecuted. And every coercive means at the state's disposal will be brought to bear.

We're shocked, shocked ~

J. Edgar Hoover would've been proud.