Releasing new documents obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Legal Director of the Colorado ACLU, Mark Silverstein, said today that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) wastes resources and threatens First Amendment rights by wrongfully equating nonviolent protest with domestic terrorism.

“These documents confirm that the names and license plate numbers of several dozen peaceful protesters who committed no crime are now in a JTTF file marked ‘counterterrorism,’” Silverstein said. “This kind of surveillance of First Amendment activities has serious consequences. Law-abiding Americans may be reluctant to speak out when doing so means that their names will wind up in an FBI file.”

Two of the FBI reports released today concern nonviolent protests conducted by critics of the timber industry’s forestry practices at a convention of the North American Wholesale Lumber Association (NAWLA) in Colorado Springs in June, 2002. “The FBI opened this investigation because it learned that activists were planning nonviolence training for persons who wanted to participate in the protests,” Silverstein said. “Nonviolence training has nothing to do with terrorism. But the documents show that the JTTF sent a report to the counterterrorism section of the FBI asking that a ‘case be opened and assigned.’”

“The protests were indeed peaceful,” Silverstein said. “Several dozen persons peacefully expressed their views during the several-day convention. A handful were arrested for trespass when they hung a banner from the tower of the convention hotel, but the overwhelming majority were never accused or even suspected of this minor nonviolent offense or any other violation of law.”

“After the protests were over, however, the JTTF obtained and included in the file a list of license plate numbers of the participants and the corresponding vehicle registration information,” Silverstein continued. “Thus, the names of persons who were never accused or suspected of even minor criminal activity are now in the files of the JTTF, solely because they exercised their constitutionally-protected right to peacefully express their opinions in a public protest.”

Although the FBI report on the NAWLA protests states that the list of plate numbers is attached, the FBI said it was withholding those three pages from the ACLU, citing FOIA privacy exemptions. Nevertheless, Silverstein said, the ACLU had already obtained those three pages – and posted them in redacted form on the ACLU’s web site -- during litigation over the “Spy Files” maintained by the Denver Police Department’s Intelligence Unit. The first page, a fax cover sheet, indicates that Denver police detective Tom Fisher, who worked full time for the JTTF, asked for and obtained the list from the Colorado Springs Police Department. Responding to earlier press inquiries about this document, an FBI spokesperson confirmed that Agent Fisher obtained the list of names and license plates in the course of his JTTF duties. “The FBI documents released today confirm that this list of names of innocent persons is maintained, unjustifiably, in an FBI file marked ‘counterterrorism,’” Silverstein said.

The ACLU also released a report, obtained on behalf of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, that shows that the FBI opened a “domestic terrorism” investigation after reading web sites promoting an antiwar demonstration in Colorado Springs in February, 2003. The report indicates that the FBI planned to conduct surveillance in Denver at the location where participants gathered to car pool to the demonstration in Colorado Springs. It also indicates that Nextel provided website information to the author of the FBI report. “The FBI case number of this report begins with 266,” Silverstein said, “which is the FBI classification for ‘domestic terrorism.’ The FBI file title includes the abbreviation ‘AOT,’ which means ‘acts of terrorism’ and ‘DT,’ which means ‘domestic terrorism.’ Yet there is nothing in the FBI report that provides any grounds for suspecting that any of three web sites were promoting domestic terrorism or violent crime. The web sites promoted a peace demonstration.”

“The FBI is unjustifiably treating nonviolent public protest as though it were domestic terrorism,” Silverstein said. “The FBI’s misplaced priorities threaten to deter legitimate criticism of government policy while wasting taxpayer resources that should be directed to investigating real terrorists.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado released new documents today that it says confirm that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) is inappropriately treating peaceful protest as potential terrorism.

The ACLU obtained the documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last December on behalf of sixteen organizations and ten individuals. The files released today concern the Colorado American Indian Movement and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. The ACLU expects to receive additional responses from the FBI in the next few months.

“These documents underscore the ACLU’s concern that the JTTF inappropriately regards public protest as potential “domestic terrorism,” prompting it to investigate and build files on the political activities of peaceful dissenters because of the mere possibility that their activities will attract participants who may violate the law,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director. “The FBI apparently regards even peaceful nonviolent civil disobedience as the proper subject of a ‘domestic terrorism’ investigation,” Silverstein continued. “By casting its net so unjustifiably wide, the FBI wastes taxpayers’ money and threatens to chill legitimate dissent.”

Silverstein said that the new files show that JTTF agents opened “domestic terrorism” investigations after they read web sites announcing an antiwar protest in Colorado Springs in 2003 and a protest against Columbus Day in Denver in 2002. They also reveal that the JTTF monitored the peaceful protest activities of law-abiding groups that formed the Coalition to Stop Vail Expansion in the late 1990s and that it investigated the Boulder-based Activist Media Project for videotaping a Lockheed Martin facility from a public street.

Denver contributes the services of two full-time detectives to the JTTF. In May, the ACLU asked Denver to withdraw from the FBI task force, because the Settlement Agreement that resolved the “Spy Files” case forbids Denver detectives to target individuals or organizations for investigation because of their First Amendment activities.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado released documents today that it says confirm that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Denver is targeting peaceful political activists for harassment and building files on constitutionally-protected political activities and associations that have nothing to do with terrorism or other criminal activity.

The documents are the first FBI responses to a formal request that the Colorado ACLU filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on behalf of 26 organizations and 10 individuals last December. At the time, the Colorado ACLU presented evidence that the JTTF was collecting information on peaceful advocacy groups whose issues ranged from animal rights, protection of the environment, labor rights, military policy, social and economic justice in Latin America, and the treatment of Native Americans. Six additional ACLU affiliates around the country filed similar requests in December, and ten additional ACLUs filed FOIA requests today.

“These documents confirm that the FBI’s anti-terrorism unit is targeting nonviolent activists and unjustifiably treating constitutionally-protected dissent as though it were potential terrorism,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director. “They illustrate that the FBI is pursuing misplaced priorities that waste taxpayers’ money and pose a threat to freedom of expression and association. People will be reluctant to sign a petition or join a peaceful demonstration when they know that their names might wind up in an FBI file on ‘domestic terrorism.’”

The documents reveal that the FBI is particularly interested in Food Not Bombs, which opposes the government’s prioritization of war and military programs over social programs. Twice a week in Denver for the last six years, Food Not Bombs has been providing free vegetarian meals in a picnic setting in public parks to anyone who is hungry. Autonomous chapters of Food Not Bombs carry out in similar activities in Boulder, Fort Collins and Durango, as well as numerous cities throughout the country.

One FBI report, written in December 2004, focused specifically on Sarah Bardwell, a young Denver activist who worked for the American Friends Service Committee for several years in the organization’s Youth and Militarism Program and who is also active with Food Not Bombs. The FBI report notes that Bardwell was listed as a “point of contact” for the organizers of an antiwar protest in downtown Denver in March, 2004. It further notes that her address is “associated with” Food Not Bombs and Derailer Bicycle Collective. (Volunteers at Derailer fix up old bikes, donate bicycles to the homeless, and teach people to work on their own bikes.) The author of the FBI report also states that Derailer hosted a meeting place during the Columbus Day protests in Denver two years earlier.

“This report on Sarah Bardwell collects information about her peaceful political activities and her constitutionally-protected associations,” Silverstein said. “It contains nothing that suggests that she is connected with terrorism or any other criminal activity.”

The FBI documents provide new information about a controversial JTTF operation that targeted political activists for aggressive and intimidating questioning in Colorado and other states in the summer of 2004. A three-page report discusses the events of July 22, 2004, when two teams of JTTF agents, accompanied by Denver police officers in SWAT gear, appeared at two Denver residences on Lipan Street that are home to a number of young political activists, including Bardwell. Bardwell explained at the time that the JTTF agents demanded to know if she and her housemates were planning to commit crimes at the upcoming Republican and Democratic conventions and whether they knew anyone who was planning such crimes. They also threatened that failing to provide information to the FBI was a criminal offense. Critics charged that the FBI was actively attempting to intimidate dissenters rather than conducting a legitimate investigation of reasonably suspected criminal activity.

The FBI report explains that the Denver JTTF received several “leads” and was asked to conduct “pretext interviews” about plans for the political conventions. The first two “leads” the JTTF pursued were the two houses on Lipan Street. The FBI report states that no information about criminal activity was obtained. The report then states that the JTTF agents decided not to follow up on another lead, regarding a radical bookstore, because, as the report stated, “the purpose of the interviews was served by the contacts made at the two residences.”

“These accounts of the JTTF’s visits to the Lipan Street homes confirm that the FBI was more interested in intimidation than in trying to gather information,” Silverstein said. “The JTTF show of force, complete with SWAT teams, was an abuse of power apparently intended to deter persons who might be considering demonstrating at the political conventions.”

Another version of that three-page report, with different redactions, reveals that the JTTF also intended to question Scott Silber, a labor consultant who had recently assisted janitors in a campaign that secured health insurance in 40 employer agreements. Silber reports receiving several phone calls from an FBI agent who demonstrated extensive knowledge of Silber’s recent addresses but who would not explain his interest in questioning Silber.

The FBI documents released today supplement documents released earlier by the Colorado ACLU, many obtained in connection with litigation over the Denver Police Department’s “Spy Files,” which also document the JTTF’s collection of political surveillance information. Those documents are available here.

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