Liberty vs. security: the knock at the door.

The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2004:

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To the Justice Department, last month's investigation of three antiwar protesters from Kirksville, Mo., is about preventing violence during the election. But to the young men involved, it is a story of government intimidating people for speaking their minds.

The three men don't want their names published. Denise Lieberman, their American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, says they were frightened after the FBI questioned them, interviewed their parents, tracked their movements and called them before a federal grand jury in St. Louis last month.

The young men are among an estimated 40 to 50 antiwar protesters nationwide who have been interviewed by the FBI in recent months, according to The New York Times. This is a troubling pattern of harassment of antiwar protesters made possible by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's lax rules for FBI investigations of political groups.

Here's the story of the Kirksville men, based on an account by Ms. Lieberman:

Between July 20 and 22, FBI agents showed up at the homes of their parents in St. Louis County, Illinois and Kansas asking about the sons' whereabouts. The men _ ages 20, 22 and 24 _ were planning to attend demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican conventions to protest the prominence of the two-party system. They had previously been involved in antiglobalization and antiwar activities.

Between July 22 and 24, FBI agents and Kirksville police showed up at their residences in Kirksville; one is a student at Truman State. The FBI asked three questions: Did they know of any criminally disruptive activity being planned for the political conventions, the presidential debates or the election? Would they say if they knew? And did they know it was a crime to withhold that information? The three refused to answer without a lawyer.

The men went to St. Louis around July 25, planning to meet up with other protesters for the trip to the Democratic convention in Boston. Soon they discovered they were under 24-hour surveillance; four FBI agents followed them to the ACLU office. Most chilling was the grand jury subpoena for the day of the planned protest. The subpoena said the three men were targets of the grand jury's investigation of "threats or hoaxes concerning acts of violence, bombings and/or the unlawful destruction of property." The men appeared before the grand jury and canceled their protest plans.

Ms. Lieberman said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew T. Drake gave her the impression that he was mainly looking for information, rather than a prosecution.

Ms. Lieberman says she saw "fear in their faces and voices."

"... Imagine being 20 and getting a knock on the door from the FBI, and not just the FBI, but the Joint Terrorism Task Force. This an abuse of the powers of the task force. ... It makes me believe that the intent was to intimidate them," she said.

U.S. Attorney Jim Martin said there was no intent to "chill" the protesters' speech, adding, "any time we get an allegation involving a bomb threat, we will take every step to ensure that threat is not carried out."

Federal scrutiny is appropriate where agents have specific information that people are planning violent or otherwise illegal activity. But FBI harassment of nonviolent protest interferes with First Amendment rights.

Two years ago, when Mr. Ashcroft expanded the FBI's power to snoop, he pledged not to repeat J. Edgar Hoover's abuses. Mr. Ashcroft hasn't kept that promise. Surveillance of antiwar protesters was ordered by an FBI intelligence bulletin last October. It asked local police to watch out for protest tactics including Internet use, fund-raising activities, videotaping of events and "peaceful techniques (that) can create a climate of disorder."

All of those activities are protected by the First Amendment. But the FBI's Office of Legal Counsel upheld the legality of the investigative techniques. The Times reported that the legal counsel concluded that "given the limited nature of such public monitoring, any possible `chilling' effect caused by the bulletins would be quite minimal and substantially outweighed by the public interest in maintaining safety and order during large-scale demonstrations."

By using valuable FBI resources to snoop on antiwar protesters, Mr. Ashcroft's Justice Department displays a troubling lack of balance and perspective that puts American freedom and security at risk.

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(c) 2004, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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