Paul Lewis and Adam Federman at
The Guardian report:
The FBI breached its own internal rules when it spied on campaigners against the Keystone XL pipeline, failing to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened files on individuals protesting against the construction of the pipeline in Texas, documents reveal.
Internal agency documents show for the first time how FBI agents have been closely monitoring anti-Keystone activists, in violation of guidelines designed to prevent the agency from becoming unduly involved in sensitive political issues. [...]
One FBI memo, which set out the rationale for investigating campaigners in the Houston area, touted the economic advantages of the pipeline while labelling its opponents “environmental extremists”.
The FBI, of course, has a long history of focusing attention on political activists, infiltrating dissident organizations, including totally peaceful ones, and in many instances acting as
agents provocateurs to sabotage the work of perfectly legal groups established to oppose government policies, including wars of choice. From the 1950s until publicly exposed in the early 1970s, the bureau ran COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), which infiltrated various organizations, forged documents, planted false stories in the media sometimes with the knowing assistance of "journalists," harassed some people and smeared others with false rumors, spurred members to commit violent acts and engaged in actions that led to the murders of some activists. All in the name of national security.
As noted here in February, the bureau has made home visits to climate activists, asking them to identify other activists engaged in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and the extraction of bitumen from tar sands deposits. One of those groups, the documents show, was the direct-action group, the Tar Sands Blockade.
Together with Earth Island Justice, The Guardian obtained the partially redacted documents by means of a Freedom of Information Act request. One investigation, the documents show, indicate that the FBI was in “substantial non-compliance” with Department of Justice rules for handling sensitive issues. The documents show that the bureau investigated anti-Keystone activists without getting the U.S. attorney general-required approval from the top lawyer and senior agent in the Houston field office.
There's more to this story below the fold.
The FBI files appear to suggest the Houston branch of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.
For a period of time—possibly as long as eight months—agents acting beyond their authority were monitoring activists aligned with Tar Sands Blockade.
The bureau conceded that it had violated its own protocol, and that it corrected this breach subsequently. But the investigation continued for more than a year afterward and, apparently, nobody was disciplined for the breach of protocol.
The documents, The Guardian reporters write, indicate that the Houston operation was just one branch of investigations of anti-Keystone groups and individuals across the country.
A former FBI agent, Mike German, helped the newspaper understand the documents. He said that they indicate the bureau opened an "assessment" under expanded authority introduced after the 9/11 attacks to allow it to investigate people and groups even if they have no reason to believe they are breaking the law or planning to.
German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, said the documents also raised questions over collusion between law enforcement and TransCanada.
“It is clearly troubling that these documents suggest the FBI interprets its national security mandate as protecting private industry from political criticism,” he said.
Again, given the FBI's history and the history of local police departments such as the LAPD's old
Public Disorder Intelligence Division, all activists should assume that they are being scrutinized and that their organization has been infiltrated. At the time it was shuttered in the late 1980s, the PDID was spying on or had infiltrated more than 200 peaceful dissident organizations as well as offices of a city councilmember and the local offices of the National Organization for Women.
