Documents Show NYPD Infiltrated Liberal Groups
March 23, 2012
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57403175/documents-show-nypd-infiltrated-liberal-groups/
liberal political organizations and kept intelligence
files on activists who planned protests around the
country, according to interviews and documents that show
how police have used counterterrorism tactics to monitor
even lawful activities.
The infiltration echoes the tactics the NYPD used in the
run-up to
Convention, when police monitored church groups, anti-
war organizations and environmental advocates
nationwide. That effort was revealed by The
Times in 2007 and in an ongoing federal civil rights
lawsuit over how the NYPD treated convention protesters.
Police said the pre-convention spying was necessary to
prepare for the huge, raucous crowds that were headed to
the city. But documents obtained by The Associated Press
show that the police department's intelligence unit
continued to keep close watch on political groups in
2008, long after the convention had passed.
In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to
New Orleans to attend the People's Summit, a gathering
of liberal groups organized around their shared
opposition to
trade agreements between the
When the undercover effort was summarized for
supervisors, it identified groups opposed to
immigration policy, labor laws and racial profiling. Two
activists - Jordan Flaherty, a journalist, and Marisa
Franco, a labor organizer for housekeepers and nannies -
were mentioned by name in one of the police intelligence
reports obtained by the AP.
"One workshop was led by Jordan Flaherty, former member
of the International Solidarity Movement Chapter in New
David Cohen, the NYPD's top intelligence officer. "Mr.
Flaherty is an editor and journalist of the Left Turn
Magazine and was one of the main organizers of the
conference. Mr. Flaherty held a discussion calling for
the increase of the divestment campaign of
mentioned two events related to
The document is available here: http://apne.ws/GGCBuX .
The document provides the latest example of how, in the
name of fighting terrorism, law enforcement agencies
around the country have scrutinized groups that legally
oppose government policies. The FBI, for instance, has
collected information on anti-war demonstrators. The
penalty groups.
suggested that support for Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, might
indicate support for violent militias - an assertion for
which state officials later apologized. And
officials urged authorities to monitor lobbying efforts
by pro Muslim-groups.
Police have good reason to want to know what to expect
when protesters take to the streets. Many big cities,
such as
in 2005, have seen protests turned into violent,
destructive riots. Intelligence from undercover officers
gives police an idea of what to expect and lets them
plan accordingly.
"There was no political surveillance," Cohen testified
in the ongoing lawsuit over NYPD's handling of
protesters at the Republican convention. "This was a
program designed to determine in advance the likelihood
of unlawful activity or acts of violence."
The result of those efforts, however, was that people
and organizations can be cataloged in police files for
discussing political topics or advocating even legal
protests, not violence or criminal activity.
By contrast, at the height of the
protests and in related protests in other cities,
officials at the
repeatedly urged authorities not to produce intelligence
reports based simply on protest activities.
"Occupy Wall Street-type protesters mostly are engaged
in constitutionally protected activity," department
officials wrote in documents obtained under the Freedom
of Information Act by the website Gawker. "We maintain
our longstanding position that DHS should not report on
activities when the basis for reporting is political
speech."
At the NYPD, the monitoring was carried out by the
Intelligence Division, a squad that operates with nearly
no outside oversight and is so secretive that police
said even its organizational chart is too sensitive to
publish. The division has been the subject of a series
of Associated Press articles that illustrated how the
NYPD monitored Muslim neighborhoods, catalogued people
who prayed at mosques and eavesdropped on sermons.
The AP left phone messages with Cohen and two NYPD press
officers last week seeking comment about the undercover
operation in
The NYPD has defended its efforts, saying the threat of
terrorism means officers cannot wait to open an
investigation until a crime is committed. Under rules
governing NYPD investigations, officers are allowed to
go anywhere the public can go and can prepare reports
for "operational planning."
Though the NYPD's infiltration of political groups
before the 2004 convention generated some controversy
and has become an element in a lawsuit over the arrest,
fingerprinting and detention of protesters, the
surveillance itself has not been challenged in court.
Flaherty, who also writes for The Huffington Post, said
he was not an organizer of the summit, as police wrote
in the NYPD report. He said the event described by
police actually was a film festival in
same week, suggesting that the undercover officer's
duties were more widespread than described in the
report.
Flaherty said he recalls introducing a film about
Palestinians but spoke only briefly and does not
understand why that landed him a reference in police
files.
"The only threat was the threat of ideas," he said. "I
think this idea of secret police following you around is
terrifying. It really has an effect of spreading fear
and squashing dissent."
Before the terrorist attacks of September 2001,
infiltrating political groups was one of the most
tightly controlled powers the NYPD could use. Such
investigations were restricted by a longstanding court
order in a lawsuit over the NYPD's spying on protest
groups in the 1960s.
After the attacks, Cohen told a federal judge that, to
keep the city safe, police must be allowed to open
investigations before there's evidence of a crime. A
federal judge agreed and relaxed the rules.
Since then, police have monitored not only suspected
terrorists but also entire Muslim neighborhoods,
mosques, restaurants and law-abiding protesters.
Keeping tabs on planned demonstrations is a key function
of Cohen's division. Investigators with his Cyber
Intelligence Unit monitor websites of activist groups,
and undercover officers put themselves on email
distribution lists for upcoming events. Plainclothes
officers collect fliers on public demonstrations.
Officers and informants infiltrate the groups and attend
rallies, parades and marches.
Intelligence analysts take all this information and
distill it into summaries for Police Commissioner
Raymond Kelly's daily briefing, documents show.
The April 2008 memo offers an unusually candid view of
how political monitoring fit into the NYPD's larger,
post-9/11 intelligence mission. As the AP has reported
previously, Cohen's unit has transformed the NYPD into
one of the most aggressive domestic intelligence
agencies in the
Muslim student groups, monitored their websites and used
informants as listening posts inside mosques.
Along with the political monitoring, the document
describes plans to use informants to monitor mosques for
conversations about the imminent verdict in the trial of
three NYPD officers charged in the 2006 shooting death
of Sean Bell, an unarmed man who died in a hail of
gunfire. Police were worried about how the black
community, particularly the New Black Panther Party,
would respond to the verdict, according to this and
other documents obtained by the AP.
The document also contained details of a whitewater
rafting trip that an undercover officer attended with
Muslim students from
"The group prayed at least four times a day, and much of
the conversation was spent discussing Islam and was
religious in nature," the report reads.
Eugene Puryear, 26, an activist who attended the New
Orleans summit, said he was not surprised to learn that
police were monitoring it. He said it was entirely
peaceful, a way to connect community organizers around
the issues of racism and the rights of the poor. But he
described it as a challenge to corporate power and said
the NYPD probably felt threatened by it.
"From their perspective, they need to spy on peaceful
groups so they're not effective at putting out their
peaceful message," he said. "They are threatened by
anything challenging the status quo."
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