Saturday, March 24, 2012

Documents Show NYPD Infiltrated Liberal Groups

Documents Show NYPD Infiltrated Liberal Groups

 

March 23, 2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57403175/documents-show-nypd-infiltrated-liberal-groups/

 

NEW YORK - Undercover NYPD officers attended meetings of

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 New York's 2004 Republican National

Convention, when police monitored church groups, anti-

war organizations and environmental advocates

nationwide. That effort was revealed by The New York

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 U.S. economic policy and the effect of

trade agreements between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

 

When the undercover effort was summarized for

supervisors, it identified groups opposed to U.S.

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

York City," officers wrote in an April 25, 2008, memo to

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 Israel and

mentioned two events related to Palestine."

 

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

Maryland state police infiltrated meetings of anti-death

penalty groups. Missouri counterterrorism analysts

suggested that support for Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, might

indicate support for violent militias - an assertion for

which state officials later apologized. And Texas

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 Seattle in 1999, Cincinnati in 2001 and Toledo

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 Occupy Wall Street

protests and in related protests in other cities,

officials at the U.S. Homeland Security Department

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 New Orleans. They did not return the calls.

 

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 New Orleans that

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 United States, one that infiltrated

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 City College New York.

 

"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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