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6 Ways Cops Have Used Sex to Infiltrate and Disrupt Protest Groups

Editor’s note: Environmental activist Eric McDavid was recently released after nine years in prison following a court ruling where the government acknowledged withholding evidence during his trial. New evidence has surfaced of how an FBI informant, “Anna,” not only attempted to coerce the group into illegal actions, but used McDavid’s romantic feelings for her to entrap him. Such devious tactics by law enforcement are unfortunately not unique. This is a case study by Professor Michael Loadenthal of how police have used sexual relationships in the pursuit of activist surveillance.

Policing Through Sexual Infiltration

“It must be a horrifying experience to discover that your partner is not the person they say they are; that they may have been relaying information provided in confidence ‘on the pillow’, to the state; and that the fundamentals of the relationship were lies. Many have described the sense of violation they feel.” 

The exploitation of human sexuality is a well-known pressure point in the repression of social movements. Typically such measures are thought to be reserved for military conflicts involving complex, multi-tiered, counter-insurgency campaigns, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout the first and second Palestinian uprisings, Israeli intelligence forces regularly recruited Palestinians for collaboration after first documenting them in precarious sexual situations. Classically, Israeli handlers would observe and record a Palestinian engaging in extra-marital, homosexual, or otherwise ‘deviant’ sexual behaviors and then leverage the publicity of these filmed vices in exchange for actionable intelligence leading to the capture of wanted Palestinian fighters and activists.

Though such methods may be more familiar to students of ‘traditional’ warfare, the collection of intelligence through the exploitation of trusted social network is a common domestic policing strategy as well. A 2014 study demonstrated that 81% of “law enforcement professionals” use social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) in their investigations, and that 80% agree that the creation and management of fake social media profiles is an “ethical” practice in law enforcement. In 2011, the British press was made aware of several undercover police agents who were infiltrating protest movements throughout a 40-year period. Of the seven undercover officers initially exposed, five were found to have had sexual relationships with women. Often times these were women the officers were tasked with monitoring. These sexual liaisons between cop and activist were the product of misrepresentation. Subsequent investigation into the actions of these officers exposed 10 individuals, nine of which who had sexual relationships with activists.

The following will provide brief biographical profiles of these individuals. In doing so it is my hope that movements can learn from these examples and improve our resistance to infiltration and disruption. The purpose of these methods is to reverberate distrust, fear, uncertainty, suspicion and divisions amongst our friendship circles, our communities and our wider social networks.

Bob Lambert

Bob Lambert, posing as Bob Robinson, infiltrated leftist and animal liberation networks, using a job at Greenpeace London as an activist cover, and targeting activists affiliated with the ALF. Between May 1987-November 1988, Lambert was engaged in a sexual relationship with a 24-year-old female, not affiliated with political activism, whom he met at a party. Lambert reportedly maintained the relationship for 18 months to create the background of a personal life for his projected activist persona. To this end, Lambert even arranged to have his own home raided by police to show that he was a ‘known activist.’ In total, Lambert spent 26 years in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch (including the Special Demonstration Squad), and recently issued an apology for the relationship stating:

I also apologise unreservedly for forming false friendships with law abiding citizens and in particular forming a longterm relationship with [the woman] who had every reason to think I was a committed animal rights activist and a genuine London Greenpeace campaigner.

Not only was Lambert involved with the unnamed 24-year-old, but a year or so prior, he also had a sexual relationship with a second female whom he fathered a child with before disappearing. Lambert met the female activist whom he was meant to spy on in the “mid-1980s” and had a son with her in 1985 before breaking up in 1987. When the child was two years old, the female activist married a second man and Lambert surrendered his paternal rights. The woman came forward in early 2013 after seeing Lambert’s 1980s picture in a newspaper and recognizing it as that of her long lost ex-boyfriend and the father of their son. The woman reports that she met Lambert in 1984, and became involved in animal rights and involving herself in direct action networks. In 2013 Lambert admitted to having relationships with four women while undercover. Throughout this infiltration, Lambert was also legally married. Lambert is one of at least two UK police infiltrators that fathered a child with a female activist who was targeted for surveillance.

In addition to his service as a police agent and sexual infiltrator, Lambert also served as an agent provocateur carrying our acts of property destruction, including the use of arson, and attributing such actions to the ALF. According to Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas, in testimony given to Parliament, Lambert was responsible for placing and detonating an incendiary device in the Harrow, northwest London branch of the Debenhams department store in 1987 in protest of its selling of fur.

Lambert is also said to have admitted his involvement in the arson to a female activist. The arson was part of a three site simultaneous attacks with only two perpetrators arrested. According to testimony from one of the convicted arsonists Caroline Lucas as well as other evidence, Lambert was the third participant. Lambert, as expected, has denied these accusations but proudly asserts his role in providing intelligence that led to the arrest of the other two arsonists. The fires caused £7-8 million in damages and according to some, were instrumental in motivating the chain to cease the selling of animal fur. The purpose of the attack was for Lambert to garner credibility amongst his ALF community and convince them he was a committed activist.

Lambert played other key roles in the animal rights community penning an ALF leaflet explaining the group’s philosophy and even co-writing the infamous McLibel leaflet in 1986 which defamed McDonalds and led to the longest civil trial in UK history. During his dating and sexual exploits, Lambert also used his role as the boyfriend of an activist to encourage more militant action. According to “Charlotte,” one of Lambert’s sexual partners, “He would tease me for not being committed enough…he got me to become more involved in ‘direct action.’”

Mark John Kennedy

Police Constable Mark Kennedy, posing as Mark “Flash” Stone, infiltrated environmental and leftist networks for approximately eight years (~2001-2009) in the area of Nottingham (sometimes working alongside a female spy playing the role of an “eco-activist”), hosting meetings with activists in up to 23 countries including the United States, and participating as an activist in illegal actions including blockades, site occupations and sabotage, sometimes playing key logistical roles such as transport. In numerous accounts from activists, Kennedy is portrayed as a provocateur, encouraging activists to commit acts of violence including attacking police. For his work, stone was paid £50,000 annually, plus an additional £200,000 annually given for “bribes, drinks, accommodation, a vehicle and travel abroad to meet other anarchists.” During this time, Kennedy presented himself as an “avid rock climber and former drug smuggler,” maintained a four year relationship with a 26-year-old, female activist named Anna who reports having sexual intercourse with Kennedy more than 20 times. After Kennedy’s true identity was revealed, Anna spoke to the news media stating, “‘If somebody was being paid to have sex with me, that gives me a sense of having been violated.”

In addition to this relationship, Kennedy reports sleeping with a second female Welsh activist, though testimony from “those who knew him best” suggests that more female activists were likely victimized. It was this second female that exposed Kennedy after discovering his legitimate passport while on vacation with the spy in July 2010. Anna, Kennedy’s first activist girlfriend, stated to The Guardian that there were “several other women within the protest movement who Kennedy slept with,” but that while she knew he was sleeping with these additional women, “there was never any type of romance involved.” After his police handlers became aware of his “erratic sexual conduct” he became the subject of surveillance, wherein police officials videotaped him having sexual contact with female activists. While Kennedy joked about his use of “horizontal interrogation techniques” with activists, he maintained a second life with his wife Edel, and their two children. Kennedy defended his actions, stating that sexual promiscuity was common within the protest movement. “It was a very promiscuous scene. Some people had five or six lovers…Girls on protest sites would sleep with guys in order to entice them to stay in these horrible places: Cold, wet, with bad food and nonexistent bathroom facilities.”

Since the exposure of Kennedy as a police spy, international activists have compiled an open-source, online, database attempting to document the host of protests, meetings and convergences in which he attended. Using the Powerbase platform, activists have linked Kennedy to at least 68 incidents, some covering multiple years. According to Kennedy, he was one of 15 police spies who had infiltrated environmental movements; at least four of these spies remain embedded in UK protest movements. After Kennedy’s infiltration became public knowledge, and he left law enforcement, he used his wealth of insider knowledge for personal financial gain, establishing a series of companies (e.g. Tokra Limited, Black Star High Access) thought to be private consulting firms. In a report by The Guardian, Kennedy used the privileged access he gained in police infiltration campaigns to act as a “corporate spy” while still maintaining his Mark Stone alter ego. Shortly thereafter, it was reported that Kennedy was working for a second spy firm in the US, Densus Group, targeting “anti-capitalist demonstrators.”Kennedy claims that during his sexual exploits, his police handlers “sanctioned” his actions, stating that some echelons of British policing was aware of his sexual relationships. Acpo president, Sir Hugh Orde told Members of Parliament that “he had no knowledge of the [Kennedy] case until the Guardian disclosed the prosecution of six activists…collapsed because of Kennedy’s role in it.” According to Kennedy, he was one of 15 police spies who had infiltrated environmental movements; at least four of these spies remain embedded in UK protest movements. While the UK’s infiltration efforts targeting social movements date back to at least to anti-war campaigners in 1968, the pervasiveness of establishing sexual partnerships appears to be a newly intentional strategy.

Andrew James Boyling (aka Jim Boyling)

Detective Constable Jim Boyling, 28-years-old, posing as Pete James Sutton or Jim Sutton 34-years-old, infiltrated pro-bicycle movement Reclaim the Streets for five years (1995-2000) as a lead organizer, as well as having contact with additional environmental and hunt saboteur campaigns. During this time events were organized within the activist community designed solely to collect information on attendees. During his time within activist movements, Boyling married Angharad Bevan, the 28-year-old activist he was tasked to monitor, and fathered two children with her before divorcing. Boyling only made his superiors aware of his relationship in 2005 by informing a single senior officer close to the time he married Beven. His relationship with Beven was one of two sexual relationships Boyling had with females in activist networks while undercover. Both relationships were described as “serious.” At times Boyling worked directly under Bob Lambert, with Lambert acting as his handler.

Following Boyling’s exposure, Chief Constable Jon Murphy of Merseyside (NW England) told newspapers that sexual conduct between police agents and activists was “never acceptable…under any circumstances,” further stating in relation to the police infiltrators that “something has gone badly wrong here” and calling the undercover agent’s actions “grossly unprofessional…a diversion from what they are here to do…[and] morally wrong.”. Despite such grandstanding, Boyling’s ex-wife stated in an interview with The Guardian that superiors were knowledgeable of these incidents, stating:

Jim [Boyling] complained one day that his superiors said there was to be no more sexual relations with activists anymore – the implicit suggestion was that they were fully aware of this before and that it hadn’t been restricted in the past…[Jim Boyling] was scoffing at it saying that it was impossible not to expect people to have sexual relations. He said people going in had ‘needs’ and I felt really insulted. He also claimed it was a necessary tool in maintaining cover.

Boyling also reportedly perjured himself in court in 1997, giving evidence under oath (as Pete James Sutton) while concealing his true identity as a police spy during his prosecution alongside protestors arrested after occupying a government office.

Boyling was also present during legally protected conversations held between defendants and their lawyers, as the police spy was represented by the same legal firm. This action has led to a legal challenge where protestors have argued that Boyling’s presence during such conversations violated the defendants’ right to protected communications with council, and that Boyling thus obtained information through protected, private correspondences. Investigations by The Guardian revealed that “police chiefs [had] authorized undercover officers to hide their identities from courts when they were prosecuted for offences arising out of their deployment.”

Mark Jacobs

Mark Jacobs, 44-years-old, posing as 29-year-old Marco, infiltrated anarchist, anti-globalization, animal rights, and other social justice networks for five years (2004-2009) in the Cardiff area. Jacobs was known for taking on logistics and financial roles in his circles, and used the reputation he built within the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN) to infiltrate the Dissent! anti-G8 planning committees. During 2008, Jacobs maintained a sexual relationship with a female movement activist, and reportedly was responsible for encouraging CAN to engage behaviors to increase division and inebriation. On organizer with CAN reported to press:

He changed the culture of the organisation, encouraging a lot of drinking, gossip and back stabbing, and trivialised and ran down any attempt made by anyone in the group to achieve objectives. He clearly aimed to separate and isolate certain people from the group and from each other, and subtly exaggerated political and personal differences, telling lies to both ‘sides’ to create distrust and ill-feeling. In the four years he was in Cardiff a strong, cohesive and active group had all-but disintegrated. Marco left after anarchist meetings in the city stopped being held.

Following Jacobs’ exposure as a police spy, his activist girlfriend stated, “I was doing nothing wrong, I was not breaking the law at all. So for him to come along and lie to us and get that deep into our lives was a colossal, colossal betrayal.” According to additional testimony, a second female also maintained a dating relationship with Jacobs but littler more information is available.

John Dines

Sergeant John Dines, posing as “John Barker” infiltrated London Greenpeace as well as unnamed anti-capitalist groups from around 1987-1992. He worked with the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad and began infiltrating Greenpeace following the departure of Bob Lambert. In 1990, Dines began a relationship with Helen Steel, and abandoned her in 1992 feigning a mental breakdown. When Steel sought to track down the whereabouts of her boyfriend, she discovered that John Barker was really Sgt. John Dines who had stolen the name of Phillip John Baker, a child who had died of leukemia years prior. Steel also discovered that Dines has been married since 1977.

The Dines/Barker case is said to be one of at least 80 similar occurrences organized by Scotland Yard over a 30 year period wherein police adopted the names of dead children in order to produce false identities and documents with verifiable back stories. Other police spies utilizing sexual infiltration, including Bob Lambert, also used the identities of dead children to create false names and documents. According to Lambert he adopted his identity from that of a seven-year-old child who died of a heart problem, and stated to media sources that the UK Home Office was aware of this practice, and that it was widespread.

Mark Jenner

Mark Jenner, presenting himself as “Mark Cassidy,” infiltrated UK protest groups from 1994-2000 as an officer in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad under the direction of Bob Lambert. During his tenure, Jenner was married yet maintained a five year relationship (1995-2000) with a 29-year-old female activist, living with her in a London apartment and rarely returning to his family. After their lengthy cohabitation, the woman explained that she thought of themselves as “man and wife” having “completely integrated [Jenner] into my life.” Jenner met the woman’s family and even appeared in her mother’s wedding photographs and videos from other family events. The woman explained that Jenner used her as an “excellent cover story.”

Jenner used the woman’s credibility and trusted social network to insure his own cover story, as she explains, “People trusted me, people knew that I was who I said I was, and people believed, therefore, that he must be who he said he was because he was welcomed into my family.” Given this history, the woman was motivated to investigate his identity after Jenner disappeared in 2000 from their shared apartment stating that he was depressed. In testimony given to a Parliamentary inquiry, the woman, speaking via the pseudonym “Alison,” spoke of the deception stating, “It has impacted seriously on my ability to trust, and that has impacted on my current relationships and other subsequent relationships. It has also distorted my perceptions of love and my perceptions of sex.”

Further Inquiry

According to activists, at least two additional undercover informants were also present and had sexual relationships with activists. They have been named as Rod Richardson and Simon Wellings. According to Evans and Lewis, Richardson was not sexually involved with activists. While it is unknown if Wellings had relations with activist women, his behavior mirrors that of other informants, collecting and reporting on the personal details of activists such as their friendship circles as well as sexual preferences and partners. It is reported by the BBC that Wellings infiltrated anti-capitalist group Globalize Resistance from 2001-2005.

Michael Loadenthal has been involved in a number of political projects around the world for the past 15 years, and at present splits his time as an adjunct professor (Georgetown University & George Mason University), Dean’s Merit Fellow (George Mason University) and research fellow (University of Cincinnati/Hebrew Union College).

6 Ways Cops Have Used Sex to Infiltrate and Disrupt Protest Groups from Green Is The New Red

Marathon live reading of Orwell’s 1984 at the DC Library (I’ll be there!)

Sometimes I wonder if people in power have never read any dystopian literature or science fiction. Or, perhaps more likely, they have ready too much of it.

George Orwell’s 1984 is even more urgent today, sixty-five years after its publication. Our current surveillance society has been Orwell’s warning look like an instruction manual.

What better way to fight that culture of secrecy and surveillance, though, than to expose it publicly?

That’s the spirit of an upcoming event organized by the Washington DC Public Library.There will be a live, marathon public reading of 1984 with special guest readers.

I’ve been invited to read, and I’m really looking forward to it.

The event is Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015, starting at 10 a.m. in the Great Hall at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (I’m scheduled to read at 7:20 pm).

 

Marathon live reading of Orwell’s 1984 at the DC Library (I’ll be there!) from Green Is The New Red

Exclusive Interview with “Eco-Terrorist” Freed 10 Years Early After Feds Withheld Evidence on Informant’s Role

Eric McDavid was released after nine years in prison last week, following revelations that the government withheld key evidence during his trial.

Democracy Now has an interview with McDavid, his partner Jenny Esquivel, and his attorney Ben Rosenfeld.

Here’s a segment where Amy Goodman is discussing the entrapment efforts of the FBI informant, “Anna,” who repeatedly pressured them into action:

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to an excerpt of an exchange between, well, the woman who calls herself Anna—and for folks who are listening on the radio, we’re also showing pictures of her; she was featured, as we said, in Elle magazine—the exchange between Anna and Eric McDavid and another activist, Lauren Weiner, when they were in the cabin allegedly planning to bomb the Nimbus Dam. Anna says, “Tomorrow, what are we planning on doing tomorrow? Are we still planning on doing anything tomorrow? Or should I just stop talking about plans?” Eric McDavid says, “Hmmm.” Weiner says, “I would love it if you stopped talking.” Anna says, “I would love it if you guys followed a plan! How about that!”

In an excellent piece for The Guardian, Ed Pilkington discusses how “Anna” lured McDavid into hopes of a romantic relationship, and how this was withheld during trial:

In an email dated 27 June 2005, six months before McDavid’s arrest, “Anna” responded explicitly to his previous amorous advances. She said: “I think you and I could be great, but we have LOTS of little kinks to work out.” She went on to say: “I hope in Indiana we can spend more quality time together, and really chat about life and our things.”

You can watch the full interview here:

Exclusive Interview with “Eco-Terrorist” Freed 10 Years Early After Feds Withheld Evidence on Informant’s Role from Green Is The New Red

Excited to announce I’ve been selected as a TED Senior Fellow!

Good news to share! From TED:

“We’re also excited to share our new class of Senior Fellows for TED2015. We honor our Senior Fellows with an additional two years of engagement in the TED community, offering continued support to their work while they in turn give back and mentor new Fellows and enrich the community as a whole. They perfectly embody the values of the TED Fellows program.”

I’m really excited to continue my TED Fellows work, and all the opportunities this brings!

Excited to announce I’ve been selected as a TED Senior Fellow! from Green Is The New Red

Eric McDavid Released from Prison, Feds Withheld Evidence

An environmental activist who was sentenced to 19 years in prison as an “eco-terrorist” was released from prison today following a court ruling where the government acknowledged withholding evidence during his trial.

Eric McDavid was convicted on conspiracy charges in 2007 related to what the government called a plot to blow up the Nimbus Dam. This “conspiracy,” though, was the creation of a paid government informant named “Anna” who traveled the country with the group of activists, encouraged them to plot illegal activity, supplied them with food and housing and even provided, with the FBI’s direction, bomb-making recipes.

“Anna” began working with the FBI after writing a community-college paper on infiltrating protest groups.

“Today we corrected one of the most egregious injustices I have ever encountered in my legal career, if you consider being released after nine years of wrongful incarceration justice,” one of Mr. McDavid’s lawyers, Ben Rosenfeld, told the New York Times.

That statement from Mr. Rosenfeld is no exaggeration. During McDavid’s trial, the court heard recordings of “Anna” berating McDavid and his two codefendants — who were pressured to turn against McDavid in exchange for a reduced sentence — that they were not taking action. The entire operation was terminated after it was repeatedly demonstrated that McDavid and the others were never going to blow up any dam.

Still, the FBI trumpeted McDavid’s case as a victory in the War on Terrorism. And reveled in his outlandish sentence of 19 years.

Prosecutors had the audacity to state in court documents that “McDavid’s homegrown brand of eco-terrorism is just as dangerous and insidious as international terrorism.”

What prompted this final round of court proceedings were documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. In turns out that letters between McDavid and “Anna” were given to the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit for review. The FBI wanted “Anna” to undergo a polygraph exam to evaluate her outlandish claims. These documents, which clearly cast doubt on everything this woman said in court, were never turned over to the defense. The polygraph never took place.

McDavid’s release is a victory, and should be celebrated. But it is also a reminder of how the FBI’s obsession with “eco-terrorists” — who have never injured anyone — and the relentless drive to proclaim victories in the War on Terrorism, have robbed McDavid and his family of years of his life.

The brutal reality is that there will be more cases like this, and the FBI’s rogue operation will continue, until there is a fullscale government inquiry into how “terrorism” resources are being used to persecute political dissidents. Without a massive change in oversight and accountability, the FBI will be allowed to continue sabotaging the lives of those who dare to speak out.

Eric McDavid Released from Prison, Feds Withheld Evidence from Green Is The New Red

Why Is The FBI Harassing Tar Sands Protesters In Washington and Oregon?

In August 2014, two activists with the environmentalist group Rising Tide spent a week riding the backwoods highways of Idaho monitoring a megaload—a big rig hauling equipment for processing tar-sands oil that’s wide enough to take up two lanes of road, too high to fit under a freeway overpass, can be longer than a football field, and can weigh up to 1,000,000 pounds.

They had no idea that they would soon be wrapped up in a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that encompassed three states and several environmentalist groups.

Helen Yost of Moscow, Idaho, and Herb Goodwin of Bellingham, Washington, have spent years travelling through area the bioregion of Cascadia to halt megaloads, from Washington and Oregon to Idaho and up through Montana. They are used to harassment from law enforcement. That week, Goodwin said, the two were stopped on average twice a night, by law-enforcement agencies ranging from state troopers to local police in Sandpoint and Moscow.

Usually carrying equipment to upgrade and expand tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada, megaloads make a torturous crawl along rural roads at night to avoid traffic, questions, and complaints. But activists like Goodwin and Yost have been remarkably successful at organizing the people in mountain country. In August 2013, more than a hundred people in Idaho participated in a four-day mobile blockade of a megaload on U.S. 12 headed for the Nez Perce reservation. The Nez Perce Nation said the megaloads threatened treaty-reserved resources, historic and cultural resources, and “tribal member health and welfare.” Tribal chair Silas Whitman was one of the blockaders arrested, while activists from Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), the group Yost helped form, played important support roles.

Rising Tide North America’s network, spun out of the Earth First! grass-roots environmentalist movement in 2005, now spans the Cascadia bioregion, with chapters in Seattle, Spokane, Olympia, Bellingham, and Vancouver, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Moscow, Idaho; Missoula, Montana; and Vancouver, B.C. In the last six months, they have collaborated on an average of a blockade per month, and have helped to spearhead the movement against fossil-fuel exports through the Pacific Northwest. The network has worked in solidarity with indigenous peoples to halt megaloads, has marched in pickets with unions to shut down ports, and has aided community groups to stop permits for coal, oil, and gas terminals on the Pacific Coast.

On Oct. 9, Herb Goodwin was approached at his home in Bellingham by two FBI agents asking about a group called Deep Green Resistance (DGR). The FBI and Joint Terrorism Taskforce had previously contacted several members of DGR and their families both by phone and through home visits in places as dispersed as Georgia, New York and Seattle.

Goodwin was alarmed but not surprised when the lead agent “flashed a badge and claimed to be from the FBI.” Refusing to tell him anything beyond her first name, “Brenda,” she provided a sloppy excuse for not presenting a business card. The other person identified himself as “Al Jensen,” and his card identified him as a member of the Criminal Intelligence Unit of the Bellingham Police Department.

“Jensen jocularly mentioned that we knew each other from the Occupy movement/camp and train blockade, attempting to coax up conversation,” Goodwin said in an e-mail. “I did not take the bait.”

The Occupy encampment in Bellingham lasted for two months in the winter of 2011-12. Goodwin was one of four people arrested during the eviction, which came about two weeks after the mass blockade of a coal train Jensen mentioned. He says he recognized the detective’s face, but didn’t know his name.

“I think he was one of the undercover guys who was shifting in and out of our camp for the couple of months we had the camp up,” Goodwin says. “I got a lot more surveillance after the Bellingham coal train blockade. I had people scoping out my apartment off and on for a couple months after that…. I could see people scoping me from cars with binoculars.”

Goodwin says he is not a member of DGR, but suggests that it has drawn the interest of the FBI for advocating an “underground” strategy to dismantle industrial civilization. At the same time, he adds, “all the people remotely connected with DGR call themselves ‘aboveground,’ and they say that they’re going to be involved in the same kind of aboveground actions that other activist groups are, but as far as I know they haven’t really done anything.”

There is no love lost between DGR and Rising Tide. In February 2014, Rising Tide North America signed a letter along with some 40 other groups, such as Greenpeace, the National Lawyers Guild, and Tar Sands Blockade, petitioning the University of Oregon to cancel a keynote address by one of DGR’s leaders at an environmental-law conference on the grounds that the group’s transphobic beliefs promote “exclusionary hate that breeds an environment of hostility and violence.”

Questioning a Rising Tide activist about DGR seemed to blur some important differences between the groups, but activists still saw between the lines: The FBI inquisition was an obvious campaign to silence dissent. “When Herb got visited,” Yost says, “we knew it wouldn’t be long before they came around to someone from Idaho.”

Habeas Corpus Battle in Rural Idaho

On Oct. 9, the same day Goodwin was visited by the FBI, an activist named Alma Hasse attended a public meeting of the Payette County Planning and Zoning Commission to testify against the expansion of a gas-processing facility in the area, along the Oregon border northwest of Boise. She recommended that the five commission members recuse themselves from the permitting process on the grounds that they had signed oil and gas leases with Alta Mesa, the company seeking approval. (All three of the county commissioners have signed oil and gas leases as well.)

An associate of Yost and Goodwin, Hasse has worked in rural Idaho for years, agitating and organizing against fracking and oil trains. Cofounder of Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE), which works with WIRT, she regularly attends Payette County government public meetings and brings up problems with their processes.

This time, something was different. The commission members closed the meeting to the public, brusquely challenging Hasse’s testimony, and ordering her to leave or face arrest. After insisting on her right to participate in the public meeting, she was arrested and kept in jail for a week without being charged or even processed.

In protest against her mistreatment by the commission, Hasse refused to give her name. Though the police knew her, and called her “Alma” when they talked about her, they refused her requests for a telephone call until she obtained a PIN number, which she could only get after being processed.

Police refused to process Hasse until she volunteered her name. Instead of booking her as “Jane Doe” (a formality, since they already knew her name), they kept her in a cell by herself.

“I felt like it was a game,” Hasse says. “They had my name. I had to sign in to testify at the public hearing, so both my name and my address were on the sign-in sheet.” She also had been granted a permit to carry a concealed weapon by the county sheriff’s office, so they had her Social Security number, date of birth, and fingerprints.

When police asked for her name, Hasse would tell them that they already knew her name, and that she wanted to talk to her attorney. They refused, which she insists was a violation of her civil rights and right of habeas corpus.

Only after she drew attention to her incarceration by going on a hunger strike, supported by a media campaign led by her husband and civil disobedience spearheaded by her daughter and WIRT, was she allowed to go free.

“I felt like I had to stand on principle,” Hasse says. “At some point, we as citizens have to stand up and assert our rights, because if we don’t, we’re just going to be steamrolled.”

When the FBI Sends Texts

On Dec. 10, Helen Yost of WIRT received three phone calls from an unfamiliar number in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Thinking they were from a telemarketer, she did not answer them. But nine days later, she awoke to another call from the same number. She had anticipated the text message that followed for years.

“Helen, I am trying to get a hold of you to speak with you. An issue has come up, and I need to speak with you. Please give me a call. I am an FBI agent. SA Travis Thiede.”

Yost responded within ten minutes: “NO!”

Agent Thiede’s reply came four minutes later: “OK, I understand, just wanted to have a conversation with you. Thanks.”

According to his LinkedIn profile, Thiede joined the FBI in 1997 after serving in the Army and as a police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was involved in the providing security at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the investigation of a power-station bombing on the games’ last day.

Yost believes that the agent’s calls were related to her role as an organizer with WIRT. On Dec. 10, the day the first ones were placed, she had just returned to Moscow from a road trip organizing for the third annual Stand Up! Fight Back! Against Fossil Fuels in the Northwest! She’d been in Sandpoint on Dec. 8 and in Spokane, about 35 miles from the FBI office in Coeur d’Alene, on Dec. 9.

Continuing Harassment

After years of dedicated activism, Hasse and Yost were not surprised. Groups like IRAGE and Rising Tide have felt the presence of the FBI for years.

The intensity of repression depends on the success of their campaigns, and not since the late 1990s has the Pacific Northwest seen so much mass action for environmental causes. During that period, the FBI inaugurated a broad strategy of repression, known by activists as the Green Scare, to track down suspects implicated in actions deemed “eco-terrorist.”

According to leaked documents, its surveillance net was so large that officers even tailed random Subaru-driving patrons of a farmers’ market. Earth Liberation Front spokesperson Craig Rosebraughwas subpoenaed eight times to testify before grand juries. The FBI’s Operation Backfire led to 13 people being indicted and nine convicted on various charges, including arson. Of the other four, one committed suicide in jail, two are still fugitives, and one escaped prison time by turning snitch, but was later jailed on heroin charges.

That era is said to have ended in 2006, but the bureau is still using agent provocateurs to infiltrate environmental and social-justice movements. (One was recently arrested for failing to register as a sex offender and for credit-card fraud.) In 2008, a young man named Eric McDavid was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison, after an agent provocateur who called herself “Anna” seduced him into talking about committing acts of sabotage at a cabin in Northern California the FBI had rented and wired for her.

Legislation such as the 2006 federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, largely drafted by the far-right corporate American Legislative Exchange Council, has expanded the criminalization of advocacy for the environment and animal rights. Because of Idaho’s new “ag-gag” law—enacted in February after animal-rights activists released videos of dairy workers abusing cows, it outlaws filming or recording agricultural operations without permission—activists in Payette County are afraid to take photographs of new fossil fuel wells and processing plants.

The surveillance has continued apace, as well. In 2011, activists with WIRT heard from an arrested megaload blockader that the local police were communicating with the FBI. They wrangled two meetings with the police and sheriff, but did not get any substantial information regarding the extent of federal involvement.

That fall, minutes after Yost received a call from an activist telling her that a protest was about to begin, police showed up and shined flashlights into people’s cars. She believes they learned the protest’s location by tapping her phone. The local sheriff also approached associates of a professor at a university in Spokane and asked them about why he “liked” WIRT’s Facebook page.

In June 2013, the FBI called the parents of an activist with Portland Rising Tide, and six other activists who have worked with Rising Tide Seattle were visited by FBI terrorism expert Matthew Acker and forensics leader Kera O’Reilly. There was also a third agent, who did not give his information.

The agents asked about the movement against tar-sands and fossil-fuel shipments. It was apparent immediately that the target was the Summer Heat action scheduled for that July 27, a joint effort with 350.org that would send a hundred or more kayaks and boats into the Columbia River for a symbolic blockade on to protest coal barges, oil-by-rail, and gas pipelines.

“My [attorney] was not able to find out what or why they were bothering my sweet folks, but I will tell you why,” one activist whose parents were visited wrote. “Its [sic] because Portland Rising Tide is outreaching, training, and organizing hundreds of Pacific NWers of all age groups to engage in a level of civil disobedience not seen in decades. We are going to do it to save our neighborhoods, our communities, our salmon, and our climate. And that scares the shit out of the powers that be.”

This story was originally published in Defending Dissent.

Why Is The FBI Harassing Tar Sands Protesters In Washington and Oregon? from Green Is The New Red

Why Is This One Congressman Trying to Block FOIA?

The United States is in dire need of an improved Freedom of Information Act, not just for journalists and academics, but because every citizen has the right to know what their government is doing. A new, straightforward attempt to do this called the FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 (S. 2520) has massive support—a version passed the House 410-0—but there is one man trying to shut this bipartisan effort down.

Outgoing Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia is single-handedly trying to stop the transparency legislation by not letting it come up for a vote. On Thursday he put a hold on the bill, and refused to comment. When he did, he issued a brief non-statement saying more transparency would “have the unintended consequence of harming our ability to enforce the many important federal laws…”

The FOIA Improvement Act would, for example:

* Close a loophole that the Department of Justice uses to withhold 25-year-old documents as “drafts.” This would release long-sought CIA documents on the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, for instance.

* Protect FOIA requestors from the exorbitant fees many agencies charge as a means to discourage FOIA requests.

Amy Bennett of OpenTheGovernment.org, the coalition behind the new bill, says that Rockefeller’s unfounded claims shouldn’t be allowed to stop a bipartisan bill.

“This bill was carefully put together by Senator Leahy and Senator Cornyn, who have worked together to strengthen FOIA for the last decade, and unanimously passed by the Judiciary Committee,” she said. “The bottom-line for the tons of FOIA experts from inside and outside government that have vetted this bill is the same: it is a good bill and should be signed into law.”

According to Ryan Shapiro, a transparency researcher and FOIA specialist at MIT:

“Unless Sen. Rockefeller wants to be remembered as a champion of governmental secrecy and obfuscation, he must lift his ill-considered hold immediately.”

TAKE ACTION:

Tell Senator Rockefeller “Lift the hold, improve the Freedom of Information Act”

Senator Rockefeller on Twitter

Senator Rockefeller on Facebook

 

Why Is This One Congressman Trying to Block FOIA? from Green Is The New Red

The Role of Journalists in Protecting Animals: Interview with Will Potter

I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Animal Law Conference last month, and when I was there I sat down with the Animal Legal Defense Fund to talk about the role of journalists in protecting animals (and protecting the civil rights of those who are protecting animals).

I hope you’ll check out this brief video about ag-gag laws, which make it illegal to expose animal welfare abuses, food safety violations, and workers’ rights infringements on factory farms and slaughterhouses.

Want to learn more? Check out the ALDF’s lawsuit challenging Idaho’s ag-gag law as unconstitutional.

The Role of Journalists in Protecting Animals: Interview with Will Potter from Green Is The New Red

Hold factory farms to account, with drones

My latest article for the October 2014 issue of Wired magazine:

The agriculture industry is waging an international campaign to create a media blackout. In response to a series of investigations by animal-welfare groups that has resulted in criminal prosecutions and consumer outrage, the industry is promoting new “ag-gag” laws that make it illegal to photograph factory farms and slaughterhouses. About half a dozen US states currently have these laws, and now this censorship model is being adopted internationally.

So how should journalists respond to investigative methods and sources being criminalised? Just as the best response to governments banning books is to encourage reading them, the best response to banning photographs is to encourage more photography. It’s time for journalists to send in the drones.

As a reporter, I always want to see what’s hidden. When government documents are redacted, it naturally makes them more intriguing. And when factory farms introduce new laws to prohibit media exposure, it makes me want to see what it is that they are hiding.

That’s why, for my next investigation, I will be using aerial drone photography to investigate factory farms, particularly in states where these “ag-gag” laws are being debated. I’m not the only one who is curious: my Kickstarter to finance the project was funded by nearly 500 supporters in just five days, and the response was so overwhelming that the project has been expanded.

“Drones are cheap, simple and potential game changers for newsrooms,” the Columbia Journalism Review recently noted in a cover story. In the hands of journalists, drones are already being used to document mass protests, wildlife, oil spills, war-torn landscapes and natural disasters.

In my case, drones will probably not be able to document all of the animal cruelty the agriculture industry is trying to hide. However, they will be able to reveal pollution and environmental destruction. Photographer Mishka Henner used satellites to create startling images of cattle-feedlot pollution (see WIRED 05.14). If that is possible from space, what else would be possible with a drone?

The American Farm Bureau has already spoken out against drone photography, citing privacy concerns. But it does not invade anyone’s privacy to photograph a landscape safely from the air. By this reasoning, should factory farms also be censored from Google Earth?

More importantly, the agriculture industry’s “privacy” does not trump the rights of consumers to know how their food is produced. It’s in the public interest to see these images, and make informed decisions. As governments rapidly expand their use of drones for indiscriminate surveillance, it’s time journalists used the same technology for the public good.

Journalists in the US are eager to embrace this technology. A media survey by the National Press Photographers Association showed overwhelming support within the industry: 86 per cent of journalists said drone photography is a First Amendment right, and more than 70 per cent said drones would be a useful tool in their newsroom.

What is stopping them? More than half of respondents said they were concerned about violating state or federal regulations. The Federal Aviation Association has taken a hardline stance against drone journalism, sending cease-and-desist letters to journalism courses at the University of Missouri. Thus far, though, this hasn’t held up in court. The US National Transportation Safety Board recently threw out the only fine that has been levied against a drone photographer. In that case, the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and a group of major media companies argued that “the public stands to benefit enormously” from journalists using drones.

The agriculture industry seems to recognise this potential, too: its lobbyists are already pushing new laws that expand “ag-gag” to the air. In Texas a hobbyist recorded, by chance, pools of blood pouring into a river from a nearby slaughterhouse. Because of the photography, the facility was shut down and charged with dumping industrial waste.

In response, the agriculture industry helped pass a new law in Texas that prohibits citizens from using unmanned aircrafts to take pictures.

Corporate lobbyists have turned their eyes to the sky. It’s time for journalists to do the same.

Will Potter is a journalist and TED Fellow based in Washington, DC. He is the author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege (City Lights)

Hold factory farms to account, with drones from Green Is The New Red

Speaking events in Mexico, Washington DC, Albany, and Vassar

I’ve got a few speaking events coming up in the next couple weeks. Hope to see ya’ll there!

Friday, November 7th, 2014

Ciudad de las Ideas, Mexico City

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

George Washington University (Law School Room SCC on 2nd Floor of Lisner Hall, 7pm)

Saturday, November 15th, 2014

Albany Veg Fest (keynote, 12:15 pm)

Thursday, November 20

Vassar College (Rocky 300, 5pm)

Photo courtesy of Colette-Yasi Naraghi

Speaking events in Mexico, Washington DC, Albany, and Vassar from Green Is The New Red