clowns being investigated?
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/threats-and-coverage.htmlThreats And Coverage
by digby
After the all day teabag news orgy yesterday I thought I'd do a little research on the coverage of the antiwar rallies before the invasion of Iraq to see if I remembered the blase attitude correctly. I did. The New York Times, for instance, didn't just fail to publish in-depth polling of the movement above the fold on page one, they just put a small story about the marches (which featured hundreds of thousands of people all over the country) on page 8 claiming they were smaller than the organizers had hoped for.
But I had forgotten about this from 2003:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22— The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.
The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used ''training camps'' to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.
F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at identifying anarchists and ''extremist elements'' plotting violence, not at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.
The initiative has won the support of some local police, who view it as a critical way to maintain order at large-scale demonstrations. Indeed, some law enforcement officials said they believed the F.B.I.'s approach had helped to ensure that nationwide antiwar demonstrations in recent months, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters, remained largely free of violence and disruption.
The teabagger rallies don't seem to have activated any of these alarms despite the fact that we know for a fact that sympathetic members of the far right are currently plotting violent activity, which the anti-war marchers had no history or intention of doing. Hell, the antiwar protesters didn't even get any coverage in the press despite having millions take to the streets all over the world. more...
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/threats-and-coverage.html