Fbi Fingers Campus "terrorists"
FBI Fingers Campus "Terrorists"
by Ted Sylvester
At least 54 current or former Ann Arbor residents are listed in the FBI's international terrorism files, according to FBI documents recently obtained by a former Latin American Solidarity Committee (LASC) member.
The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in July 1988. The FBI at first refused to release any information, citing national security and its need to protect informants. After an appeal, 18 pages of an acknowledged 22 pages were received, with significant portions blacked out. What was left readable reveals an extensive FBI surveillance from 1982 through 1986 of LASC membership and activities.
The 54 names, including University of Michigan students and faculty as well as community members (including the two current AGENDA editors), all appear to be present or former members of LASC. No discernible pattern is apparent to explain the exclusion of other active LASC members from the FBI list.
The Latin American Solidarity Committee "is a non-profit campus-community organization dedicated to supporting the self-determination of the people in Latin America, and changing our government's policy of intervention in Latin America."
In addition to compiling a general list of LASC members, the declassified documents show that FBI agents spied on LASC rallies and meetings, entered the LASC office without permission, and searched Post Office records for the owner of the LASC postal box, and then read that person's U-M records.
The heavily censored documents show that the probe of LASC in Ann Arbor was part of a nationwide FBI investigation of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), a Washington D.C.-based group with around 180 chapters in the United States. LASC is a member of CISPES as well as other national organizations which oppose U.S. government policy in Central America.
The FBI began investigating CISPES in September 1981 after the Department of Justice asked the bureau to determine whether CISPES was in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). This Act requires that persons acting in the U.S. on behalf of foreign governments or entities register with the U.S. government. No violation of the FARA was discovered and the investigation ended in December, 1981.
In March 1983, based upon information furnished by the Dallas Field Office, the FBI authorized a new investigation of CISPES, this time to determine if CISPES was controlled by what the FBI considered "terrorist" organizations in El Salvador, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR). The FBI also suspected that CISPES was planning terrorist activities in the U.S.
In October 1983 the investigation expanded to every FBI field office in the country. Subsequently, numerous other investigations arising out of the CISPES probe, referred to as "spinoffs," were conducted. The FBI investigation of LASC in Ann Arbor appears to have been one such "spinoff" since it continued past the date the CISPES investigation was alleged to have ended (June 18, 1985).
The CISPES investigation and its 178 spinoffs eventually surfaced in the media and sparked such a public outrage that the FBI conducted its own internal investigation in 1987 (which cost $800,000, nearly as much as the original CISPES investigation). A number of hearings were also held in both the Senate and House of Representatives concerning the CISPES investigation as well as the FBI's internal probe.
At one such hearing, on September 29, 1989, FBI Director William Sessions described to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence the investigative techniques used by the FBI in trying to substantiate links between CISPES and the FMLN. "Among them were checks of public records and sources, photographic and visual surveillances, undercover attendance at meetings, reviews of financial records...trash checks, checks of telephone and utility company records, checks of records of license and credit bureaus, checks of records of law enforcement agencies, and limited personal interviewing of CISPES members," he said.
The FBI Director also told the committee that "no substantial link between CISPES and international terrorism was ever substantiated." Mr. Carroll Toohey, who led the FBI's internal probe of the CISPES investigation also told the committee that the FBI "never was able to establish that funds were provided to the FMLN as a result of CISPES."
"Based upon the documentation available to the FBI by October, 1983, there was no reason to believe that all CISPES members nationwide knew of or had any involvement in support of El Salvadoran or U. S. terrorists," Sessions told the committee. "Thus there was no reason to expand the investigation so widely."
"Instead," Sessions continued, "these activities caused information on rank-and-file members who had nothing to do with international terrorism to be included in the FBI case files."
As a result of the FBI's internal probe of the CISPES investigation, Sessions told the committee that he imposed disciplinary sanctions against six FBI employees at the middle supervisory level for their performance. A seventh employee, who would have been dismissed, resigned.
During the course of the hearing, the Director admitted several times that the CISPES investigation was improperly handled, that the FBI's investigative process was "flawed," and "the FBI was not proud" of its conduct. Sessions also told the committee that "in the CISPES investigation there were instances when activities that were essentially political in nature were surveilled."
During the course of the hearing, a number of Congressmen asked the Director what could be done about expunging the names from FBI files of citizens whose rights were violated in the course of the investigation, citizens who were doing nothing more than exercising their legitimate rights as protected under the First Amendment. One suggestion was that the CISPES files be removed from FBI control and housed in a neutral location like the National Archives.
Sessions explained that since "the CISPES investigation was a foreign counterintelligence terrorism investigation, as they call it, a 199 classification, as we call it...the Archivist would not approve a request that the CISPES files be totally expunged because they are of historical significance."
Historical significance or not, many local members of LASC feel that the investigation of CISPES and their inclusion in the FBI's international terrorism files is totally unjustified, and could have a chilling effect on legitimate participation in the democratic process.
In the July 1990 issue of La Palabra, the newsletter of LASC, one writer observed: "What kind of freedom do we have when the FBI investigates those who disagree with the government? The threat of an FBI investigation can scare people. It can force them out of the democratic process. It is ironic that every day we read of the democratic transformation of Eastern Europe, and the hatred the Eastern Europeans have for their secret police. If we live in the 'land of the free,' should we accept the secret police here in the United States of America?"
In addition, many LASC members feel that the FBI continues to spy on their activities. They cite documents which show that the FBI continued to collect information on LASC through 1986 as a reason not to believe Director Sessions' assertion that the FBI probe of CISPES ended in June of 1985. Since it look nearly two years for the FBI to respond to their initial FOIA request for documents relating to LASC, it is only a matter of time, they say, before they have more documents to prove that they are still being spied upon.
The FBI, for its part, refused to be interviewed for this article. A spokesperson for the FBI's Detroit Field Office (which supervises the Ann Arbor Field Office), said that Hal N. Helterhoff, the Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Division, "did not have any additional comments above and beyond the Director's public statements."
If you participated in LASC activities between 1982-86, and wonder if you are one of the 54 persons named in the FBI's international terrorism files, you may contact this reporter at the AGENDA office for information.
What was left readable reveals an extensive FBI surveillance...of LASC membership and activities.