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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
State and local police are taking it upon themselves to investigate antiwar activists -- and in the computer age, the threat to our civil liberties is even greater than it was in Hoover's day.
Feb 12, 2004 | Political spying has many costs. One is that it poisons communities, putting dissidents in the same social position as criminals, co-conspirators or untrustworthy elements. Jennifer Albright, a 30-year-old lawyer in Albuquerque, N.M., believes such spying cost her her job with the Bernalillo County district attorney's office.
On Tuesday, March 25, two days after marching in a permitted demonstration against the war, Albright, then an assistant district attorney, was called into her boss's office and put on leave. The reason? Local police said she had identified undercover agents in the crowd at the protest, which she denies. Three days later, Albright was fired.
At the time, Deputy Chief of Police Ruben Davalos told the Associated Press, "One of the officers said that (Albright) actually walked straight up to the officer and stood face-to-face and stared at him for a period of time." He also said she was "seen pointing directly at the officers and getting others to see who they were in the crowd."
Albright denies this. "I didn't identify anybody," she says. "I don't recall seeing anyone that I knew was an officer, let alone an undercover officer."
Yet clearly there were undercover officers there, confirming a belief long held in Albuquerque's activist community. "Law enforcement has always appeared at any kind of peace group," says Albright. "At any antiwar group, it's just assumed that there's at least one undercover officer." Antiwar meetings, she says, are typically opened with someone saying, "We welcome all the law enforcement that is here. If you have any questions you can ask us now, and if you'd like to talk to us discreetly, we understand."
According to Maria Santelli, an employee at the Albuquerque Peace and Justice Center, where many antiwar demonstrations are organized, people are advised not to say anything at the center that they don't want police to hear. "If you want to say something covert, if direct action is planned without cooperation from police, we advise people not to speak in here," she says.
Jeff Arbogast, public information officer for the Albuquerque Police Department, which is part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force, refuses to say whether the department sends undercover cops to antiwar meetings. He defends the department's decision to use undercover agents at antiwar protests, saying, "We received intelligence information regarding the potential for people that could be present for other than peaceful purposes." Arbogast won't say where the intelligence came from.
Today, Albright works for a small criminal defense firm and plans to move into civil rights law. She's contemplating a lawsuit against the D.A.'s office, but says, "In all honesty it hasn't hurt my career. If anything it's bettered my career." Still, she calls what happened to her a "witch hunt."
She believes the police are motivated at least in part by personal hostility. "My point of view, which I tried to discuss with my boss before I was fired, is that I'm being retaliated against by the police department," she says. "Many law enforcement officers have prior military service. In talking to some of the officers, they seemed to take a real personal affront to anyone thinking the war is wrong. They said, 'That's a personal attack on us.' Somehow they equate themselves with the military."
The Albuquerque police haven't returned calls for comment.
Albright's story sounds unique, but across the country, in Grand Rapids, Mich., Abby Puls also had her job threatened by undercover cops who accused her of exposing them.
Puls, a 24-year-old Spanish translator who works on contract in the city court, was part of the People's Alliance, a group of antiwar activists who planned to demonstrate at the Federal Building the day the war started. They had also agreed to meet that night at Grand Rapids' Community Media Center to plan further actions, including acts of civil disobedience.
On March 20, as bombs fell on Baghdad, Puls went to the protest as planned and saw two people she knew. At the courthouse, Puls had gotten to know a few of the undercover cops who work on drug cases -- she even considered them friends. "Really funny, wild guys," she says, but not guys she expected to see protesting the war in Iraq.
So when she saw them at the Federal Building, she asked them what they were doing there. They told her, "Just hanging out, don't tell anyone." She says she didn't, but that other protesters figured out what they were up to. "They are so obviously not part of our group and can't answer questions without sounding like cops," Puls writes in an e-mail from Argentina, where she was traveling with a friend. "One of my friends came with a woman (cop) who started arguing with me in favor of the war at an antiwar protest -- smart." Later, another one of the officers posed for a picture holding a sign. The picture was posted on the Web, where Puls says someone else I.D.'d him.
That evening, about 40 people gathered at the Community Media Center to plan further actions. Puls couldn't make it, but even without her there to identify anyone, antiwar organizer Jeff Smith says one attendee, a quiet, clean-cut, well-built man in his 30s, made him uneasy.
"There were a few people in the room we didn't really know, so we passed around a sheet of paper to get people's names and phone numbers," says Smith, who runs the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy, a group that teaches media literacy and is housed in the Community Media Center. During a break in the meeting, Smith called the number the man had given, and found that it didn't work.
When the meeting resumed, the man was gone. Almost immediately, though, two police cars pulled up, saying that someone had reported "inappropriate behavior." They demanded the name of the owner of the building -- a building the Community Media Center has occupied for three years -- and wanted to know what it was used for.
The next day, there was another rally at the Federal Building, and Puls was there. As she was leaving, a man sitting in the passenger seat of a tan Ford Taurus called her over. There was another man in the driver's seat and a woman in the back. The passenger asked if she was the interpreter who works at the court. "Yes, my name's Abby," she said, and took the first man's outstretched hand. He shook her hand but didn't let go.
"Abby what?" he said.
"I repeat, 'Abby,' and he repeats the question this time with a firmer grip," Puls says. "It's starting to hurt so I tell him my last name."
After she told them her name, the man in the driver's seat accused her of identifying an undercover cop at the meeting the night before. He threatened her with arrest for hindering and opposing an officer. Then he told her, "I don't know how you are employed at the court, contract or employee, but if these judges find out you're choosing sides against the police, they may not want you in the courthouse translating. I'm not threatening you, I just want to warn you that if you I.D. us you'll be arrested. You happen to have an advantage working at the courthouse."
