Protection -- or paranoia?

Why is the Secret Service treating harmless professors and pacifist homeless advocates like they're members of al-Qaida?

By Justin Rood

Aug 6, 2004 | The Secret Service had good reason to be on its guard when President Bush visited Minnesota last month. The state was once home not only to alleged al-Qaida pilot-in-training Zacarias Moussaoui but also to Mohammad Warsame, arrested last winter for supporting al-Qaida with money and training. And Mohammad Kamal Elzahabi, who taught sharpshooting to the wrong side in Afghanistan, hung his hat in (and got a hazmat driver's license from) Minnesota. He's currently being held for allegedly lying to the FBI about shipping radio equipment to Pakistan. Most recently, on July 7, an Iraqi named Ali Mohammed Abboud Almosaleh was arrested in Minneapolis by federal agents after deplaning with videos of Iraqi militia leaders and a note hinting at public suicide; he has pleaded not guilty to charges that he lied to agents about trips to Iraq.

So when President Bush visited Duluth, Minn., for a Bush-Cheney rally on July 13 -- just one week after Almosaleh's arrest -- it wasn't surprising that the Secret Service was on alert. It had even done some homework, identifying three specific men to watch for. Fliers with photos of the men were taped to tables at the Secret Service's security checkpoints at the rally, apparently to aid agents in spotting and stopping the men before they could harm the president.

Who were these three men? Members of an al-Qaida sleeper cell? Iraqi resisters "bringing the fight" to Minnesota? If so, at least two were under very deep cover. One, Joel Sipress, 40, is a University of Wisconsin history professor and Green Party activist. Another, Joel Kilgour, 27, is a pacifist, homeless advocate and member of the 71-year-old Catholic Worker Movement, which is "committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken," according to its Web site. The third man, whom the Secret Service would not identify, remains unknown to the public.

The fliers were spotted by several of the rally's 8,100 attendees, including members of the local press. When Bob Boone, publisher of Duluth's Reader Weekly, a local alternative weekly, walked through the metal detector in the press line to enter the event, he noticed the flier with the three men's photos taped to a table. "My photographer recognized them and said, 'What's Joel's picture doing here?'" Boone recounted. "The Secret Service person said, 'Is he a friend of yours? What's your concern?'" Boone said that as he and the photographer, Wendy Sjoblom, tried to take a picture of the flier, "two Secret Service [agents] wheeled on me and wanted to know what I was doing ... My press pass was sticking conspicuously out. They said it wasn't my concern, to go about my business and leave."

Boone then looked around other security checkpoints for fliers featuring the well-known local activists. He saw some at other tables and tried to take pictures of those, too. "Instantly, two Secret Service [agents] wheeled on me, put their chests in my face and said, 'No pictures are allowed. What are you doing here?' and booted me back into the arena."

Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur refused to tell me why the agency featured those men's faces on the fliers or what the fliers were for. "We can't speak about our protective intelligence mission," he said in response to all questions. When I pointed out that the questions did not involve the Secret Service's mission but, rather, why these men were considered threats, Mazur repeated his earlier response.

Next Page: Joel was holding a sign that read "The Poor Can't Eat Your Weapons"

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