FOIA shows Bush admin. spied on AntiWar.com

[Playinghardball]

Source: Raw Story

During the Bush-era, a great many Americans were swept up in the spying dragnet laid after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 by federal officials hoping to prevent another major terrorist attack -- people like pacifist Christians, liberal activists, families with members overseas and even street-level falafel sellers.

Now Americans can add another group to the list of those unjustly viewed as a potential threat: the staff of AntiWar.com.

Documents produced by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by an obscure conspiracy blogger show that in 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assigned an analyst to dig into the website's staff and financial contributors to determine whether they were "engaging in, or have engaged in, activities which constitute a threat to National Security on behalf of a foreign power."

The investigation of AntiWar.com was launched after the site published a list of suspected terrorists (PDF) that the Bush administration had sent around to government agencies and major private sector employers, to help screen potential new workers.



Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/22/foia-shows-bush-admin-targeted-antiwar-com/

[Arctic Dave]

1. And NOTHING will happen.

[Harmony Blue]

19. Saddest part of American history

We can tell our grandchildren how dark this era was too.

[Enthusiast]

25. You ain't seen nothing yet.

And that's a fact.

[RKP5637]

28. Yeah, sadly that's what I've concluded too. n/t

[Supersedeas]

31. not only no legal action, but a complete lack of discussion nationally

[RKP5637]

2. Often I wonder if DU is being watched. n/t

[cascadiance]

4. Probably not in this case. For a long time, you couldn't link to antiwar.com here...

because of problems from some of their content being allegedly anti-semitic.

I had a lot of articles that I wanted to link to that were coming from many independent journalists talking about what Sibel Edmonds was finding amongst others with WMD trafficking, etc. that wasn't being covered anywhere else. I didn't see the anti-semitic stuff that was there, but I do recall that Pat Buchanan and perhaps some of his like had at times contributed some articles there. It's too bad, because anti-war.com did have a lot of other good stuff from some decent writers that didn't get seen here on DU at the time because of this restriction. It would have been nicer if we could have found ways of just limiting links when the articles themselves had anti-semitic content instead of whole sites being kept off, but that is past history now...

[RKP5637]

5. Thanks for your reply and the summary!

:)

[KoKo]

7. Yes...I remember that .....

I think it's still banned from here. At least an article that was posted few months ago from that site was flagged as "not appropriate link for DU."

[stockholmer]

22. I haven't seen anti-semitic content on antiwar.com, they despise Obama's war mongering, I think

that is why they are persona no grata on DU. The 'anti-semitic card' is all too often a false canard, designed to preemptively crush all dissent against an expansionist zionist policy and its neo-con/neo-liberal lackeys. Antiwar.com also libertarian (not the faux, bullshit corporatist-in-disguise tea-baggery type), and that is another reason I think many here do not like them.

I for one make common cause with them on the HUGE issue of anti empire policy, even if I do not support them when it comes to many other issues. Buchanan is not at all liked by many on Antiwar.com, and if you start banning all media sources who he contributes to, I think over half of DU links would have to go.

[cascadiance]

26. antiwar.com's being restricted on DU started well before Obama was president...

... and during the Bush administration.

Yes, I do think that they were pushing the limits at times questioning the Zionist policies that probably in many cases was depicted falsely as anti-semitic, and perhaps with some writers there was more of a grain of truth. i can't really say much to support or dismiss those charges. Only that I really didn't see anything that would support that.

Of course there were the problems with the Israeli spies, some more substantiated, and others more speculation, because investigations were quashed. Sibel Edmonds had asserted that a lot of the problems with WMD trafficking and leaking of Brewster Jennings asserted that both Turkish and Israeli entities were where leaks of technology and identities of spying operations like Brewster Jennings happened from people in the State Department from people like Marc Grossman there, which was covered by the London Times (albeit owned by Rupert Murdoch) but not touched by any domestic media outlets here.

I myself noticed what appeared to be some very suspicious censorship of Google news links to articles on Sibel Edmonds that seemed to coincide with the timing of when AIPAC's Larry Franklin (spy?) was arrested then around in 2005, and a subsequent really mysterious google news alert at the beginning of the following year on an article that occurred at this time many months earlier. Look here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=39220

This is the kind of stuff that antiwar.com would publish people writing articles about. And given AIPAC's involvement, etc. it is very easy to see how some of what went on could be dismissed as anti-semitic.

Even Sibel Edmonds herself has at times expressed support for Ron Paul, so I can understand your concerns about libertarian influence. Though I completely don't support Ron Paul on economic issues and some other areas that I feel that Libertarian philosophy is completely broken, on things like transparency over our foreign policy activities, he's right on most of the time. I think a smart future Democratic President might name someone like Ron Paul to his cabinet for a security position to hopefully gain the support of many of the libertarians who subscribe to the theories that both Democrats and Republicans have been playing us all for fools for what is going on behind the scenes in a bipartisan fashion. Paul in a security position would be very limited in how he could affect domestic policy for rebuilding the economy, but would be a real valuable entity when just focused on transparency issues.

[boppers]

12. DU *is* being watched. Most political sites are.

Public websites are fair game... and as the story notes, in the released documents, all the (non-redacted) references were to public databases... there's so much out there that's public, and *legal* to grab, a great deal of the time no warrant is needed to start building a case.

Of course, if something's fishy enough, such public information can lead to warrants... in this case, somebody who was already under investigation (and this was part of the reason antiwar.com information was harvested) was part of antiwar.com, so the investigation led the feds to look if something fishy was going on.

edit:rephrase for clarity.

[JackRiddler]

27. Of course it's being watched, and also subject to managed persona attacks.

It's would be naive to think that PR and active surveillance projects from the corporations, parties, political groups, the deep state (i.e., private-govt-spook hybrids) and probably official government agencies and law enforcement have not all been here, and on all the major discussion boards and social network sites. It's gotten very easy, with software that allows one operator to manage a dozen or more "personas" registered at many different sites. Influencing opinion on the Web is a stated high priority of the US military (among others) and the way to do it without worrying about any remaining pesky laws is to operate from abroad and ostensibly only on foreigners.

[RKP5637]

29. Yep, thanks!!! n/t

[Gregorian]

3. Somehow this jogged a synapse which made me remember this-

From the days of long ago when we were all equally enraged and disgusted by our War President (aka War Criminal).

http://www.mnftiu.cc/category/gywo/war81/

[JDPriestly]

8. Thanks. I needed a laugh.

[SoapBox]

6. Not even a surprise anymore...BushCo. = Rotten, Crooked, Crimal.

And yet, the Stupid and Stoopider crowd continues to support BushCo. and their Thug tactics.

[blkmusclmachine]

9. Why are you "looking back:"

You might see something you're not supposed to see..

[boppers]

13. Find a crime, prosecute it, simple.

The "looking back" problem is that so many of the things that people are, and were, upset about, were and are defensible as legal, if morally reprehensible....

... then again, maybe that's the part "you're not supposed to see..".

[7wo7rees]

10. Really?

9/11 was bullshit, WMDs was bullshit, torture was bullshit, war profiteering bullshit. But the threat from a website was REAL???

See ya at the Hague, fucker.

[Necronomiconomics]

11. Antiwar.com is a Republican, "libertarian" Ron Paul-cheerleader site.

[krabigirl]

14. who cares?

does this mean it's OK for the FBI to spy on them?

[Necronomiconomics]

15. Of course not. Don't be krabi.

It's fairly useful information to know that a site which promotes Ron Paul is being targeted.

It's fairly useful information for what it reveals about the FBI, as well as what it reveals about Antiwar.com & Ron Paul.

Have an analytical mind.

[LanternWaste]

20. What precisely is the relevant information?

What precisely then is the relevant information you imply?

[stockholmer]

23. the very fact you call them Republican shows you know next to nothing of them

[indurancevile]

16. raimundo's site?

[KansDem]

17. If the Bush administration really wanted to spy on terrorists following 9/11

They would have installed secret cameras and microphones inside the Oval Office...

(Oh, but wait!...they would have gotten the intelligence "wrong").

[BetsysGhost]

21. oh but they DID

and Truth is stranger than fiction.

[nineteen50]

18. Fear

and respect based on fear. 

[Enthusiast]

24. Bush spied on us?

BFD! BFD! BFD!

The fucker also ignored CLEAR evidence that could have prevented 9/11.

The fucker also falsified intelligence to justify a war with Iraq.

The fucker also admitted to torture.

Spying is the least of his crimes.

And guess what? President Obama has chosen to "look forward". Ignoring crimes by the Bush Administration is dereliction of duty and clear grounds for impeachment.

[coalition_unwilling]

30. I came to DU in the fall of 2001 from articles posted on antiwar.com. As such,

I retain a fondness for it and consider it an excellent and eclectic compendium of anti-war and anti-imperial voices from around the globe.

The FBI clearly resurrected the old tried-and-true smear campaign made popular during the McCarthy Era. I'll be contacting my rep Karen Bass to demand that she launch an investigation into this blatant attack on the first amendment freedom of the press by the FBI.

Outrageous doesn't even start to capture my reaction to what has been and is being done in my name.

On edit: Justin Raimondo has an excellent account and analysis of what the fearless Eichmanns in the FBI are up to:

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/08/21/antiwar-com-vs-the-fbi/