Police Surveillance: Spying on Activists Discussed at Forum

[struggle4progress]

Group Questions Why Some, Not Others

By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 12, 2008; Page C03

... Frederick lawyer Barry Kissin, his wife and two other members of the Frederick Progressive Action Coalition received letters from the police last week notifying them that they were on the list. Since the anthrax attacks in 2001, the group has been devoted to marching peacefully to fight the government's expansion of biodefense research at Fort Detrick, arguing that the research will pose a health threat ...

Some who made the list said they were not in Maryland when the spying took place, prompting them to wonder if the operation went on for longer or if their names were culled from other databases. The activists were furious that they will not be allowed to keep paper copies of their files or review them with attorneys for the ACLU, which is representing many of them ...

Their antiwar protests landed Sister Carol Gilbert and Sister Ardeth Platte, both of Baltimore, in federal prison in Colorado after they trespassed on a military base and poured blood into a nuclear missile silo to protest the war in Afghanistan. When they received their letters from the state police, they were offended that they would be able to review only "relevant" information the police have gathered on them. "Anything you have on me is relevant as far as I'm concerned," Gilbert said.

Nancy Kricorian, a New York writer who coordinates that state's chapter of Code Pink, a national nonviolent women's antiwar group, said she received an e-mail from the state police Monday asking for her address. She thought it was a prank. "Honestly, I've never been to Maryland," she said, although she might have driven down Interstate 95 to the District to march in a Mother's Day peace vigil in Lafayette Square. When Code Pink plans a protest in New York, she's the one who calls police to let them know. "To me that's a big irony here, that I'm the police liaison," she said ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/11/AR2008101101427.html