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Will Potter, author/writer at GreenIstheNewRed.com
A series of paramilitary-style raids were conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against activists in Portland, Oregon, on July 25. Grand jury subpoenas were issued to individuals targeted in these raids. There were also individuals issued subpoenas in Olympia and Seattle in Washington. The subpoenas informed individuals they were to appear before a federal grand jury at the Federal Courthouse in Seattle on August 2.
FDL’s The Dissenter covered this development on July 27. The post explored the use of grand juries as a tool of political repression in great detail. Special attention was also paid to the reality that the FBI is looking for “anarchist materials” to allegedly track down individuals who might have been at “May Day riots” in Seattle.
Author and writer for GreenIstheNewRed.com, Will Potter, has been following this as it develops as well. His latest post highlights the search warrants that indicate the FBI was looking for “anti-government or anarchist literature.”
Will and I had a discussion about the recent raids, grand juries, the FBI’s institutional drive to suppress radical groups, along with documents he uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that show he and other journalists covering the repression of political activists are under surveillance.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
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KEVIN GOSZTOLA, The Dissenter: What can you describe has unfolded in the United States with these raids over the last few weeks going back to the raid in Seattle when Occupy Seattle organizers were raided?
WILL POTTER, GreenistheNewRed.com: What’s been going on in the last couple weeks in the Northwest is there’s been a series of raids and grand jury subpoenas in Seattle, Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. The raids and search warrants lists that the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) were searching for “anarchist literature” alongside flags, banners, electronics, cell phones, address books and things like that. I think what’s most indicative of what’s going on though is that specific call for agents to seize “anarchist literature” as some kind of evidence of potential illegal activity. And with the grand jury, that’s especially troubling because grand juries have been used historically against social movements as tools of fishing expeditions and there used to seek out information about people’s politics and their political associations. So, I think that gives some indication where all of this is going.
GOSZTOLA: I’ve written a little bit about the grand juries that have been used by the Justice Department under the Obama administration. What’s your take on the willingness of the Justice Department to use these grand juries? Historically, are we seeing an escalation in the use or is this just standard operating procedure and were paying closer attention than typically?
POTTER: I think that’s difficult to answer. Grand juries by their nature are secretive. They’re required to be secretive. People are subpoenaed—Nobody knows how many grand juries are going on, whose subpoenaed, what they talked about. That’s part of their power. That being said, I think there is both an increased awareness of this and it seems to be an increase in the use of the grand juries in the last year or so.
Grand juries were particularly prevalent against the environmental movement and the animal rights movement in the mid-to-late ‘90s and there have been continued use of grand juries since then, also against antiwar movement and others. But it seems like there’s a renewed interest in this tactic. I mean, Jordan Halliday, who is an animal rights activist, was just released from prison after serving more than six months. Before that, he served another four months for resisting a grand jury and this is believed to be the first time in over thirty years that someone was jailed for both civil and criminal contempt for resisting a grand jury. So, to me, that also indicates the severity and overindulgence that the government was using that tactic.
GOSZTOLA: What about the materials, specifically, that are being sought and your thoughts on what could potentially happen with the grand jury because people are supposed to show up on July 31 in Seattle?
POTTER: The search warrants—As far as I know, they are all identical in the items that are being potentially seized and they include things like black clothing, paint, flags, “anti-government” or “anarchist literature,” documentation, such as letters or journals and things like that that are fairly typical. What stood out to me, of course, is this emphasis on black clothing, flags, “anarchist literature.” There’s been some preliminary reports already that this grand jury may be related to the May Day protests in Seattle in which some corporate property was destroyed in part by people that had dressed in a black bloc in black clothing.
I would really caution not to be directed too much in that direction and lose sight of the broader political climate that’s going on right now. This grand jury may be investigating black bloc activity. Even if it is, “anarchist literature” has nothing to do with that. I think this emphasis on people’s political beliefs is part of a much broader crackdown. I mean, recently I wrote about FBI training materials on anarchists as “domestic terrorists.” And one of these training documents—and this is according to the FBI’s own language, says that anarchists are “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activity.” And I think that really says a lot about how the Bureau is approaching anarchists in the Occupy movement.
GOSZTOLA: To that point, the agency clearly has an institutional bias against permitting anarchist groups of people to operate and I think rightfully so many of the individuals are concerned they are undergoing this sort of suppression as a way to force them to divide off or force people who are progressives and are not into anarchist ideals to push away and distance themselves from these people. And it seems that a result is likely to happen is the division of the movement. What are your thoughts?
POTTER: Absolutely. These tactics are one hundred percent about dividing the movement and especially through instilling fear. When we understand how the grand jury operates, it forces activists to make a decision about, one, whether or not they will actually set foot in that grand jury room. When they do, everything that happens there is kept secret so it immediately fosters fear and distrust within the movement. It is impossible to know what was actually said. People start wondering if activists supplied information about each other, if they became informants. I mean, all these kinds of rumors and gossip can be incredibly destructive.
Even more important than that though is that these types of raids and grand juries also make people afraid even if they are not targets. When the FBI and JTTF are throwing flash bang grenades into people’s homes and then seizing “anarchist literature,” computers and all other political material, it sends a very clear message to the public. It sends a clear message to people who identify as anarchists. And it sends a message to the general public and other progressive groups that these people are perceived as criminals, as terrorists.
In all those ways it is about instilling division and fear and I think that’s why it is important that, as this unfolds, the movement that these people are a part of rally behind them as they face these grand juries and to show that they are supportive.
GOSZTOLA: How would you relate this to the other mechanism or tactic that the FBI uses, which is the infiltration—the sending in of people you could call provocateurs—as we’ve seen quite clearly in Cleveland and even in Chicago around the NATO summit? They’ve used coded language to specifically isolate individuals arrested and insert language and make it seem these are “self-proclaimed anarchists” intentionally. How would this relate to the grand jury use?
POTTER: I think that’s a great question. There are a couple immediate connections between them. One is that they are all part of the FBI’s obsession with identifying people perceived as leaders. The FBI historically has a difficult time conceptualizing anti-hierarchical movements. So, anarchists are very difficult for them to understand and they are always attempting to find the so-called leaders. And like you said, to point them out at protests for arrests, to target them with raids, grand juries, to some cases use entrapment attempts with informants.
More importantly, I think some of the parallels of the two are this criminalization of this ideology. I would argue that these entrapment attempts really grew out of not specific individuals and not the alleged crimes they were alleged to be a part of but their perceived politics. That’s what really happened everything that happened in Cleveland, everything that happened in Chicago. That’s what guided the timing of those announcements of the arrests of those people as “terrorists.” And that’s what guiding everything that’s going on in the Northwest with the focus on “anarchist literature.”
I think what we’re seeing is the scope of tactics that are being used against radical movements. In some cases, it’s extremely heavy-handed of directly targeting people through I would argue entrapment attempts, such as the five people in Chicago. In other cases, you have these raids and grand juries that are quite different and they’re not arresting and not charging them terrorists but the intent is to criminalize them because of their politics.
GOSZTOLA: In your tracking of the FBI in relation to so-called eco-terrorists and anarchists, is it that the FBI has an ideology that drives its actions against these radical organizations or is it that they have these resources? That in a post-9/11 world there are infinite amounts of resources that can be garnered through requests or budgets and they have these tools at their disposal and feel that they have to use them?
POTTER: I think that it’s really both of those explanations. Clearly, the history of the FBI—Its existence has been about targeting. We see from the top levels of government the targeting of the environmental rights movement, targeting anarchists as terrorists, surveillance of the Occupy Wall Street movement. All of this is not happening through the agency of specific individuals. All of this is coming from the top down.
That being said, there is personal agency in that these FBI agents see the “climate” and they are operating within that to progress their own careers, to fill the mission of the Bureau and of their own profession. So that’s how I think we should really see what’s going on. There’s some institutional pressure but there’s also pressure and it’s individual potential to take advantage of these resources.
I was talking to a former FBI agent about the entrapment cases in Cleveland and Chicago. He was saying this really began with the FBI’s targeting of Muslims after September 11th. He said after September 11th there was such little oversight. The Bureau was really able to do whatever it wanted in the name of targeting so-called Muslim terrorists that it was doing these very oppressive and illegal entrapments. Other agents within the FBI saw the success of that kind of informant-driven operation and they started applying it to their work as well. So we’re seeing it become much more common now with Occupy and other social movements.
GOSZTOLA: To what you uncovered recently about yourself and the surveillance of journalists, can you talk about that?
POTTER: Sure, so I originally through the Freedom of Information Act obtained some documents from the Counterterrorism Unit that show the unit is monitoring First Amendment Activity, including news articles, pieces, books and public lectures of people who are critical of this government oppression. Much of that was about my own work and my book, my articles, my public lectures. And the reason I chose to write about this is it really reflects the expanding scope of the “war on terrorism.” It’s not just about targeting people who are alleged to be involved in some illegal activity. It’s really about, as we’ve been discussing in this interview, criminalizing ideology. Criminalizing anyone who would even dare to question or talk about any of what is going on in the first place. I think that’s very indicative of where we’re at in the culture right now that the government is keeping files on journalists that are critical of government oppression.
GOSZTOLA: Isn’t it also that there is an element of criminalization of people who seek to exercise their freedom of information and apply for requests? I seem to recall a set of documents from the FBI where it was revealed that they thought they were revealing an element of anarchist organization. If they were submitting FOIA requests, it was something they should be on the look out for.
POTTER: Exactly. I think that’s a really good point because it’s not—It’s this culture of secrecy, that despite all the claims of the Obama administration has really become endemic. This idea that we don’t have any right to know what the government is actually doing let alone asking critical questions about it. So, I think you are right that even the act of pursuing act of information and using your rights through the freedom of information act and through other outlets of obtaining this information is perceived as a threat in and of itself.
20 Comments
Grand juries, warrants, etc. are tactics to “getcha”.
What’s the PTB fundamental problem with the environmental movement?
Not so sure that the PTB have a “problem” with the Environmental movement, per se. Think it’s just another nail in the coffin of curtailing our freedom, in general, and letting us know who’s “the boss.” More repression & suppression of our 1st Amend rights, whilst conservative voters clap & cheer because it’s so “great” to see the DFHs “get their due.”
Thanks for the post. Chilling news, which we’re unlikely to see reported anywhere else, except maybe some foreign outlets or possibly DemocracyNow.
If civilization is going to survive its flag is going to have to be Green Red and Black. Capitalism isnt sustainable. The “austerity” regime is an aknowledgement of that. Its entire purpose (they believe it will work) is to drive the 99% into low consumption, mass poverty. This will also have the effect of thinning the population (they mistakenly believe). All the while the 1% gets to,not only keep all the wealth it has stolen over the centuries, but profit even more from the mass impoverishment of the rest of civilization. Then when we are all desparately poor, they can claim that any of their speculative bubbles is “growth”.. Thats the “austerity” plan, its the only plan they have.
I’m considering applying to Ecuador for asylum. Every day in every way the Vast Machine works to criminalize and stifle dissent.
911 changed everything. I am very much opposed to the tactics of the Feds on this, but I must say I am still very concerned about a number of things the ‘anarchists’ have not expressed, at least to me personally, including 1) a stand FOR non-violence, and 2) a rejection of destruction of private property.
I see them as wanting to disconnect from capitalism, and have no problem with that, but playing cat and mouse games with the cops and wearing masks just makes the reactionary problems of the fascist elements within our society more justifiable (at least in the rightwing teabagger, and the media’s eye, which is self-fulfilling.)
The real violence historically comes from the right-wing in American history, and it is as true today as it was during the Palmer raids, the Klan terror, the coal wars, and COINTELPRO. I fear the black bloc is pushing the right to attack us again, so as to expose the ‘crisis’. I don’t agree with this strategy. The only way to defeat the terrorist label, in my view, is to be open and forthright about ecological imperatives and conduct oneself tactically in a non-violent manner. Until anarchist groups commit to non-violence I have little interest in working with them. The fantasy of an anarchist future, built on justice and free from corporate exploitation is just that, a fantasy. I have tried to work with them, but have found them arrogant, insular, and a bit cultish. So, instead I remain committed to non-violence as a strategy and a long-term approach to meeting oppression and finding home.
The FBI has a problem with any movement whose civil disobedience causes disruption of business. The environmental movement was hunky-dory until Greenpeace started shadowing commercial and government vessels, ELF started tree-sitting and spiking trees in old growth forests, and other environmental groups started lying down in front of bulldozers and dump trucks to prevent mountain-top removal.
Same with Occupy. They were OK until they started disrupting business and traffic with their civil disobedience–to the point that occupying the steps of the building where the Bill of Rights was drafted was OK as long as they didn’t block access to the building.
Civil disobedience, then, even nonviolent civil disobedience, is considered violent by the authorities. In the 1960s, it was the Freedom Riders who were “violent” according to the authorities; there were “outside agitators” “stirring up things”; sit-ins were “violent”.
And, the other factor: the ghost of J. Edgar stalks the halls of the FBI.
The only way to deal with this is to assert that (1) “anarchists” by definition do not all have the same agendas and same strategies. (2) “Diversity of tactics” is a two-way street, and that separation of time and space is a minimal reasonable request for those who do not agree with violence or destruction of property. And (3) the situations under which violence and destruction of property can erupt can amount to a police state sucker-punch by provacateurs; it is not always nor is it never the case that violence or destruction of property is initiated by self-styled “anarchists”. (4) If there are no leaders, there also are no followers; one’s behavior and decisions stand on their own. As a consequence, the idea of all “anarchists” agreeing on anything, much less a ban on violence and destruction of property is by definition not possible as a principle although in specific cases, you can get unanimity that violence and destruction of property are to strategically helpful.
There is a lot of nuance and individual decisions in those points that often get missed, and especially by observers outside the movement.
Last of all, the obvious counter-proposal should be that the police commit to renouncing violence in principle when dealing with peaceful protests and that neither the police nor their collaborators and informants, as a principle, participate in violence or destruction of property. Look for all the excuses there.
The authorities are not satisfied with unilateral disarmament; they seek total submission.
Tarheel, “A financial element…has owned the Government since the days of Andrew Jackson” FDR 1933. Jackson fought and lost vs. The Bank of the United States. Said private bank was seed funded by the the Rothschild’s…Hoover, as despicable as he was, worked for said element or elements. As my mother used to say, “I don’t think they’re Irish.”
I think that approach is pretty naive. The Birmingham bus boycott led to peoples houses being bombed. But, they remained committed to their principles and open to working with others.
Who made the new anarchists the moral center of the progressive universe? Sorry, I have worked with them, fought for their inclusion, and I have also experience state repression. I don’t fear because I know that the non-violence to which I adhere is a part of a long arc. I will defend and fight with them if they renounce violence. This is a normal progression of effective political movements and can be inclusive of any ‘horizontalism’ one seeks to achieve . The Derek Jensen types seem to create more problems than positive change….or at least too many idiotic meetings. Maybe I will be proven wrong in the long run, maybe not.
I can’t speak for the raids in Portland or Olympia, but I know the people who were raided in Seattle. Great people. You are making broad generalizations of anarchists based on your experiences, and applying it to my comrades who are working and organizing every day against the 1%.
The ‘anarchists’ you worked with are not the same as the people who had their apartment raided at 6AM with flashbangs, SWAT and automatic weaponry shoved in their faces, their place rifled through, and political pamphlets seized.
Sort of OT, but IMO it begs the revisiting of a question: Could the so-called “allies” have prevailed in WWII if tactical (passive, non-violent) resistance had been the sole means of defense with which to prevail? Anybody care to contribute to this conjecture?
The only thing that was changed by 9/11 was the ability of the US govt. to engage in illegal preemptive war as both foreign and domestic policy. When one considers the foreign policy of USA,Inc. for generations, it’s only surprising that the “Homeland” has not been the target of blowback more often. This incident has been used as an excuse to implement a repressive security state that criminalizes, disappears, and murders those it views as threats to its power.
It depends on how broad a time frame you want to allow for decision and action. The best non-violent actions are always preventative. Had a reasonable settlement been made at the Versailles conference instead of a punitive exaction of reparations of a people who now lived in the Weimar Republic under a different regime than the one that lost World War I, that would have been a nonviolent action that would have prevailed. Had the global financial industry not driven the world into the Great Depression (through a little prudence), it is unlikely that Hitler would have come to power. So one does not know.
There were instances of passive, non-violent resistance throughout the war. Some failed tragically and some like Otto Schindler’s succeeded in accomplishing their objectives. Probably the most notable was the resistance of the Abwehr, which involved Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics is a very interesting struggle with the question you are raising. Just because he walked the talk, the book is worth studying even if you do not come out where Bonhoeffer did.
They, in fact, are English.
Bush V Gore guaranteed the reemergence of capital A anarchism but 911 evidently delayed it. The Government, big G, is right on the money here. The stupendous infrastructure it is building for domestic surveillance is designed with knowledge aforethought to fight anarchism.
I am no fan or friend of the crazies but they are inevitable and so too is the fight against them. The Stasi will have nothing on Homeland Security/FBI/NSA in 15 years. Nothing.
Trick question, as I finally figured out the answer after all these years.
Environment movements reduce the value of corp assets. Esp obvious in the case of oil. If green energy were to replace oil, all the oil corps assets in the ground would become worthless.
Petroleum and natural gas still a chemical feedstocks for the manufacture of various materials, including polymers and plastics. The research work is not as far along on green substitutes for these uses. In fact, the assets would not be worthless but would not have their current inflated value. And those assets would provide an income stream over a very long time instead of being exhausted within a century. It’s not the worth of asset by the time horizon of being able to monetize them for profit that is driving the opposition of the fossil fuel industry to facing environmental realities. It’s control, not wealth at stake in their conflict with the environmental movement.
The timber industry and fishing industry, classic examples of exhaustion being driven by the time horizon for decisions are two other industries that do not like environmental activists.
Tarheel, thanks for the historical info/insights, esp. re: Bonhoeffer. This is something I think of often, and wish I had more time to explore in greater depth. Please post any recommended additional/supplemental reading.
Oooh, rapier51, defeatism is tempting at times; however, I’ll have to admit to watching too many ST/TNG/SW reruns for absolute despair to ever really get a chance to take hold. Perhaps ten more years of this will alter my head, so to speak…Meanwhile, the Bomb remains parked somewhere in the bunker, and the Lion sleeps again tonight (or is somewhere in Traverse City watching old movie reruns – heh?)
No, the only way to avoid being labeled a terrorist is to win. Then, when you write the history books, you can choose a more complimentary label for yourself.
Until then, the state will do all it can to promote its narrative, and the mainstream media will happily comply. You can be as nonviolent as you want, and you’ll still have to contend with false flags, agents provocateur, and naked propoganda, while the state uses violence against you without consequence. With any luck, you can get the support of the people – but you’ll get that by your cause and victories, not your choice of tactics.
Nonviolence is overrated as a tool of revolution, anyway. India’s revolt was not nonviolent, Gandhi notwithstanding. Neither was Egypt’s, though it’s typically described as such. Neither was France’s. Our own fight for independence was decidedly violent, as were the labor struggles of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Today, activists are denied any effective tools for change, and so the Occupy movement never grew to a force to be reckoned with.