By Brenda Norrell
After the Denver police spy files were revealed in 2002, my friends, the spied upon, said, "It isn't just happening in Denver. It is happening all over the United States."
In Denver, the secret police spy files became public through attorney discovery in a local court case. The spy files did not become public because of the integrity of the Denver Police Intelligence Division. Those secret police spy files included cases that went back 30 years. Of course all of the American Indian activists names were there, the usual suspects working for peace and justice. But there were surprises in the list of 3,200 individuals and 208 organizations.
Denver police spied on an 80-year-old grandmother because she had a "Leonard Peltier" bumper sticker on her car.
Denver police also spied on American Indian attorneys at the Native American Rights Fund and a senator who worked for Native American rights. South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, who once headed the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, was spied on. Abourezk obtained a copy of his spy file and said he still didn't have a clue why he was targeted. Abourezk said he hadn't been in Denver in 15 years. The Abourezk spy file just said the Denver police were watching him.
Anyone helping Navajos at Big Mountain or Zapatistas in Chiapas in Denver was under Denver police surveillance.
The Quakers, it turned out, were among the most spied on in the US, revealing the insanity of US police probes of the peace-seeking.
In the end, after a lawsuit was filed against the Denver Police Department by American Indians, the ACLU and others, the spied-upon could go and retrieve their spy files in Denver. However, this required updating Denver police records with current IDs and personal information, so many passed.
Now, years later, spy files are worming their way out of police file cabinets everywhere, like maggots in wait, feeding on the dark and decaying fecal matter of failed trust.
American Indians were a primary target of the Denver police. In retrospect, it appears Denver activists were a sort of pilot project for extensive domestic spying because of the large network of multi-agency task forces in Colorado and secret US military operations in Colorado Springs.
Elsewhere in the United States, groups of peace activists opposed to the Iraq war and organizations working against the death penalty were targets. Their meetings were infiltrated by liars and deceivers. In Maryland, peaceful climate change activists were listed as "suspected terrorists." Code Pink women who never came to Maryland were tracked in spy files by Maryland State Police.
Now, it is revealed that one million Americans are on the US watch list. One million Americans are being spied on. How can any government provide manpower to spy on one million people?
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2009/02/syping-activists-who-criminal-now
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