Report whitewashes FBI political spying

[Hannah Bell]

report issued by the Justice Department Monday reveals new details of illegal spying by the FBI on an array of environmental, antiwar and animal rights groups during the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But the report clears the FBI of any deliberate violation of civil liberties, claiming that agents were motivated by concern over potential violent acts, not the leftwing political views of their targets...

In one particularly ominous finding, Fine wrote, “In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘acts of terrorism’ classification.” This has much more than a technical significance. Given the Bush administration’s claim—continued under Obama—the federal government has the authority to arrest and detain indefinitely, without trial, anyone engaged in “terrorism,” such a classification could have led to the seizure of nonviolent protesters and their long-term detention at Guantanamo Bay or in secret CIA “black site” prisons.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/fbir-s22.shtml