In August 2003, two FBI agents watched over an Omaha rally organized by peace activist Frank Cordaro, a former Catholic priest.
The agents observed no criminal activity at the rally but still sent notes on those in attendance to local military and law enforcement officials so they could plan security measures for a conference on U.S. nuclear policy at Offutt Air Force Base, according to a Justice Department report.
Also, FBI files reveal that agents, working under the direction of the bureau's Omaha field office, secretly monitored the activities of Iowa City protest groups before the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
“I learned early in my peace and justice career to assume the government knows what's going on,” said Cordaro, who has spent a total of about five years in jail for trespassing on Offutt property. When the FBI was monitoring him, Cordaro was planning a protest against nuclear weapons at the Offutt conference.
Now the FBI, including its Omaha office, is under intense scrutiny for investigations that revive memories of the bureau's Vietnam-era intrigue.
Unsealed agency documents and a report from the Justice Department detail the FBI's broad investigations of protest groups in Nebraska, Iowa and other parts of the country based on its authority to look into allegations and threats of domestic and international terrorism.
“In several cases there was little indication of any possible federal crimes,” Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in his report, which detailed similar investigations the agency conducted around the country.
“In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism' classification.”
A domestic terrorism designation can have a large impact, the inspector general said, because people who are subjects of such probes are normally placed on watch lists and their travels and interactions with law enforcement may be tracked.
The FBI investigated whether the Iowa activists were part of a national network of radicals who wanted to disrupt the GOP convention in Minnesota and the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. The records show that the investigation lasted from roughly March to December in 2008.
During that time, authorities went through activists' garbage and their cell phone and motor vehicle records.
Other law enforcement officials watched the Iowa City activists while they visited libraries, grocery stores, restaurants, taverns and a church. They watched training sessions where protesters taught passive resistance techniques or ways to help people who had inhaled pepper spray or tear gas.
A paid FBI informant attended protest groups' public meetings, socialized with members and supplied intelligence.
The Justice report also said the Omaha field office collected military-acquired information about nuclear-proliferation protesters at Offutt during an event in 2004, then stored it in files pertaining to counterterrorism investigations.
Nationally, the FBI examined potential terrorist connections to the environmental group Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and anti-war groups such as the Catholic Worker Movement and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh.
The FBI then gave inaccurate information to Congress when it claimed a possible terrorism link to justify surveillance of an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh, Fine said, adding that the FBI had no reason to expect that anyone of interest in a terrorism investigation would be present at the Merton Center-sponsored event in 2002.
Weysan Dunn, the special agent in charge of Omaha's field office, denied any wrongdoing in the local investigations and said the Iowa-based probe was based on allegations that some members of the group would use criminal activities to disrupt political conventions.
“Every investigative technique that was employed was authorized under the Attorney General Guidelines and was deemed necessary to resolve the allegations,” Dunn said.
The 315 pages of heavily redacted FBI files on the Iowa investigations were provided to The World-Herald and other news agencies by former University of Iowa Antiwar Committee member David Goodner, 29, who obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency did not unseal roughly 266 pages of other documents on the Iowa City protesters.
Goodner said he and his allies learned last year that a paid informant had been planted in their midst.
“What we didn't know until a couple of weeks ago was that the surveillance was much broader,” he said. “They build these cases on provocateurs.”
Goodner said he's exploring a potential lawsuit with the help of the Iowa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
This report includes material from World-Herald press services.
Contact the writer:
444-1068, johnny.perez@owh.com
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