FBI Settles With Environmentalist

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<FONT class=artname>Profiling: How the FBI Tracks Eco-Terror
Suspects</FONT>
Author: Michael Isikoff, Newsweek
Published on November
14, 2005, 08:06




The FBI collected detailed data on political activities and Web postings of
suspected members of a tiny environmentalist commune in southern California two
years ago as part of a high-profile counterterrorism probe, bureau records show.
Facing further new disclosures about the matter, the bureau last week agreed to
settle a lawsuit and to pay $100,000 to Josh Connole, a 27-year-old ex-commune
member who had been arrested-and later released-on suspicions he was one of the
eco-terrorists who had firebombed SUV dealerships in the summer of 2003. But the
bureau's rare concession of error, expected to be publicly announced soon, could
bring new attention to what civil-liberties groups say is a disturbing trend:
the stepped-up monitoring of domestic political activity by FBI counter-terror
agents.

Connole, an anti-Iraq-war protester, had been living in a Pomona,
Calif., vegan commune when a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) targeted him
after arson attacks on four nearby Hummer dealers-acts blamed on the shadowy
Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which the bureau considers a domestic terror
group. The case was considered serious enough that Director Robert Mueller
briefed President Bush. After concluding Connole looked like a lanky, goateed
suspect caught on surveillance tape, agents arrested him at gunpoint on Sept.
12, 2003, then raided the commune. After being interrogated and held for four
days, he was released. Another suspect with no connection to the commune was
later arrested and convicted.

In their wrongful-arrest lawsuit, Connole's
lawyers demanded to know why the FBI looked at Connole in the first place. Court
documents show agents were initially tipped off by a neighbor to "suspicious"
activity at the commune the night of the attacks. (In fact, says Connole,
members were simply helping one of the residents move out.) Agents placed the
commune under surveillance and developed a political profile of the residents,
discovering the owner of the house and his father "have posted statements on
websites opposing the use of fossil fuels," one doc reads. Another says the
owner had ties to a local chapter of Food Not Bombs, an "anarcho-vegan food
distribution group." Among activities flagged in bureau docs: the father of the
owner had conducted a "one man' daily protest" outside a Toyota office, was
interviewed for an article called "Dude, Where's my Electric Car!?" and posted
info on a Web site announcing "Stop Norway Whaling!" Critics say such info has
been increasingly collected by agents since the then Attorney General John
Ashcroft relaxed FBI guidelines in 2002. "How does advocacy of electric cars
become the basis for suspicion?" asks Bill Paparian, Connole's lawyer. Bureau
officials say they collect such info only when there might be ties to violence
or terrorism. A spokesman declined to comment on Connole's case, saying that
because no settlement has been entered into the court record, it remains "a
pending legal matter." </P></Table>