STATUS: 100% complete, though footnotes need to be filled in
Chapter 6 -- Infiltrate Citizens' Groups

    Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting ...  the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

        First Amendment

The next time you meet with your antiwar group, I am afraid you have to ask yourself if everyone present really is who you think he or she is. Incredible as it sounds, you may well have undercover investigators hanging out with you. Dictatorships and would-be dictators routinely infiltrate legal citizen groups and report back to the group in power or seeking power. Historically, infiltrators are also directed to disrupt and harass such organizations. The goal: to make sure that it becomes too costly and nerve-wracking to act out as a citizen.

In Italy, Fascist spies infiltrated groups of trade unionists. In Stalin's Russia, spies reported on the activities of intellectuals and dissidents.[1] In Germany, National Socialist agents infiltrated groups of anti-Nazi students, Communists, and labor activists; these agents were busy, even attending cabarets where jazz and other "unGerman" music was being played, in order to denounce the musicians.[2] In the GDR, the Stasi infiltrated dissident groups of the usual targets. In Prague in 1968, infiltrators joined in with groups of writers, theatre workers, journalists, and intellectuals. In Chile, Pinochet's agents joined groups of prodemocracy students.[3] The Chinese Politburo sends state agents to infiltrate forbidden pro-democracy and banned religious groups.

Infiltration is not just an intelligence tool; like surveillance, it is also a psychological pressure point. When the state infiltrates citizen groups, people feel vulnerable about acting in accord with one another and so are less likely to risk the assertive collective behavior that democracy requires.

In dictatorships, infiltrators are joined by ''agents provocateurs'' at marches and rallies. These provocateurs don't just act and dress like the protesters: Their task is to provoke a violent situation or actually to commit a crime. One FBI infiltrator, Gary Thomas Rowe, for instance, warned his handler of an impending police attack on the Freedom Riders--then went ahead to participate energetically in the beatings that followed.[4] ''Provocateurs'' also serve a PR purpose: They set up protesters to look like lawless threats to society, thus providing would-be dictators with the rationale for declaring martial law as a means to "restore public order."

Sin 2000, there has been a sharp increase in U.S. citizen groups that are being harassed and infiltrated by police and federal agents, often in illegal ways. A 20006 ACLU report notes that police departments in California had infiltrated antiwar protests, political rallies, and other constitutionally protected gatherings and were secretly investigating them, even though the California state constitution forbids this.[5]

But that was just the beginning. A Defense Department program called Talon created a database of "anti-terror" information about peaceful U.S. citizen groups and activists.[6] Talon included details of antiwar groups' planning meetings in churches; a church service for peace in New York City; even details of the meetings of such all-American groups as Veterans for Peace. The Defense Department even had e-mails that had been forwarded to it by people who had pretended to be members of the groups.[7] Some of the groups were placed in this database with the rationale that while they weren't violent yet, they might become so. Jen Nessel of the Center for Constitutional Rights said, "We have absolutely moved over into a preventative detention model--you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you."[8]

Harassment is a more serious tactic. Before the Republican convention in New York in 2004, the police department's intelligence team sent detectives throughout the city to infiltrate groups planning to demonstrate peacefully at the convention. When the New York Civil Liberties Union asked to unseal the records of this undercover spying, lawyers for the city argued that the records should be kept secret, because the news media would "fixate upon and sensationalize them."[9]

It is in a fascist shift that the truth is recategorized as being unseemly--destructively inflammatory.

Today, if you are outspoken, you are increasingly likely to face other kinds of harassment, such as an IRS investigation: All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, was scrutinized by the IRS after a rector gave a sermon that characterized Jesus as antiwar. (A year after the 1917 Espionage Act was passed, Rev. Clarence Waldron was sentenced to prison for fifteen years for passing out a pamphlet that said that war was un-Christian.[10])

The IRS asked fort he California church's internal documents and e-mails in order to investigate if it had violated tax law.[11] Many conservative churches have helped Republicans: Two Ohio churches turned their facilities over to Republican groups, hosted Republican candidates, and were credited with turning out voters for Bush in 2004. But they were not investigated by the IRS.[12]

Harassment takes many forms: Peace activist Cindy Sheehan wore a T-shirt with the message, "2,245 Dead. How many more?" referring to the war in Iraq, in the gallery of the House of Representatives. Capitol Police arrested her and charged her with "unlawful conduct," which could have given her a year in prison. Beverly Young, a Republican congressman's wife, wore a T-shirt in the same place that read, "Support Our Troups"; she was asked to leave, but was not arrested or charged with a crime.[13]

On July 25, 2006, Jim Bensman, a coordinator with Heartwood, an environmental organization, was at a public meeting in Illinois convened by the Army Corps of Engineers to discuss proposed construction of a channel on a dam in the Mississippi River. Bensman advocated a standard solution to the problem under discussion: using explosives. Dams are typically destroyed with explosives, a point which the Corps of Engineers' own presentation at the meeting noted. News coverage of the meeting included the summary that Bensman "would like to see the dam blown up."

Less than a week later, Bensman got called by an FBI agent. The agent persuaded him that the call was for real by telling Bensman about items in his FBI file. The agent also told Bensman that he wanted to visit him at home. Bensman recalls: "I was thinking, 'I need to talk to an attorney'... and he said, 'Well, O.K., I will put you down as not cooperating.'"[14]

So Americans do need to watch what they say, watch what they do. Be careful how you phrase things. Don't leave your meeting's minutes lying around. Check your gut reaction when you are talking to people in your local group. Be mindful while your pursue your activism.

Have the number of a good lawyer handy.

But most important of all, lead your friends and community to unite in a grassroots movement to restore our nation's freedom.