The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is seeking FBI files on behalf of four advocacy groups and 10 activists in the state, saying it believes they have been targets of surveillance because of their politics.
The ACLU, in Freedom of Information Act requests it plans to send out today, is requesting all records kept by the FBI and antiterrorism agencies on the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group in Cambridge; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has a state chapter in Boston; the International Action Committee Boston, an antiwar group, and the ACLU itself. The letter also seeks government files on 10 activists and political dissidents, including such liberal heavyweights as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU chapter in Massachusetts, said several activists believe they have been under surveillance for at least a year, including around the time of the Democratic and Republican national conventions last summer.
''We believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant and that the American people have a right to know and a duty to find out if the government is engaged in domestic political spying in ways that diminish our liberty and do not make us any safer," Rose said in an interview yesterday.
The request is part of a coordinated nationwide effort by the ACLU to obtain records of alleged spying on activists who oppose the war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act, and other government policies. ACLU affiliates in nine other states planned to file similar requests today.
In addition, the ACLU's national organization said it will file suit in federal court in Washington today to compel the FBI to comply with a similar request it made in December for the files of groups in the District of Columbia, Colorado, and five other states. To date, the ACLU said, the FBI has provided fewer than 20 pages in response to those requests.
The Washington Post reports today that new FBI documents show that questioning by antiterrorism agents of antiwar protesters last summer in Denver did not lead to any information about criminal activity.
The ACLU obtained the memos as part of ongoing litigation. They provide a glimpse of the FBI's efforts to interview dozens of members of leftist protest groups in advance of the party conventions last year in Boston and New York, the Post reports.
ACLU officials said yesterday that the documents show that investigators from the FBI and the local Joint Terrorism Task Force were on a fishing expedition, the Post reports.
An FBI spokesman in Washington, Edwin C. Cogswell, declined to address the allegations of surveillance of Massachusetts groups. He acknowledged in a statement that the agency had investigated some Colorado-based activist groups, including Food Not Bombs, in response to a ''specific and credible threat" of violence at the Democratic National Convention last July.
In Massachusetts, Keith Harvey, director of the New England office of the American Friends Service Committee, is one of those who believes he's been watched. For at least two weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention last summer, he said, black SUVs and black sedans were parked outside his group's office on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. A helicopter often hovered overhead and even appeared to follow one employee home to Dorchester, he said.
At one point, Harvey said, he approached a man sitting in a sedan and asked him to identify himself. The man politely replied that he worked for the US Department of Homeland Security but declined to identify himself, he said.
''He said, 'Keith, I'm just doing my job,' " Harvey said.
Harvey said yesterday that his group has vigorously opposed the war in Iraq and other government policies, but that he cannot understand why it would be placed under surveillance.
Another individual who complained about possible surveillance is Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a nonprofit group that has alleged violations of Arab-Americans' civil rights since Sept 11.
She said a uniformed Boston police officer appeared at the group's office on Boylston Street in Boston when the group held a press conference two years ago to protest a move by FleetBoston Financial Corp. to close the accounts of several individuals and institutions with Arabic names.
The officer left before the press conference ended, Najimy said. But when Najimy went to a Fleet branch up the street from her office immediately afterward to close her account as a protest, she said, she spotted him inside and overheard him on his cellphone discussing the press conference and telling someone it ''wasn't anything to be concerned about."
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at [email protected].
