We wanted to share with our friends and supporters the following article by Michael Isikoff of NBC News. The article references documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund showing that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security coordinated with local police agencies, including Boston’s counter-terror unit, to monitor Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and other peaceful protest activities.
FromĀ NBC News:
Unaware of Tsarnaev warnings,
Boston counterterror unit tracked protesters
By Michael Isikoff
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis testifies before a House committee on the marathon bombings. (Photo: NBC News) |
In the fall of 2011, a key Boston police counterterror intelligence unit — funded with millions of dollars in U.S. homeland security grants — was closely monitoring anti-Wall Street demonstrations, including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the potential impact on “commercial and financial sector assets” in downtown areas, according to internal police documents.
The police monitoring of the activities of Occupy Boston — an off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests that swept the country in 2011 — came during a period after the U.S. government received the second of two warnings from the Russian government about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told a congressional panel Thursday that his department was never alerted by any federal agency to the information about Tsarnaev, but added that it was “hard to say” whether it would have made any difference in preventing the bombing. FBI Ā officials have insisted that the intelligence about Tsarnaev was vague and uncorroborated and that their own assessment at the time produced no “derogatory” information that justified opening a full-scale investigation.
But the internal Boston police documents, recently obtained by a civil liberties group, could raise fresh questions about the role of Homeland Security-funded “fusion centers” like the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, which conducted the monitoring. The Boston unit Ā is one of 72 such units set up to collect, analyze and share intelligence about potential terror threats. While Ā Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called the units āone of the centerpiecesā of the nationās counterterrorism efforts, congressional critics have questioned their effectiveness and accused them in some cases of writing “useless” reports that infringed on civil liberties.
āThey Ā were monitoring completely lawful activities,ā said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice, a civil liberties group that recently obtained the documents on the BRICās monitoring of Occupy Boston under the Freedom of Information Act. She said the BRIC monitoring was an example of the āvast expenditure of government moneyā to collect intelligence on activities unrelated to terrorism, in violation of First Amendment rights.
A Boston police spokeswoman said the department has changed its reporting procedures since the monitoring of the protests and emphasized that the BRIC is āabout a lot more than terrorism.ā
A Homeland Security official declined comment, saying the BRIC, like other fusion centers, was ālocally owned and operated.ā But the official noted that, just five days before the marathon bombing, the BRIC did produce an assessment for the event that, while concluding there was āno specificā or ācredibleā threat information, advised that āofficials should be aware of a range of potential terrorist threats, from scattered unsophisticated attacks to dispersal of chemical or biological agents.ā The assessment also identified the marathon finish line ā where the bombing took place ā as well as Fenway Park as āan area of increased vulnerability.ā
The internal police documents about the activities of the BRIC show that on Sept. 30, 2011 ā just two days after the second Russian warning about Tsarnaev was sent to the CIA ā the Boston police unit was focused on an upcoming āTake Back Boston Rallyā planned for the cityās Dewey Square.
āApproximately 100 people are listed as attending the Take Back Boston Rally on the eventās Facebook page and Occupy Boston organziers are encouraging people to attend it as well,ā reads one BRIC report written by a U.S. homeland security official on Sept. 30, 2011. āThe BRIC has received information that approximately 700 people will participate in the Take Back Boston march, with approximately 100 people staying to camp out as part of Occupy Boston.ā
A follow-up report, three days days later, tracked the number of protesters, noting that āthe size of the camp in Dewey Square has steadily grown over the weekendā and that āaccording to the groupās websiteā the demonstrators were planning two marches, including one to a ālocal media station, very likely to be Fox News Boston on Beacon Hill.ā
Verheyden-Hilliard, whose group obtained the documents, said it was not surprising that the BRIC would be reporting such information since later documents appear to show Homeland Security officials requesting such data. In one āDaily Intelligence Briefing,ā dated Oct. 21, 2011, the āThreat Management Divisionā of Homeland Securityās Federal Protective Service outlines a ātemplate for creating the daily intelligence brief for your regionā and then cites a ālist of events we want to requestā that officials submit āfor daily briefing information.ā Among the categories, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and āsignificant criminal activityā is one called āPeaceful Activist Demonstrations.ā
In his testimony Thursday, Commissioner Davis acknowledged to a House committee that his department, which runs the BRIC, was never provided any of the intelligence from the FBI and CIA that Tsarnaev, a resident of Cambridge, had been twice flagged by the Russians as an Islamic radical with ties to āundergroundā groups in that country.
āWe were not aware of the two brothers,ā Davis said in response to questioning by Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. āWe were not aware of Tamerlanās activities.ā
Davis acknowledged that police counterterrorism detectives were assigned to an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) — a separate unit from the Homeland Security fusion centers that serves as the government’s primary investigative arm for probing terror threats. An FBI agent at the Boston JTTF conducted an āassessmentā of Tsarnaev in 2011 after the first warning about his ties was sent by Russiaās FSB intelligence service. The assessment found no āderogatoryā information about Tsarnaev that justified conducting a formal investigation. Later information about Tsarnaev included a second Russian warning to the CIA on Sept. 28, 2011.
But while Boston police had access to the JTTFās classified database, Davis said that his own officers assigned to the task force were never Ā specifically alerted to any the information about Tsarnaev. āThey tell me they received no word about that individual prior to the bombing.ā
FBI spokesman Jason Pack said Thursday that state and local members of the JTTF are āresponsible for maintaining awareness of possible threatsā in their areas and could have performed ācustomized key word searchesā of the FBI database that would have yielded the information about Tsarnaev.
NBC News researcher Taylor Sears contributed to this report.
Background reading
DHS documents revealing that peaceful protesters were monitored as a matter of policy can beĀ read by clicking here: Ā http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/new-documents-reveal-dhs.html
FBI documents showing the nationwide monitoring of the Occupy movement can beĀ read by clicking here: Ā http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
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