The following is from Dori Smith, of Talk Nation Radio

Why are groups like Indymedia and Food Not Bombs on the government’s terror watch list and why did an FBI agent show law students a list that included those groups during a class presentation on terrorism at the University of Texas March 8th? These and other questions have prompt concern as a story written by Nick Schwellenbach goes global thanks ironically to the international “Be the media” group, Indymedia

Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. I’m Dori Smith. On March 8th an FBI agent walked into a classroom at the University of Texas law school. The class was on U.S. Law and National Security so his presence was not questioned, however, when he showed the students a list of groups on the U.S. government’s terror “watch list” some of the students began to lean forward in their seats and pay closer attention.

They recognized the names. Indymedia and Food Not Bombs were groups their friends had been active with. We hear from national security writer Nick Schwellenbach whose March 27th story in Alternet.org about this incident is titled Keeping Tabs on the Peaceniks We speak first with University of Texas law school student Elizabeth Wagoner who was present at her law school class when the FBI agent walked in. I asked her to explain what happened.

Elizabeth Wagoner: I’m a student in a class called, U.S. Law and National Security and my professor invited a friend of his from the FBI office in Austin to come speak to us about terrorism in Texas. So I was present in the class when the officer gave his presentation and listed certain groups on a watch list.

Dori Smith: This was agent G. Charles Rasner who came to speak to the class. Tell us what happened next.

Elizabeth Wagoner: So he gave a presentation on terrorism in Texas, and that presentation was labeled “unclassified” on the first slide. And this was all on “Powerpoint.” There were several slides in the presentation and the first one listed three general categories of organizations that the FBI looks at.

Again, this was all about terrorism. That was the title of the presentation. And it said, “International Terrorist Groups,” “Domestic Terrorist Groups,” and “Cause Groups.” And when asked what a “cause group” was he sort of referenced anti war, you know that kind of thing. Environmental activist kind of groups; what he meant by cause groups was what you imagine it might mean. Just groups that have a cause, whatever that is, political cause.

So then the next slide was a map of Texas and then on the side there was a key and for different kinds of groups there would be a dot on the map. And so white supremacist groups had a red dot and anarchists had a yellow dot. And so then he had a dot, you know these different colored dots all over the map to indicate where this sort of activity was happening in the state. And then Austin, which is where I live, had anarchists, white supremacists, it had all four dots. I don’t remember what all four were. A third one was international terrorism I think. I don’t remember what the fourth one was.

And then finally right as class was ending he puts up the slide, “The Watch List” and on that list were Indymedia and Food Not Bombs and then, as friends and I have discussed it we determined that Rainforest Action Network was on the list. -The Texas Communist Party was on the list.

I have friends that remember more than I did, but you know I saw Indymedia and Food Not Bombs and was shocked because I have friends that work in those organizations. I mean to have those organizations listed anywhere in a presentation on terrorism is shocking.

Dori Smith: Now Indymedia, let’s just point out, it’s an independent news media, it’s kind of a news media collective, people being the media right?

Elizabeth Wagoner: That’s right. “Be the media,” is their slogan.

Dori Smith: And so about Food Not Bombs. They give out food right?

Elizabeth Wagoner: That’s right. Their overriding philosophy is, as I understand it, is that our money should be going towards feeding the people and not bombing countries. So certainly that’s a political message but their activity is feeding, you know feeding the homeless, or feeding whoever wants to be fed with food that’s been donated or collected somehow.

Dori Smith: We are going to be speaking with Nick Schwellenbach. In his Alternet.org story he writes that (see group serving Hurricane Katrina victims) Food Not Bombs distributes unused vegetarian food from grocery stores. So I wonder if that caught any special attention. They’re vegetarian.

Elizabeth Wagoner: Who knows? (Laughs.) I mean that would be pretty amazing if so. They definitely have an anti consumption message, you know, this idea of using food that others don’t want and that kind of thing goes against certain people’s visions of consumption and that being good for America and that sort of thing.

Dori Smith: Now we can make light of this but I understand that you found it somewhat unsettling and this is not something that is typically in your field of interest right?

Elizabeth Wagoner: That’s right. I mean I just do labor and poverty law. That’s what I’m mostly interested in. But it was shocking that the FBI would be involved in, would be looking at these groups. And that they would tell us about it, that it was just so open. Well yes, we look at these peace groups. (Laughs) It was disturbing. These are people that I’m friends with. This is me. I mean anybody can be in Indymedia.

Dori Smith: So this is a little close to home.

Elizabeth Wagoner: Yeah.

Dori Smith: And I understand that you filed a FOIA. A Freedom of Information Act Request?

Elizabeth Wagoner: That’s right. After the presentation I asked the officer if I could have a copy of the presentation and he refused and he said he had proprietary government interest in the presentation. And I said well but government property belongs to the people when it’s unclassified, and he said well no I have a proprietary interest, I’m not going to give it to you. -But he did give me his card and so from that I filed a FOIA request and since then the ACLU also is working on filing FOIA requests, and getting the groups together who were listed in the presentation to file a FOIA request jointly.

Dori Smith: Now what was the climate in the class and what kind of an atmosphere prevailed during this presentation? Were other students concerned about what was happening?

Elizabeth Wagoner: There were other students that were concerned and I should add from a variety of political stripes but this being a law school the nature of, I mean I feel that most people in there just don’t want to rock the boat, don’t want to say anything, just kind of want to get home to their kids. So most people were not saying anything and probably weren’t even worried about it that much, but for those of us who, for me it was because I knew people in those groups and I think for others it may have been some of the same thing or just general concern for civil liberties. But overall there was a surprising lack of shock. There are a lot of conservatives in this law school so maybe that’s why.

Dori Smith: And do you think that in a way we’ve been prepared for this ever since the day that George Bush announced you are with us or against us, and sort of started focusing on threats that would be posed and how the war on terror superceded all other agendas?

Elizabeth Wagoner: Well I guess agencies know now that if they say that something’s terrorism then they can work on it, so everything’s terrorism. A group that’s against the administration is “terrorism”. That doesn’t really make sense to me and I don’t think that would really make sense to anybody. But I guess the way it was Communism in the 1950s its terrorism now even for groups that have nothing to do with that. And it’s ridiculous and I wonder, you suggest that it’s calculated and I think that there’s some of that but I don’t know I wonder if it’s incompetence too. I mean it’s just so stupid to be spending time on groups like this when there are more obvious dangers. That can be debated as well but certainly this is the wrong focus.

Dori Smith: What do you think that this kind of an experience might do to someone like yourself? How do you think it will impact you?

Elizabeth Wagoner: I don’t know if it will impact me as much as it impacts, for instance, the kids who do Food Not Bombs in Houston. Many are high schoolers. Their parents are concerned with them being involved with Food Not Bombs in light of this. And of course there is no reason for concern. None. Food Not Bombs is a peace group who serves food. But that affects these kids whose parents are worried about FBI surveillance.

I just heard a presentation. You know, and my political work later on, I mean certainly as an anti-war activist or something I could envision being targeted or being put on the “no fly list” for having talked about this or something but it’s certainly not going to stop me from doing anything or talking about it.

Dori Smith: There’s an L.A. Times story about this and then the other by Nick Schwellenbach in Alternet. What do you make of the coverage? Do you feel that it has accurately reported what happened?

Elizabeth Wagoner: Yes, I do. And they’ve luckily been able to talk to a number of law students in the class to corroborate the story because the FBI spin has already started. But I think it’s important that this story be looked at not just in isolation but as part of what’s going on nationally with FBI surveillance all over the country. Because this isn’t just in Austin this is in Philadelphia, it’s in Denver, it’s in San Francisco. So I think it’s great that journalists are making that connection between the surprise revelation at a law school in Austin and actual FBI activity that’s going on everywhere.

Dori Smith: We’ve just seen that the Patriot Act was extended and is official. At what level are you aware though of the implications where the President’s NSA domestic spy program is concerned?

Elizabeth Wagoner: I guess in conversations that I’ve had with the ACLU we’ve talked about that and they’re similar issues and I guess that was everyone’s underlying concern with the NSA program all along was that they were not just listening to supposed Al-Queda terrorists but also listening to average Americans. And this provides more ammunition for that, I mean that concern that they are in fact listening to anti war groups or people with leftist political views and not people with any sort of violent motives.

Dori Smith: And as a law student would you say that you understand the reasons why the laws were enacted to protect the civil rights of innocent people who might be dragged into things like this without any real reason?

Elizabeth Wagoner: Again, I’m no expert on civil liberties, civil rights law, I guess more as a citizen it’s just my instinct that this kind of thing is not what free speech is about. The First Amendment was passed to protect us and we all know that, we all grow up knowing that, and so to have to worry about being watched or listened to for your political views is shocking, is outrageous.

Dori Smith: Elizabeth Wagoner is a law student at the University of Texas in Austin. She’s been in touch with the ACLU of Texas and has also filed a Freedom of Information Act Request to try to obtain a copy of the Powerpoint report the FBI showed to her class on March 8th. Our next guest is Nick Schwellenbach, a writer focusing on national security and a former University of Texas student who is now an investigator at the Washington D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight. Pogo.org -That group is not officially involved with Schwellenbach’s private research and writing on what happened at Elizabeth Wagoner’s law school class.

In his Alternet story he points out that this is not the first time that there have been reports of federal surveillance of political organizations at UT Austin. He and others are now trying to understand the implications.

Nick Schwellenbach: Of course, I’ve studied a little bit about what happened in the 1960s and 1970s with activists being infiltrated by the FBI, activists in the Native American movement, in the Civil Rights movement, and protesters to the Vietnam War. And I was also aware of Congressional investigations into what happened, namely the Church Committee. And even skeptical senators, members of Congress, came around to the conclusion that what our government was doing was having a chilling effect on our civil liberties, namely freedom of speech and assembly. And how can you have a government that suppresses civil liberties in the name of them? It’s a contradictory position that the government was in and that obviously has negative effects on democracy itself.

Dori Smith: Were you at all surprised at some of the groups that were mentioned by this FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent G. Charles Rasner?

Nick Schwellenbach: I was actually somewhat shocked that he said these things publicly and in at least one press account where the reporter actually got a hold of Rasner he admitted that he actually didn’t know what two of the groups, I believe it was Food Not Bombs and Indymedia, what they actually stood for and what they did. And so I found it hard to believe that he would say these things publicly and then turn around and say “I don’t even know why I said this.” And it begs the question what kind of oversight and quality control, how do they decide which groups are on the top terror watch lists? You know can this be easily manipulated by people seeking to suppress political dissidents?
I think that’s a great question and the FBI needs to answer.

Dori Smith: Now how could someone possibly believe that a group calling itself “Food Not Bombs,” would be a dangerous terrorist organization or have any ties to any, because of the name itself right?

Nick Schwellenbach: One Washington writer, his name is Bill Arkin he actually has a very good critique of this. Arkin believes that there is this kind of connecting the dots mentality. And since 9/11 you hear this, from government commissions, intelligence agents, they want to connect the dots. That could be anything from oh this person is laundering money and they are involved with Al-Queda. Now, if we can connect the dots between that person and people they are financially connected to perhaps we can figure out a terror financial network. -Now this kind of thinking can obviously be abused. They’ll say someone in Food Not Bombs might be connected to some anarchist organization that smashed windows at Starbucks during the Seattle protest. And while that may be true can you equate smashing windows at Starbucks with blowing up innocent civilians? I don’t think you can and I don’t think you should. And so you need to distinguish between these two things and I think that this data mining, dot connecting mentality, is you don’t learn to distinguish what is legitimate political protest and what is illegitimate. You lose all sense of barriers and differences are kind of washed away. It’s kind of diabolical because at some point anyone can be a terrorist and so the term itself loses its meaning.

Dori Smith: Anyone can be a terrorist meaning in the sense of how we are all Six Degrees of Separation away? (From film by that name.)

Nick Schwellenbach: Exactly, at a certain level you could indict anyone. It really is dangerous because anyone can then suddenly be held in suspicion if they are at all connected to something that’s outside the mainstream or if they do something even a little abnormal. Then suddenly they can fall under investigation by the FBI. And you know it doesn’t really help fight what are really terrorist activities because then your law enforcement is spread thin; they’re following dead leads, chasing down grandmas and activists who are trying to get food to homeless people.

Dori Smith: Let’s go through your story here. You start out by talking about this agent, G. Charles Rasner who delivered a guest lecture before Professor Ronald Sievert’s U.S. Law and National Security class of approximately 100 students. Now take us to the University of Texas law school here, what’s your best guest as to what agent Rasner was doing here?

Nick Schwellenbach: Counter terrorism in Texas that was the name of his presentation. And of course the FBI wants to reach out to law students. It’s kind of clich‚ but they are the leaders of tomorrow and then they also may go to work for the FBI. So it’s a potential recruiting ground and a place just to get the word out and communicate with the public which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the FBI to do. But I think in this case it kind of backfired because of all the media attention his presentation has garnered.

Dori Smith: You write that in a list of approximately ten groups, Food Not Bombs was listed 7th, Indymedia was listed 10th, with a reference specifically to IndyConference 2005; the Communist Party of Texas made the list, and Rasner explained that these groups could have links to terrorist activity and noted that peaceful sounding group names could cover more violent extremist tactics.

Where you were looking at the groups involved, what kinds of things came to mind as to what these groups could be facing under this new climate where someone like Agent Rasner would just sort of casually mention their names like that?

Nick Schwellenbach: Well there was no explanation for what these groups do so if you don’t know who these groups are, and say you are just an average law student, suddenly when you see Food Not Bombs maybe a flyer or something, I mean what do you think when you hear Food Not Bombs? Do you just associate them with terrorists because you know of nothing else?

Actually, I’m more interested in what’s going on inside the FBI and inside law enforcement. Are they so paranoid that they’re willing to infiltrate or surveil these groups? I mean what kind of resources do they dedicate towards dealing with groups that are on their terrorist watch lists?

I spoke with an FBI San Antonio press person, where Rasner is based out of, and he said well you know just because you are on this watch list doesn’t necessarily mean we are going to detain you or throw you in jail. We may just want to question you. But I wonder what else do they do? Do they surveil them? Is there an extreme culture of paranoia within the FBI and how do they interact with the public if they have such attitudes.

Dori Smith: And then we have to think about what could happen when a group like Indymedia winds up on a terror watch list because if that group is then investigated by federal agencies or homeland security with that label already affixed to it then all kinds of things can be colored in such a way that behavior can be misread, misunderstood right?

Nick Schwellenbach: Yeah and I think the steps it takes for law enforcement to go over the line have been reduced. I can see this is definitely possible. When you are already classified or connected with terrorism, in the case of Indymedia wrongly, you know say there is a controversial story in Indymedia, then the number of steps it will take for the FBI to say shut down their servers has probably been cut down from half a dozen steps to a couple. And so the willingness of law enforcement to violate the civil liberties of an organization like Food Not Bombs or Indymedia or the people involved with those organizations has been reduced.

People take for granted that one of the fundamental documents that creates our government and lays out the social contract between the people and the government is the Bill of Rights. And the Bill of Rights is to protect the people, to insulate the people from the government actually violating their rights. We see that the government is lowering the threshold by which it views these groups and individuals within our society and is more willing perhaps to violate their rights.

Dori Smith: Let’s talk about UT Watch, a good government group, a group monitoring policy?

Nick Schwellenbach: Yeah it was a group I was involved with when I was a student at the University of Texas. We were just a university watchdog group. We wanted our university to be held accountable. We wanted affordable tuition and we wanted the university to be accessible to students regardless of income across the state of Texas, and we were also critical of corporate influence within the university.

Dori Smith: But in the story you have written here that’s in Alternet you point out that an FBI agent questioned a student and asked that student if he had ever been involved with UT Watch. Talk about the circumstances of what happened.

Nick Schwellenbach: Well among the variety of things that we did we discovered that our campus police were involved with the Austin Joint Terrorism Task Force. Now, Joint Terrorism Task Forces are located in a variety of cities across the United States to coordinate activities of law enforcement from the local city law enforcement with the FBI and other law enforcement on the local, state and federal level.

So we discovered that our own campus police were part of the Austin JTTF and we discovered that through a Freedom of Information Act request. Another activity that we were involved with is we discovered that our campus police also had semi automatic weapons and shot guns on campus and you know we made both of these things public. So presumably that is how the Austin FBI actually knew about the existence of UT Watch and knew to ask about our organizations. But there also is the possibility that the University of Texas informed the FBI.

Now, the number one unanswered question of this case is how did the FBI know that this student who is not involved in UT Watch actually made this request in the first place? The request was a state open record request to the University of Texas. And how did the FBI get a hold of that request? Obviously someone at UT gave the FBI this request and said hey this is suspicious, you know, you should check into this, and maybe at the same time they said hey you might want to see if this kid’s connected to this group.

Dori Smith: Do you think that this investigative process that wound up compiling lists of these groups that are known to be anti-war, known to be trying to document wrongdoing on the part of the Bush Administration; is this more evidence that this is a political campaign to repress dissent and to protect the White House from the kind of criticism that these groups have to offer?

Nick Schwellenbach: It can be read that way. I’m really unsure if this is being coordinated from the top down or if this is just a culture of paranoia at the FBI. I’m sure you are aware of this program called COINTELPRO in the 1960s and 1970s. Now that was literally a coordinated campaign to suppress political dissidents. I really don’t know if there is a coordinated campaign. I think the program of COINTELPRO has just become the culture of the FBI.

Like I said we need to know more but that in some ways can be even more diabolical if it’s ingrained in these people’s minds I think but yeah, we do need to see what’s going on from the top down. I mean what kind of orders are agents in their local field offices receiving? Those are questions that need to be answered and I really don’t know the answer. But this is happening nationally and I think that’s clear.

Dori Smith: Nick who spoke with Rene Salinas, the spokesperson for the FBI San Antonio field office?

Nick Schwellenbach: I actually spoke with him.

Dori Smith: Why did Rene Salinas tell you that “the FBI doesn’t put people on the terror watch list for grins?”

Nick Schwellenbach: Well I asked Salinas, how does one get on the terror watch list? And he wouldn’t go into details. He simply said we don’t put them on the list for grins. He said we don’t do it lightly. But he wouldn’t give me any more details than that. He referred me to the National FBI office but I haven’t had a chance to call them. That would be an institution that you would want to get in contact with if you or anyone else interested in this would like to probe farther.

Dori Smith: He said that a group had to act or participate in a group connected with terrorism. What comes to mind when you think about that? I mean suppose a person were to log on and as search engines are notoriously weird come up with a search or a web site that was never intended to be looked for but it had to do with something that the FBI or other agencies were watching. Does that constitute acting or connecting with terrorism?

Nick Schwellenbach: I don’t think it significantly says anything and that’s a great question. Same kind of question; if you look up a book on Osama Bin Laden or the Taliban. Does that connect you with terrorism? I don’t think that’s enough information to say anything. The only thing you may be able to say from that is someone is interested in Al Queda or Osama Bin Laden. But on its own that’s in my opinion not worth looking into any farther.

With these Patriot Act provisions the FBI can look up your library search records and what are they doing with that? And these are the kinds of questions that I have. What are the standards for putting someone on a terror watch list? How does one arrive on it? And what he said was very vague.

Dori Smith: He also mentioned the fact that the terror watch list helps keep different law enforcement agencies informed about suspect characters, is that the word he used?

Nick Schwellenbach: I don’t believe he used “suspect” characters but he meant that though, characters we may want to ask questions of. He didn’t say that if you were in Food Not Bombs you were a terrorist but he did say that members of those organizations may be connected to something and we may want to ask them questions. He wouldn’t elaborate any further.

Dori Smith: Do you get the sense that there is a sophisticated aspect to the individuals and groups they are choosing to look at? Or, do we monitor everyone who emails abroad? Do we monitor everyone who’s in touch with their sister organization in England about the peace march that’s going to take place next month. That kind of thing.

Nick Schwellenbach: Well I think they are doing both. I don’t think there are any boundaries. I think they’ve all been broken down in this connect the dots mentality that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have. And you see with the National Security Agency which is supposed to be the foreign directed government agency, all the barriers are breaking down, the wall between domestic and foreign is being broken down and any kind of walls between what’s a legitimate political activity and what could be considered terrorism they are being broken down. So everything is being scooped up in this kind of vacuum cleaner approach. That’s unhealthy for democracy and it may have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to speak up.

Dori Smith: Or organize and get active.

Nick Schwellenbach: Or organize and get active or do anything or even speak on the phone with someone about what they believe in. I mean something as innocuous as that. But I don’t think it’s any surprise that they do target groups like Indymedia. I mean groups like Indymedia are central to political organizing. And people in Indymedia, you know, they’ll tell you that they are politically active. They don’t feign objectivity. So those people get tagged and connected to activist organizations too. So if you have someone who is connected to an anti war organization of course then at least some of those people are going to be traced back to Indymedia; then everyone in Indymedia is going to get a black mark and put on some terror watch list. -That’s if they are doing this vacuum cleaner approach which it looks like they may be doing. And it’s very dangerous.

Dori Smith: Nick Schwellenbach is currently an investigator at the Washington, D.C. based Project on Government Oversight. Pogo.org A watchdog group that promotes open and accountable government. He’s a former member of University of Texas Watch; UTWatch.org a student based watchdog organization. Schwellenbach is also a free lance writer focusing on national security.

For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced at WHUS Radio for the People at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. WHUS dot org Wed. at 5 pm. Talk Nation dot org or Talk Nation Radio dot org for transcripts and discussion. Our music was provided by Fritz Heede