Surprise? FBI spies on Bush critics

Those who remember when the CIA and FBI engaged in spying on left wing groups, Martin Luthur King Jr., ordinary citizens, and Nixon's "enemies list" may not be surprised to learn that the FBI is up to the same old tricks. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the FBI is again armed with expanded powers to collect information on ordinary citizens. And it has been doing so.

That is what the FBI itself disclosed in federal court yesterday. It acknowledged that it has collected 1,173 pages of files on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 2,383 on Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group, and an undetermined number of files on an organisation called United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups. The coalition allegedly was planning protests at the time of the Republican Party National Convention in New York.

...Beau Grosscup, a professor of international relations at California State University and author of ”The Newest Explosions of Terrorism: Latest Sites of Terrorism in the 90s and Beyond”, told IPS, ”All one has to do is look at the annual FBI report on terrorism to discover that as they watch the ACLU, Earth First, Greenpeace and the peace movement, they refuse to apply their political attention to the violence of the rightwing and in particular anti-environmental groups.”