W
hen
students, faculty, and concerned community members gathered at an
anti-war conference sponsored by the Drake Chapter of the National
Lawyers Guild, on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines on
November 15, little did they expect that some would later become
subject to a government investigation and recipients of Grand Jury
subpoenas more than two months later.
The
forum, titled “Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!”
held workshops on U.S. foreign policy and the economic roots of
terrorism. The next day a small group of protesters gathered outside
the Iowa National Guard headquarters in Johnson. About a dozen demonstrators
were arrested, including one woman charged with assault. The woman,
a librarian at nearby Grinnell College, says she merely went limp
and resisted arrest.
According
to the
Washington Post
, in early February, a federal judge
ordered officials at the uiversity to turn over records about the
forum, which may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades.
The subpoenas were served on four of the activists who attended
the forum by a local sheriff’s deputy who works on the FBI’s
Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The
four activists were: Wendy Vasquez, a member of the American Friends
Service Committee, who visited Iraq in 2002; Elton Davis and Patti
McKee, who were arrested at the November 16 demonstration; and Brian
Terrell, who lives and works with his family and friends at Strangers
and Guests Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa.
Records
were also subpoenaed from the Drake University chapter of the National
Lawyer’s Guild—an organization whose national office experienced
government red-baiting during the McCarthy period. “The subpoena
[which sought records identifying the officers of the Drake chapter
in November 2003, the current location of any local offices, as
well as agendas] has nothing to do with national security and everything
to do with intimidating lawful protestors and suppressing First
Amendment freedom of expression and association,” Heidi Boghosian,
executive director of the Guild, responded in a Guild press release
issued February 6.
The
U.S. attorney’s office in Des Moines also convinced U.S. District
Judge Ronald Longstaff to issue an order prohibiting Drake employees
from talking about a subpoena the university received, Randy Gould
reported on February 9, in his always informative online newsletter,
the
Oread Daily
.
Mark
Smith, a lobbyist for the Washington-based American Association
of University Professors, told the Associated Press that he was
not familiar with any other similar situation where a U.S. university’s
records were subpoenaed. The case, he pointed out, has echoes of
the “red squads” of the 1950s and campus clampdowns on
Vietnam War protesters.
After
several days of refusing to comment, on Monday, February 9, U.S.
Attorney Stephen O’Meara finally offered the “first official
details of what the investigation is about,” TheIowaChannel.com
reported. “O’Meara said reports that the case is being
investigated as an ‘antiterrorism’ matter that involves
the U.S. PATRIOT Act are ‘not accurate’.”
“The
narrow purpose and scope of that inquiry is to determine whether
there were any violations of federal law or prior agreements to
violate federal law, regarding unlawful entry into military property—and
specifically to include whether there were any violations as a result
of an attempt to enter within the fenced, secure perimeter at Camp
Dodge,” O’Meara said in a statement.
Iowa
Senator Tom Harkin indicated his dismay by demanding more information
on the case from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. “I want
to know what is going on. I want to know what is happening here
and why these subpoenas are being issued,” Harkin said, prior
to release of the statement from the U.S. attorney in Des Moines.
The
four anti-war activists were set to appear before a Grand Jury when
they received word that the subpoenas had been withdrawn by the
Justice Department. Brian Terrell told a crowd of about 100 cheering
people outside the federal courthouse: “We made them want to
stop and we have to make sure they never want to do this again.”
“If
it was just a trespassing investigation, why seek the membership
records of the National Lawyers Guild,” asked Ben Stone, executive
director of the Iowa ACLU. “If this was an attempt to chill
protests through the aggressive policing of a run-of-the-mill crime,
we’ve got a serious problem in America.”
Al
Overbaugh, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office, told
the AP that the investigation was not over, but he didn’t issue
any further comment. Bruce Nestor, a Minneapolis attorney
and past president of NLG who worked on the case, said that the
subpoenas were withdrawn because of the “tremendous response
from across the political spectrum condemning the use of the grand
jury.”
I
t’s
really hard to tell what this means in a broader or policy sense
for the Department of Justice,” Bruce Nestor said. “Clearly
the FBI memo reported by the
New
York Times
in October directed the joint terrorism task forces
to compile information about political protesters. The actions of
the U.S. attorney’s office in Iowa appear to be consistent
with the directive in that memo. Whether that means that the Department
of Justice intends to expand the use of the grand jury to investigate
political protest movements is unclear. In this instance they clearly
used the grand jury for that purpose.”
Whether
or not the convening of the grand jury was a DOJ trial balloon or
the actions of an overzealous U.S. attorney in Iowa, Nestor believes
it is part of “a pattern of events taking place across the
country.” During the past year, police agencies across the
country have not only been gathering information, but also have
used strong- armed tactics against peaceful political demonstrators.
In early April 2003, acting on warnings from the California Anti-Terrorism
Information Center (CATIC), the Oakland, California police department
indiscriminately fired wooden slugs at and injured several non-violent
anti-war protesters—and several non-protesting Port workers
as well—who were demonstrating at the Port of Oakland.
In
Atlanta, the city’s police department “routinely places
under surveillance anti-war protesters and others exercising their
free-speech rights to demonstrate,” the
Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
reported. In Los Angeles, the police department maintains files
on anti-war protesters it deems capable of “a significant disruption
of the public order.” In Miami, the sight of the recent police
riot during the November demonstrations against the Free Trade Area
of the Americas, “police routinely videotape demonstrators
and infiltrate rallies with plainclothes officers,” Detective
Joey Giordano of the Miami-Dade Police Department, told the
Journal-Constitution
.
During
the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Paul Weyrich, recognized as
one of the “founding fathers” of the Christian Right,
suggested that either Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security, or Congress, launch a full-scale investigation
behind the funding sources of what he termed “neo-Communist”
groups organizing the anti-war movement. While no full-blown congressional
ly-sanctioned investigation of the peace movement has been initiated,
local police departments, in cooperation with regional FBI offices,
have established anti-war investi- gative units.
“This
Administration is using all sorts of tactics to marginalize dissenters,”
NLG’s Avery pointed out. “They’ve used pre-emptive
strikes, police violence, and have resorted to penning off demonstrators
in so-called free speech zones, so that when the president travels
around the country people can’t get within several blocks of
him.” At this time, Avery said he wasn’t aware of other
cases involving the convening of grand juries to go after dissenters.
The
ACLU wrote in a February 10 press release, “The Justice Department’s
decision to quash the [Iowa] subpoenas comes on the heels of reports…that
U.S. Army Intelligence contacted organizers of a seminar at the
University of Texas Law School at Austin on sexism and Islam.”
Local
NLG members were asked by law enforcement officials to provide a
list of conference attendees because persons under investigation
had been present. The NLG is concerned that the University of Texas
could be next in line for a Justice Department fishing expedition.
Bill Berkowitz
is a freelance writer covering conservative movements.
