New information about Bush’s spying on Americans has been discovered by the ACLU due to a Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request: The FBI is essentially using right-wing think tank reports as “intelligence” against environmental groups. An examination of 2,000 pages of documents showed that the FBI relied “`pretty heavily on research done by a couple of think tanks that are very conservative, pro-business, anti-regulation in their mindset and their mission’ for information on Greenpeace, a longtime environmental group involved in peaceful protest activities.”
ACLU associate legal director stated that use of right-wing think tank material in FBI investigations suggests that “the FBI is not just doing this to investigate crimes, but is doing it purposefully to suppress legitimate dissent and criticism of the administration’s policies.” One document on the subject of Greenpeace’s anti-Star Wars activities indicated that the FBI was concerned that such protests could harm the public image of the weapons program:
“Now, to me that sounds very much like the FBI trying to assist the administration in preventing criticism of its positions and programs from getting out there in the public. And that’s a very dangerous job for the FBI to be engaged in.”
While it was “hard to determine how these documents from right-wing think tanks were used,” the FBI did not have documents from “counter-balancing organisations.”
Prior to this administration, many Americans may have believed that when our government used the word “intelligence” to describe information obtained by the CIA or FBI, that it was describing credible, fully vetted information that was reliable and well-sourced.
But, now we know that the White House cited statements by Iraqi National Congress members, including Chalabi, as evidence of WMDs in Iraq after the CIA/Pentagon paid the Rendon Group to create INC, install Chalabi as its leader, and then sell Iraq War to the world in media blitz. We also know that the White House leaked WMD “evidence” to Judith Miller of the New York Times, and then cited the paper’s story as “evidence” on Sunday talk shows. Libby leaked to Miller that Saddam had aluminum tubes for nuke program and then Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell and Meyers hit the Sunday circuit, all pointing to Libby’s planted story as the evidence that the “smoking gun” could be a “mushroom cloud.” And, we now know that the White House theory that Saddam may hand WMDS to his terrorist allies to attack the US was based on a theory espoused by a right-wing think tank and a book by a right-wing Mylroie who happened to co-author a different book with Judith Miller:
“Mylroie believes that Saddam was behind every anti-American terrorist incident of note in the past decade, from the levelling of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 to September 11 itself. She is, in short, a cranky conspiracist – but her neoconservative friends believed her theories, bringing her on as a terrorism consultant at the Pentagon.”
Now, it appears that right-wing think tanks are providing their partisan theories to the FBI, which may be using it as “intelligence” to conduct surveillance and monitoring of environmental groups, which this administration views as “domestic terrorists.” Anyone feeling safer now?