#68 March/April 2004
The Washington Free Press Washington's Independent Journal of News, Ideas & Culture
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REGULARS

READER MAIL
Immigration, ads, environment, attorney retainers, kucinich, prison

MEDIA BEAT by Norman Solomon
UN spying and the evasions of US media

NATURE DOC by Dr. John Ruhland, ND
Let's have a pox party!

BOB'S RANDOM LEGAL WISDOM by Bob Anderton
Dog Law

RAD VIDEOS by Dr. John Ruhland
Racism and corruption in the FBI/CIA/Police

GOOD IDEAS FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES by Doug Collins
The Netherlands: Reliability

FREE THOUGHTS

Ten Everyday Things You Can Do To Fix Your Country
by Alicia Elliott

Take a Quack At Our Ongoing Rubber Ducky Essay Contest

Overheard...
by Styx Mundstock

Who the heck reads this paper?
by Doug Collins

POLITICS

Lootocracy
by Paul Rogat Loeb

We Need Reforms for Presidential Nominations
opinion by Rob Richie and Steven Hill

MEDIA

Billboards for the People
Local girl makes good
by Alicia Elliott

The Perils of Progressive Publishing

NATURE

THE FOREST OR THE TREES?
Back on the chopping block
by Eric de Place

WORKPLACE

Illegal Immigration: A World Concern
by Domenico Maceri

Workplace News Summaries
compiled by Paul Schafer

HEALTH

Vaccination Decisions: part 3 of a series
A Parent's Personal Judgements on Specific Vaccines
opinion by Doug Collins

LAW

I Almost Killed My Son
by T. G.

Legal Briefs
by various writers

Settlement On Jefferson County Jail Conditions
from the ACLU of WA

WAR

FBI Infiltrating Peace Groups
from the ACLU

Expendable Pawns, Collateral Damage
by Donald Torrence

CORPORATIONS

Multiple Corporate Personality Disorder
The Ten Worst Corporations of 2003
by Paul Schafer

CULTURE

Poets of the Non-Existent City: Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era
review by Robert Pavlik

FBI Infiltrating Peace Groups

from the ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and members of a Fresno peace group today filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act seeking information about the government's infiltration of a local peace group.

The requests were filed with the offices of the FBI and US Attorney, which maintain a Joint Terrorism Task Force with local law enforcement agencies in the Fresno area.The action was prompted in part by the New York Times' disclosure last November of an internal FBI bulletin advising local law enforcement agencies around the country to monitor anti-war activists and to report to the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

"The FBI memo confirms that the federal government is targeting innocent Americans engaged in nothing more than lawful dissent," said Julia Harumi Mass, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. "We are filing these information demands because the public has a right to know how Aaron Kilner, a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's Department anti-terrorism team, came to infiltrate Peace Fresno, and what policies and procedures are in place to authorize similar spying on other community groups."

The group has already filed requests for information under the California Public Records Act with the Fresno County Sheriff's Department and the Fresno Police Department. Those agencies denied having any records regarding Peace Fresno or its members and refused to turn over requested manuals, pamphlets and procedures related to intelligence and surveillance.

Peace Fresno members discovered one of its members had actually been a government agent when the Fresno Bee published an obituary on September 1, 2003, about Aaron Kilner's death in a motorcycle accident. In his obituary, Kilner--known to Peace Fresno as Aaron Stokes--was identified as a "member of the Fresno County Sheriff's Department anti-terrorist team." When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read the obituary they began piecing the story together.

"We were shocked and deeply disturbed to discover that one of our members--who had quietly participated in meetings, vigils and demonstrations for several months--turned out to be a government spy," said Camille Russell, who was president of Peace Fresno at the time of the infiltration. "We believe we were targeted because we are outspoken critics of the Bush administration's policies and we fear that the government has secret, potentially inaccurate records on Peace Fresno and its individual members."

Catherine Campbell, a local attorney representing Peace Fresno added: "The California Constitution prohibits this kind of infiltration without some specific suspicion of criminal activity. Even if local law enforcement officers are acting under the direction of the FBI or other federal authorities, they are still bound by the privacy guarantees embodied in this state's constitution."

The ACLU's FOIA request to the FBI and US Attorney is online at www.aclunc.org/privacy/040129-foia.pdf. For an example of the FOIA and Privacy Act requests filed on behalf of individual Peace Fresno members go to www.aclunc.org/privacy/040129-russell.pdf.


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