FBI Investigating "Rights" Groups

This sounds like the complaining parties are protesting a little too much to me.

The organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, are suing for the release of the documents. The organizations contend that the material will show that they have been subjected to scrutiny by FBI task forces set up to combat terrorism.

The FBI has identified 1,173 pages related to the ACLU and 2,383 pages about Greenpeace, but it needs at least until February to process the ACLU files and until June to review the Greenpeace documents, the government said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Now I can easily think of why an anti-terrorism task force would investigate these groups. The simplest one to pop into my mind relates to camouflage. But I'm certain that the ACLU does a complete and thorough check on all it's activities to ensure that there is no possible chance that a suspicious party can't utilize them as a stalking horse. Here's a quote from Anthony Romero of the ACLU.

"I know for an absolute fact that we have not been involved in anything related to promoting terrorism and yet the government has collected almost 1,200 pages on our activities," Romero said. "Why is the ACLU now the subject of scrutiny from the FBI?" [emphasis mine]

The all seeing, all knowing Romero. With denials like that I'm starting to hope that the FBI has done a thorough job.

John Passacantando, Greenpeace's U.S. executive director, said his group is a forceful, but peaceful, critic of the Bush administration's war and environmental policies.

"This administration has a history of using its powers against its peaceful critics. If, in fact, the FBI has been deployed to help in that effort, that would be quite shocking," Passacantando said.

Ah yes, it's only about suppression of speech. Not that an especially loud enterprise like GreenPeace wouldn't be a great screen for a domestic terrorist group like, say, ELF or ALF.

This is the best part of the article.

The ACLU has sought FBI files on a range of individuals and groups interviewed, investigated or subjected to searches by the task forces. The requests also are for information on how the task forces are funded to determine if they are rewarded with government money by labeling high numbers of cases as related to terrorism.

Sounds like a fishing expedition to me. Something that wouldn't be allowed by law enforcement, but will be openly allowed by a group under investigation.

I really don't have any issue with the government showing some due diligence related to these groups. They can protest all they wish that they are clean, but I'd rather have a third party tell me that then their own spokesman. As for the release of the documents, I think they should be released, if the investigation is over and there is no related investigation/prosecution that will be harmed.

You can go to the ACLU website to view their denunciation of the FBI's investigation. I find it almost laughable that these people are almost religiously certain that there is no chance that anyone in these organizations could be using them illicitly.