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Posted on Wed, Aug. 18, 2004
Missouri, Kansas activists interviewed about potential attacks
DAVID TWIDDY
Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - FBI counterterrorism agents interviewed at least a dozen political activists in Kansas and Missouri last month about potential attacks on news vehicles at the Democratic national convention in Boston, activists and FBI officials said.
Spokesmen for the bureau said the questioning is routine when authorities receive credible information involving potential violence, especially since the Sept. 11 attacks.
But activists question why they were targeted and said they believe the FBI was trying to intimidate them from organizing or participating in political protests during the Democratic convention and the Republican convention later this month in New York.
They note, for example, that three activists in the northeast Missouri town of Kirksville received subpoenas to appear before a grand jury for an investigation into domestic terrorism the day they planned to travel to Boston.
The American Civil Liberties Union in St. Louis, which is representing the three Kirksville men, didn't return repeated calls for comment. But a statement posted on the ACLU of Eastern Missouri's Web site condemned the interviews as the FBI trying to intimidate activists under the cloak of counterterrorism.
"These young men are quite terrified by the experience of being targeted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force because of their protest activities," wrote Denise Lieberman, the ACLU branch's legal director. "The FBI interrogations have had a chilling effect on free speech."
Pete Krusing, a spokesman for the St. Louis bureau of the FBI, denied that the questioning of activists was aimed at discouraging protests.
"It's not just because they're a protester or they may be a protester," he said. "There has to be some indication that they have knowledge or they may have knowledge about some activity."
He added that the interviews, other than those subject to a subpoena, were voluntary.
"In these interviews, people weren't dragged out of their house and placed under lights," he said.
U.S. Attorney Jim Martin said he couldn't confirm that there was a grand jury investigation or comment on a specific case, but added, "If we get a bomb threat, we will do everything we can to make sure that threat doesn't become a reality."
In Kansas City, two activists who received visits from agents said they never heard of plans for violence at the conventions and don't know why they showed up on the FBI's radar.
Roommates Nate Hoffman and Jeff Kinder, both 21 and economics students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said they were first approached by FBI agents on July 23.
Kinder said the agents asked him if he intended to do anything violent at the conventions, whether he heard of anyone planning violence during the conventions and that it was a felony to withhold information.
Kinder, who said he used to consider himself an anarchist, told the agents he didn't know anything. He says he still doesn't.
"Everybody I know is trying to build a mass movement, and you can't build a mass movement in America by blowing stuff up," he said. "I don't know where the cops got that from."
Hoffman, who said he built his first political Web site when he was 15, met with the agents in a Kansas City coffee house but refused to answer their questions without a lawyer present.
"They told me that in their experience that when somebody didn't want to talk to them that meant they probably had something to hide," he said.
The agents gave him a business card and told him to call them back or they would find him again the following week. Hoffman said he never called them and hasn't heard from them since.
"It was pretty intimidating," he said. "I wasn't planning on going to any of the conventions. You always hear that when you become politically active, you're put on some list. But it doesn't become real until you get a visit from the FBI."
Jeff Lanza, a spokesman for the FBI in Kansas City, said he couldn't comment on whether agents had talked to Hoffman and Kinder but said the bureau had interviewed about a dozen people in the Kansas City area and Lawrence, Kan., as part of a nationwide canvassing by agents in the days leading up to the Democratic convention.
"Ultimately, we were looking for the people who wanted to carry (the attacks) out, but to do that, you have to talk to people who might have knowledge of the plan," Lanza said, adding that the bureau is no longer conducting interviews locally.
Hoffman said he may have been targeted because he helped organize an anarchist meeting two years ago in Lawrence and operates a Web site called Kansas City Direct Action Network, which is a message and information board for activists. He also co-founded the Infoshop, a Kansas City bookstore specializing in socialist and other left-leaning literature.
But he said he felt it was a big jump to being considered affiliated with domestic terrorists.
"I'm trying to reach out to people and take away the image of violence that we're always accused of," he said. "I think (the FBI is) playing off stereotypes."