The War On Terrorism Hippies

In 2004, as the President was working hard to scam Americans into reelecting him, the current retroactive justification for the invasion of Iraq was the spreading of democracy in the Middle East. President Bush was cast as a tough, ass-kicking Johnny Appleseed, spreading democracy in the hardest of soils (spoiler alert: he won the election, but this actually was a spectacular failure).

And as this campaign was set to crescendo in late August in NYC for their 9/11 Masturbation Theatre Republican National Convention, this was going on-

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports....

More alarming details at the link above.

(via Atrios, who said 'Forget civil liberties issues, this is such an absurd waste of resources.')

While the depth of the spying engaged here is disturbing (for both reasons Atrios notes), the general concept is nothing new. In 2005, NBC News revealed that the Pentagon was monitoring and keeping a database on peaceful anti-war groups. And, in early 2006, as the White House insisted its just-revealed warrantless wiretapping program was a limited counter-terrorism program, revelations debunked that, noting that the NSA was sending the FBI a "steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names" which "led to dead ends or innocent Americans". Etc.

No one will be held accountable for this, of course. But just more proof that, for the government, hippies are just as frightening as Osama. It's a real serious war they're fighting.