Ashcroft defends interviews with protesters

Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, August 21, 2004


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Attorney General John Ashcroft defended recent FBI interviews of political activists across the country Friday, saying federal agents questioned only protesters the government believed were plotting to firebomb media vehicles at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month or might have known about such plots.

Political activists and civil rights advocates scoffed at Ashcroft's explanation, calling his defense of the interviews part of a government campaign to intimidate protesters.

"They see that activists are trying to send a message, and they don't want activists getting their message out," said Rachael Perrotta, 24, one of the protesters interviewed by the FBI. "They want to marginalize us. I think it's a smear campaign by the FBI and the federal government to discredit the protest movement."

Amid government warnings that terrorists might want to disrupt this year's election, federal agents have interviewed political activists around the nation in recent weeks. Protesters and FBI officials said the agents questioned the activists about potential violence during the national political conventions and other election-year events.

Lawyers, civil liberties activists and several Democratic congressmen have criticized the interviews as political harassment, saying they were designed to stifle protests and violated the protesters' First Amendment rights. At a news conference in Washington on Friday, Ashcroft called these accusations an "outrageous distortion."

"We interviewed a very limited number of people that we believed were either participating in a plan to criminally and violently disrupt the Democratic National Convention, or individuals that might have known something about that plan," Ashcroft said.

Before the Democratic convention, U.S. Secret Service and police officials had warned of an alleged plot by self-described anarchists to throw homemade explosives, known as Molotov cocktails, at vans of television crews covering the convention. The warning was based on claims of an informant who described such a plot, a senior U.S. law enforcement official told the Associated Press this week.

New York City law officers also have warned of potential violence for the Republican convention, which starts Aug. 30. Authorities anticipate that hundreds of thousands of protesters will descend upon the city, and some groups have announced they are planning to "disrupt" the convention, although no groups have mentioned using bombs or any other weapons.

Gary Bald, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, said the bureau does not have enough evidence to move against any group or person who might be plotting violent protests in New York. Federal investigators have infiltrated some organizations and are monitoring Internet sites that publish protest plans for updates about potential violence.

Protesters who say they have been interviewed by the FBI denounced Ashcroft's allegations that they would target the media, calling his claims a pretext for a political crackdown.

"I am a media relations coordinator. The thought that I would be involved in anything like this is just so preposterous," said Perrotta, who is managing media coverage for an antiwar, anti-Bush march from Boston to New York called DNC2RNC that began after the Democratic convention.

Perrotta said the four FBI agents who interviewed her in Boston last month never asked her specific questions about firebombing television trucks during the Democratic convention. She said they asked general questions about violence during national political events.

Perrotta said she had never heard any of her fellow political activists talk about using bombs. "This includes anarchist groups and liberal groups," she said. She said the FBI was "spreading a lie."

Bill Dobbs, spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, a national coalition of more than 800 antiwar groups whose 250,000 members plan to march across New York on Aug. 29, also said he had not heard of any plans to throw homemade bombs at the media.

"This sounds like classic fear-mongering by law-enforcement on the eve of a major protest," Dobbs said. "It poisons the atmosphere."

Other activists questioned Ashcroft's assertion that the FBI interviewed only a "handful" of protesters. Ann Beeson, associate legal director of American Civil Liberties Union, said she was aware of dozens of interrogations in Colorado, a handful more in Missouri, and several in New York and Massachusetts.

Joe Parris, an FBI spokesman, has said federal agents had interviewed "around 25" activists in different states.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the government's treatment of political activists was reminiscent of the anti- Communist crackdowns of the Cold War era.

"The Ashcroft Justice Department has taken ... a perverse interest in peace demonstrators," Turley said. "Pretty soon federal prisons are gonna look a lot like the streets of San Francisco."

Chronicle news services contributed to this report.E-mail Anna Badkhen at abadkhen (at) sfchronicle.com.

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