Antiwar Activists Denounce FBI Infiltrators, Organize National Day of Action

“Karen Sullivan” and “Daniela Cardenas” pretended to care about peace, about justice – and about solidarity with those working for the same.

They were lying.

As the Minnesota Anti-War Committee revealed this month, the characters known as Karen and Daniela were not who they seemed. Though they appeared to be committed peace activists, even going so far as to organize protests and fundraise, they were in fact FBI agents. Their great service to the country? Disrupting peaceful antiwar activism.

“When I speak of disruption, I am referring to an August 2009 solidarity delegation to Palestine,” says Jess Sundin, a founding member of the Anti-War Committee. “Officer Sullivan made public her plans to join this delegation, she helped to promote it and fundraise for it here in our community. At the same time, she was secretly working to sabotage the trip entirely. Through her work, reports were passed onto Israeli authorities, who then barred entry to the two Minneapolis women traveling with Karen Sullivan.”

At this point, even supporters of the war on terror ought to be asking just what the hell is the FBI doing wasting taxpayer money and its finite resources on infiltrating groups of non-violent peaceniks when – as the government never tires of reminding us – there are dangerous terrorists out there that need to be stopped? It's all about priorities, it seems, and respecting First Amendment-protect speech isn't one of them.

And it hasn't been for a long time. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI notoriously spied on dangerous rabble-rousers like Martin Luther King Jr., and during the reign of George W. Bush, FBI agents infiltrated antiwar protests, according to a recent report from the bureau's Inspector General, detailing to their superiors the number of Middle Eastern-looking faces they saw.

Since 2001, “A secretive, unaccountable, post-9/11 homeland security apparatus has increasingly turned inward on American citizens,” writes Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent in the Minneapolis field office. As we've reported here at Change.org, dozens of anti-war activists have had their homes and offices raided for allegedly providing “material support” – while at the same time, prominent GOP officials like Rudy Giuliani proudly boast of their support of the MEK, a State Department-designated terrorist organization that was armed and funded by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

“A good place to begin reform is by challenging the handful of words in the 'Patriot Act' that enlarged the definition of 'material support of terrorism' to encompass 'expert advice and assistance' given to designated 'foreign terrorist organizations,'” writes Rowley. “This phrase essentially makes mere advocacy of peace and humanitarian issues illegal with respect to groups listed by the State Department.”

And, as we've seen, the “material support” language isn't applied equally – otherwise the mayor of 9/11 would be behind bars – but is instead used to stifle dissent and harass those who question the Nobel laureate's strategy of bombing (and bombing) nations on the other side of the globe in the name of peace and goodwill.

Around two dozen nonviolent peace activists – redundant, I know, but try telling that to the FBI – have been subpoenaed to testified before a grand jury thanks to the expansive, selectively enforced “material support” law. But if the goal's to silence activists, and all signs are that it is, it isn't working.

As Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin told Change.org in an interview after the first raids, the U.S. government's campaign of intimidation has actually enlivened the antiwar movement, spurring rallies across the country. And activists are organizing a "national day of action" for January 25 to express solidarity with those targeted by the FBI. Find a rally in your area and make sure to let the Obama administration know that, like its war in Afghanistan, the war on dissent isn't working.

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