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The FBI and Federal Prosecutors Say My Journalism Is “Extremist”
I recently wrote about Jordan Halliday, an animal rights activist who was jailed for refusing to name names before a federal grand jury investigating the release of mink from fur farms. Prosecutors urged a harsh prison sentence because Halliday has publicly vowed to resist the political witch hunt.
In the sentencing memorandum, they said that, while awaiting sentencing, Halliday continued to protest, continued to associate with animal rights activists, and continued to urge activists to support him.
And then prosecutors described to the judge what they said is an even more troubling association.
“Of More Serious Concern”
“Of more serious concern is the fact uncovered by the FBI” that Jordan Halliday was mentioned in a photo caption on this website, they said.
The FBI had given prosecutors an article I wrote titled, “BREAKING: FBI Raids Activist House in Utah, Connected to Iowa ALF Investigation.” I covered this story as it happened, and scooped local press. I was able to do this because, as I noted in the article, “I just got off the phone with multiple housemates who were there witnessing the raid, and who were able to read the warrant.” The housemates called me because I have been reporting on the FBI’s attacks on animal rights and environmental activists since 2001. I later updated the blog post with a photo from the scene that credited Jordan Halliday.
To me, this was Journalism 101 — work fast, then flesh out details and add a photo. To the FBI, this quick work was the evidence of a network of extremists. Prosecutors state in the sentencing memo: “The search warrant was sealed, as is typical, with no warning or public knowledge ahead of the time of service. Nonetheless, photograph taken contemporaneous with the execution of the search warrant service has been attributed to the defendant on the animal rights extremist website” GreenIsTheNewRed.com.
Guilty By Association
It is not surprising to see a government sentencing memo try to connect a defendant to “extremists.” I’ve covered this in many, many prosecutions. The intention is to use guilt by association to secure additional prison time. For example, prosecutors will say that Joe Defendant is friends with drug dealers, or that Jane Defendant’s family are in a gang.
In this case, the government labels journalism as extremism.
Prosecutors say that since my article mentioned Halliday in a photo caption, it means he placed himself “above the law” and violated an order to have “No association with animal group[s] A.L.F., E.L.F., Vegan Straight Edge (VSE).” [The ALF and ELF are the underground Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. "Vegan Straight Edge" is a punk lifestyle, not a terrorist group, and I'm having a hard time even typing this explanation without being reminded by these lyrics.]
Packed into that short accusation are two dangerous unstated assumptions:
- Anyone who takes a photo of law enforcement is associated with those being targeted. Keep in mind that this raid led to no arrests. Yet the government says that merely possessing a photo of it implies criminal association, and is acting “above the law.”
- Anyone who writes about what the government is doing to animal rights activists is an “animal rights extremist” by extension. This is the most dangerous message being sent by the government. My writing and commentary on civil liberties issues has been featured by NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and many other of the top media outlets in the country. I have lectured at nearly 100 universities and associations, including Georgetown Law School, Yale Law School, and the House of Democracy and Human Rights in Berlin. My book was awarded a Kirkus Star for “remarkable merit,” and has been praised by Publishers Weekly, Utne, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and many others. I say all this hoping to make clear that if my journalism is being labeled “extremist,” if my entire body of professional work can be reduced to extremism because I ask questions about what the government and corporations are doing, then everyone is at risk.
Chilling Free Speech
If there has been one theme running through all of my work, through every blog post and book chapter and speaking event, it is this: fear. Corporations and politicians are using post-9/11 fears of terrorism to push their political agenda. Fear is being manufactured and manipulated by people in power in order to make people think twice about using their rights.
This chilling effect on First Amendment activity is at the core of lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The vague and overly broad language of the law, and the sweeping attempts of prosecutors to utilize it (such as this grand jury investigation), is unconstitutional not because it has expressly prohibited First Amendment activity, but because it has chilled it.
This is another representation of that constitutional threat, in two ways:
It makes me feel that using my First Amendment rights puts me at risk. Describing journalism as “extremist” in the context of a terrorism investigation is, to put it mildly, unsettling. This isn’t the first time I have learned of surveillance like this. I have previously written about how my writing and speeches have been listed in Counter-Terrorism Unit briefing documents.
More importantly, it makes me feel that using my First Amendment rights puts my sources at risk. When I saw that my work was being used by the FBI and prosecutors against Halliday, it made me sick to my stomach. It’s one thing to see my name in terrorism files, it’s another to see my work being used by prosecutors to punish people I have written about. An old muckraking motto is “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.” To have my work afflict people who already have the full weight of the U.S. government pressing down upon them goes against everything I believe about this craft.
A Pattern on Behavior
You might be asking: Was the government really trying to send these messages? Or was this a case of bad FBI intelligence and prosecutors who don’t “get it”? (To steal a line from The Daily Show, “Are they evil, or stupid?”)
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I know government officials have done this before. When I visited Daniel McGowan in the Communications Management Unit, prison officials did not threaten me. They did not expressly prohibit me from writing about the experimental prison units. Instead, they told McGowan that if I wrote about the visit he would be punished for my words.
I also know that prosecutors said Jordan Halliday needs to be punished for his “stardom,” so “defendant’s supporters are not emboldened to follow the defendant’s contemptuous ways.” Through these and many other examples, it’s clear that the government is openly trying to send a message.
And so, as I edit this, about to hit “publish,” I keep hesitating. Will writing about this amplify that message of fear? Everything I do depends on the trust I have built with countless activists and their friends and families. What if this makes people afraid to be mentioned on this website?
The mere fact that I have to ask myself those questions is a testament to how much we have lost in the name of fighting “terrorism.”
This pattern of conduct by the FBI and federal prosecutors is nothing less than an attack on the First Amendment, and an attack on journalism. It is an attempt to foster distrust between author and source, and it is an attempt to shake the confidence that one can report freely and without retribution, both of which are essential to any meaningful expression of journalism in a democracy.
42 Comments so far
Show AllEnvironmentalism and Animal Rights, among other causes that interfere with unfettered corporate plunder, have been declared 'terrorists.' This is nothing new, as union organizers and contraception information providers, among others, were prey to the same sort of government repression in prior times.
Mr. Potter: It goes beyond the following:
"it is an attempt to shake the confidence that one can report freely and without retribution, both of which are essential to any meaningful expression of journalism in a democracy."
Even before the passage of the should-be illegal NDAA, some of us in the C.D. forum noted the nascent path of its legal trajectory. Loose language was already being used to equate "terrorism" not only with those upholding animal rights, but gearing up to include any persons who oppose any number of environmentally unsustainable (and often deadly to persons & ecosystems) practices.
The full measure of these encroachments upon Civil Liberties is to fully marginalize, to the point of threatening with incarceration, dissent.
Welcome to the Homeland Authoritarian State. If you don't think the business of this nation is war and corporate-led environmental/natural resource depletion, then you are already marginally an enemy of the state. Should you speak out, publish opinions, document the facts with photos, or effectively organize others in support of SACRED causes, your shit list status increases. Nor are you guaranteed the right to a trial, and "evidence" against you can be kept hidden under the State Secet's Clause.
The battle between the old ways through the Keepers Of the Dying Paradigm, and those who embody the vision of what will come next has begun. We know the winners are on the side of Light & Life. What we can't know is how difficult and deadly the process of this Transition will turn out to be. I CAN say, given "the stars" as my witness, that the next 3 years are critical, and apt to be incredibly trying. So we must do what we can to build up Soul Stamina.
Total acuedro, 3 years, max, the changes are now; and more to come. The struggle, La Lucha, will be intense and difficult. Light, Love, Peace and Compassion will triumph.
The ways of fascist police state amerika and its allies, will be ways of the dark past !
The USG is using the Machiavellian tactic of fear to rule the USAn's/world. Not because fear is the superior of the 3 options which are fear, love, fear and love.. Fear is used because it is the easiest of the 3 Machiavelli tactics., not the most effective just the easiest. The USG politicians, the corporate and the pretend christian televangelists all use fear to manipulate the population because they are notoriously lazy.The glue for the fear strategy is Karl Rove and Grover Norquist both Machiavelli proponents.Herman Goering spelled it out in one short paragraph, how easy it is to implement fear to manipulate any society to do the bidding of the fear mongering rulers. Fear is costly, but with fear the cost is never taken into account because the fear mongers are lazy.
From Wikileaks, to Bradley Manning, to Tim DeChristopher, to whistleblowers of all types, to Will Potter, yes, there is absolute proof Obama's Injustice Department and its cast of authoritarians within the many coercive agencies are following a policy meant to Terrorize anyone challenging their War on Liberties.
I am reminded of something I read once about Orwell's novel, 1984. When Russian emigres read the book they were `astonished that Orwell had never visited Stalin's Russia. It was so realistic.
MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING
Last Monday's meeting of Eat An FBI Agent was poorly attended. There were only four attendees: me and three alphabet undercover agents.
MCH &(# $&!$ # T(#ZG APR *#$@ +*(%^$@@
Nolyrt
It's evidence of how law enforcement works these day Will. I mean there is crime a second in this country by more people more insidious and more dangerous to this country and here we have the fbi conjuring up extremists and pulling protesters out of their bunghole. But that does seem a little bit appropriate since the fbi is highly criminal enough because they refuse to release the video of what actually hit the pentagon on 9/11/01. Definitely not a defender of truth and justice in the good old u.s. of corporations where crime is absolutely rampant at the top, middle and at the bottom.
Hard to imagine that I and many others believed in the integrity of the fbi but not any more and especially since 9/11/01. Law enforcement and the judiciary are a broken and subverted entity(s). Criminal status is predicated on how much money one does NOT HAVE these days.
These agents of the federal government are at war. Everybody, anywhere and everywhere are considered the enemy. We are the enemy....
So much for the land of the free........
Thomas Gilbert-
Once again, to really understand how deep and durable this network--suspicious of those with a GENUINE interest in liberty, free speech, and free assembly--goes, I recommend the book, "Dangerous Dossiers." Our "Intelligence" Services have been keeping records on writers, poets, playwrights, artists and other cultural persons of interest for DECADES. While The Sunshine Law and the relative liberties of the l960's & l970's made these incentives disappear, they've returned with a vengeance that's thoroughly assisted by the new ease of computers (along with Internet technology). I'm convinced that some of us have dossiers.
This is not about defending freedom of political belief so the comparisons to McCarthyism and HUAC are not valid.
The activists committed crimes of trespass and who knows what else.
I'm sure a lawyer will along to spell it out better than I can .
This has everything to do with Potter's WRITING being labeled "extremist," which IS a valid comparison to HUAC and McCarthyism.
No offense, but this is taking a narrow and authoritarian-friendly view of Potter's predicament.
The government is definitely encroaching upon and eroding this journalist's freedom of expression and association, and imposing a pejorative "guilt by association" approach. This is exactly the Big Chill technique of McCarthyism.
An authoritarian police state seeks to erode and eliminate the protections of any civil liberty that hampers its efficient and draconian operation.
Speaking of lawyers, this story reminds me of the trend in recent decades of prosecutors and "justice" departments to aggressively go after attorneys who represent designated Enemies of the State in "organized crime" and "terrorism" cases.
Frustrated by the prospect of accused suspects having effective legal representation, thus enhancing the possibility of acquittal, prosecutors began to intentionally target attorneys upon the theory that they are actually part of the criminal or terrorist organization, and not entitled to "hide behind" the shield of civil liberties.
I'm sure if Lynne Stewart has Internet access-- not likely-- she will be along to spell it out better than I can.
What bothers me are the mink farmers and other private corporations that committ cruelty to animals.
It's these corporations cynically and corruptly using the law, influencing the law and making the law to protect their own financial interests that has me worried.
So the problem becomes when the law and it's enforcement has become corrupted how do people respond to anti-social behaviours?
Civil disobedience is one way, another is through lobbying the people, the politicians and stores that sell products of cruelty.
I wish the article focused more on how industry created and is protected by the corrupt system than just the corrupt system.
Why is it that your knee JERK reflex is to always take the side of State Power, or the armed forces, or another particularly egregious aspect of the status quo? If you're not in uniform, your brain is, Ms. mortuary.
I see, I can question everything but you.
Got it.
10's of millions of USAn'ers construe the Constitution designation of the POTUS as the Commander in Chief [CC] means that the POTUS is CC of all USAn's when it means that the POTUS is CC of the armed forces only,
The fascist police state federal oppressors, based in warshington, trespass on human rights all over the Planet at every moment !
You know, now that I think of it, a lot of those OWS protesters looked like they were jaywalking.
That just ruins everything. I guess we need to put more trust in the market and get rid of any pesky regulations that are stopping the brokerage firms/banks from helping the economy recover.
It's all so clear now.
Another asinine comment from "Morticia". (What kind of an infantile handle is "Morticia"?) You need to go back and get some remedial reading assistance. This blog is not about an animal rights advocate, but rather a journalist being threatened with "guilt by association" by a fascist legal system and a GESTAPO like investigative agency that works in tandem with it.
And why are they picking on journalists who associate with animal rights activists?
Why are animal rights activists being victimised?
iow, who is the state apparatus protecting and why?
Oh, and it seems to me you don't know what the gestapo is like. Well I do. From the first hand accounts of my mother who had a few run ins with them when she was a teen.
They weren't nice.
"McCarthyism anybody!" Guilt by association is McCarthyism, and the "good old USA" is at again. It's right in there with US exceptionalism.
Time to bring this madness to a halt!
"Lies told about the Nazis!" Why! The truth would surely be enough to choke a horse! What they did gives Neanderthals in the middle of Europe the worst of names, and that's really saying something. Can you say tribal warfare inventors? Read European history at least by real experts and it will open your eyes. Forget about the Holies "a pair of 45s."
Shades of the Hollywood 10! That was back before that Wheeling West Virginia talk by Joseph McCarthy.
Looking backing on that insanity looks as if it came right out of Prussia or Germany, with Prussia being the dominant and most war mongering imperialist part of Germany historically. Oh, by taking over our intelligence appartus with the help of some unpatriotic and either pro Nazi or soft on Nazi Amurkans, the German Nazis took control of US foreign policy. Do read the documeted chapter and verse account of "Blowback" by Christopher Simpson then of the Institute for Policy Studies about same. Not even mentioning the Nazi (We'll "kill you and drink you're blood" Werewolf movement lasting up until at least 1947 says the advanced academic search data base of the local library system! Yes the war against the Nazis didn't end until at least 1947. Gee how about that official Nazi surender in May 1945? Not worth the toilet paper it should have been written on. Damn those Prussians sure knew how to lie through their teeth. Must have been that 150 and more years of "schools of death" and lies about them being better all others! Damn that Scandinavian educator back in 1838 sure knew about that gang.
Lousy uneducation camps, media brain washing for imperialism. Damn! Is it coming here?
It would move any decent person to say "Thank God I('m a brother man or thank Gold I'm sister blood" as we all are going back to the start of all modern humans. "The simple kind of life never did us any harm/living in sub Saharan Africa/living with an extended family on a big communal farm" "People let me tell exatly what I mean/thank God I'm a brother man." A hu man!
The lies about the Nazis! That's "just not right!" How about this-- herding young women and men together to breed like cattle to make babies for their leader and crazed despot as well "The devil operating in human form" as Henry Wallace referred to him. Then surely just whine about the need for "living room, living room." The Red Army had their living room once the jack asses made that wrong move on Moscow.
Absolutely chilling. The protection of the private property of the privileged has eclipsed all human values. Clearly these agencies are operating at a level of clinical paranoia.
Throughout history, the power elite have feared the morning when their victims/slaves run the blade across their throat. They will do whatever it requires to forestall that bloody sunrise.
Yet, that sunrise shall come.
Hello everyone. I wanted to thank you all for your thoughtful and articulate comments about my article (and thank you to the folks at Common Dreams for featuring it). If you are concerned about civil liberties issues such as the NDAA, labeling activists as terrorists, secret prison units, and FBI surveillance, I hope you will subscribe to my blog (you can also download free sample chapters of my book). It is certainly unsettling to uncover documents like this, but it is inspiring to me to see a rapidly growing public awareness and outrage of these corporate/government abuses. Best, Will
Will, I bought and read your book, which was excellent. Thank you for your courage in bringing to light the government's witch hunt against environmental and animal rights activists, who act out of love for the Earth and for innocent animals who can't speak for themselves. You are all heroes in my book.
The fact is that the truth is extreem. Truth makes some people very nervous and fearful. So i guess anyone interested in truth is now a terrorist. The FBI has always been a bit insane ever since J. Edgar tap danced in his ballet shoes.
For Christians the Truth is a very special being more often called the Holy Ghost. the Truth has a life of its own and as has been said, "The Truth shall set you free.".
The law itself is in question. Which is why we have courts! AND REPORTERS!
I don't understand. What's the problem? This is all perfectly normal in a neofascist police state.
Please people. Get with the program.
Another in a string of acts of authoritarianism under Obama's presidency and another article in which the Obama-bots avoid trying to promote Obama.
"To the FBI, this quick work was the evidence of a network of extremists."
Yes, Will, of course the FBI would say that! But as Dr. Joseph Goebbels said: "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State."
"Mein Führer! I can walk!"
A big hand for that one...
"The mere fact that I have to ask myself those questions is a testament to how much we have lost in the name of fighting “terrorism.” "
To state the obvious: Welcome to Germany 1938 upgraded to USA 2012.
Anyone here self-censoring some due to the random deletions and bootings, perchance? - No, of course not: CD is into opposing authoritarianism, not performing it. Right.
From the article:
"In this case, the government labels journalism as extremism.
"Prosecutors say that since my article mentioned Halliday in a photo caption, it means he placed himself “above the law” ..."
Back in the late 1960s, when I wrote about protests and took pictures published in a state "newspaper of record," my journalism was entered into the court record by the (attorneys for) Defendant protesters, in partial evidence that the protesters had done nothing deserving of arrest. These trials were in the context of mass protests on college campuses and "police riots" that sometimes went on for several days and nights running.
I think that what will potter is suggesting here is that by merely covering a news story involving social protest, the Reporter is to be made a "co-conspirator" as a sort of "publicity agent" for the Bad Guy. He writes:
"“Of more serious concern is the fact uncovered by the FBI” that Jordan Halliday was mentioned in a photo caption on this website, they said.
The FBI had given prosecutors an article I wrote titled, “BREAKING: FBI Raids Activist House in Utah, Connected to Iowa ALF Investigation.” I covered this story as it happened, and scooped local press. I was able to do this because, as I noted in the article, “I just got off the phone with multiple households..."
It would appear that what the "authorities" want is for Halliday to yell to will potter as he is being shoved into the Detainee Van, "Don't cover this story, will!" It is not always easy in journalism to "identify the victim," but once you have come to view a certain very social situation as involving a "victim," and the "victim" pleads with you NOT to report, while if you DO report, you may be accused of being a co-conspirator in a "terrorist" "plot," your mere presence as a journalist/reporter PROOF of your part in the "plot"!, ... What to do?!
Will potter writes:
"It is not surprising to see a government sentencing memo try to connect a defendant to “extremists.” I’ve covered this in many, many prosecutions. The intention is to use guilt by association to secure additional prison time. For example, prosecutors will say that Joe Defendant is friends with drug dealers, or that Jane Defendant’s family are in a gang.
"In this case, the government labels journalism as extremism."
Read that again. He is right.
When I was reporting on student protests back in the Sixties, nobody ever accused me of "conspiring" with the Protesters because I knew when they would appear, and where. It was part of my job to know. Besides, everybody knew.
Will potter is documenting a whole new paradigm. At a level that recognizes Chris Hedges. The Criminalization of Journalism. The Extinction of the Fourth Estate. (While the skeleton remains for show...)
Back then, everything was still analogue. Back then, my camera was a 35mm Nikkormat with a wide lens and a 2X Adapter. I no longer have flash.
Walgreens processes my 35 mm film rolls. My pictures are turned into strip negatives, hard-copy prints, and a DIGITAL CD!
I do not mean to shill here, but it is one thing to use an ipod as a camera. Quite another thing to use a camera as an instrument of Truth. [I do not mean to deny the Truth here. London and Tony Blair started this Madness. Cameras everywhere. Jump to the iPod 4 and millions are taking pictures of everything around them, including pointing the iPod camera at themselves. The iPod is not merely a mirror.
Anyway, the FBI people came really late to the digital revolution. Simple example: How do you digitize 60 years of print-copy records on Bad Guys?. Answer: with much difficulty, electronic archiving now a major issue.
"Extremist" journalism is created by extreme events. By its nature, Journalism starts as a Conservative Institution. Esp. where it exists by paid advertising. Why rock the boat?
Journalists are paid to OBSERVE. We are supposed to be better than others at this: we are supposed to be good at writing about what we observe. So are Archaeologists. (Scott Pelley of CBS? Argh!)
We live in Extreme Times. My hat is raised to the journalists and reporters on the Front Lines.
We are witness to the Decline and Fall of the PetroDollar, and we ought to pretty quickly come to the GRIPS of the Consequences, as they have been outlined for at least a decade by some pretty astute historians, not the least being CK Liu at atimes.com/org. TOTALLY ignored by U.S. MSM.
Like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, quoth George W. Bush. the DOLLAR "is just a goddam piece of paper"!
My Family's Land Title is written on Papyrus. Babylonian, we recorded in three scripts, just in case.
We are now ALL co-conspirators. We are now ALL "terrorists."
Thought is Terror!
Meanwhile, WHO are those people in "high places" who plot against the values of their grandparents?
My paternal side goes back to 1702 South Carolina. Don't Tread on Me.
George W. Bush should be facing an International Tribunal. The whole world knows this. Here, it's business as usual...almost. The Dollar is slowly collapsing. Inflation is afoot, while NPR is lying about it. Those of us on Social Security are watching as our Standard of Living is intentionally declining.
But I digress.
BRILLIANT ARTICLE here by Will Potter. All Journalists and reporters of the World should UNITE here. True Journalism is a hard discipline. Will potter is a true reporter.
As an old man who once had that fire in the belly, combined with a desire to be EMPIRICALLY CORRECT, keep it up!
-30-
Poking through several levels of web data finally unearths the strange case of one Mr. McGovern. Seems he took umbrage with fur farms in Oregon and their group snuck out there and opened the doors to let the animals escape. His chums also set fire to some lumberyard that was cutting down old-growth trees (direct action, to be sure, but not very bright). He gets hit with "Federal" charges. When you poke through the verbiage, it seems the Government's claim is that because the fur farm (and the lumberyard) are engaged in "interstate commerce" by shipping their products across State lines, then Federal courts have jurisdiction. --
This is absurd. Let us say that a factory worker at GM is angry with the plant managers and throws a rock at a car-carrier departing the plant; an auto window is shattered. Petty vandalism? Sure; county police deal with it. Nope: GM is engaged in "interstate commerce," so now under the theory of "Homeland Security" it is a "Federal crime." Ludicrous. If I were the sitting Judge and some prosecutor came into Court with that charge, I would toss the prosecutor in the can for contempt.
This absurdity demonstrates in a nutshell what is wrong with the Dept. of Homeland Security, the FBI, the "anti-terrorism" laws, and the Congress that creates this nonsense. The taxpayers cough $47 billion a year so that vandal cases can clog up the federal courts. You deal with this by replacing the Congress. [Meanwhile, defendant McGovern is doing 7 years for his vandalism.]
Ahhh ... Hope and Change.
It feels so good, so warm and snuggly. And based on the republican clown show, we will probably be all hopey-changey until January 2017. Then it will get worse.