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Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Undercover Agents Infiltrated Tar Sands Resistance Camp to Break up Planned Protest

 Earth Island Journal

Latest News

 

TransCanada and Department of Homeland Security keep close eye on activists, FOIA documents reveal


After a week of careful planning, environmentalists attending a tar sands resistance action camp in Oklahoma thought they had the element of surprise — but they would soon learn that their moves were being closely watched by law enforcement officials and TransCanada, the very company they
were targeting.
 
 
tar sands action training camp 
 
 
According to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, investigators from the Bryan County
Sherriff's Department had been spying on a Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance training camp
that took place from March 18 to March 22 and which brought together local landowners,
Indigenous communities, and environmental groups opposed to the pipeline.


On the morning of March 22 activists had planned to block the gates at the company’s strategic oil reserves in Cushing, Oklahoma as part of the larger protest movement against TransCanada’s tar sands pipeline. But when they showed up in the early morning hours and began unloading equipment from their vehicles they were confronted by police officers. Stefan Warner, an organizer with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, says some of the vehicles en route to the protest site were pulled over even before they had reached Cushing. He estimates that roughly 50 people would have participated— either risking arrest or providing support. The act of nonviolent civil disobedience, weeks in the planning, was called off.

“For a small sleepy Oklahoma town to be saturated with police officers on a pre-dawn weekday leaves only one reasonable conclusion,” says Ron Seifert, an organizer with an affiliated group called Tar Sands Blockade. “They were there on purpose, expecting something to happen.”

Seifert is exactly right. According to documents obtained by Earth Island Journal, investigators from the Bryan County Sherriff’s Department had been spying on a Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance training camp that took place from March 18 to March 22 and which brought together local landowners, Indigenous communities, and environmental groups opposed to the pipeline.


excerpt from undercover investigation report
An excerpt from an official report on the "Undercover Investigation into the GPTSR Training Camp" indicates that at least two law
enforcement officers from the Bryan County Sherriff’s Department infiltrated the training camp and drafted a detailed report about
the upcoming protest, internal strategy, and the character of the protesters themselves.
 
At least two law enforcement officers infiltrated the training camp and drafted a detailed report about the upcoming protest, internal strategy, and the character of the protesters themselves. The undercover investigator who wrote the report put the tar sands opponents into five different groups: eco-activists (who “truly wanted to live off the grid”); Occupy members; Native American activists (“who blamed all forms of government for the poor state of being that most American Indians are living in”); Anarchists (“many wore upside down American flags”); and locals from Oklahoma (who “had concerns about the pipeline harming the community”).

The undercover agent’s report was obtained by Douglas Parr, an Oklahoma attorney who represented three activists (all lifelong Oklahomans) who were arrested in mid April for blockading a tar sands pipeline construction site. “During the discovery in the Bryan county cases we received material indicating that there had been infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance camp by police agents,” Parr says. At least one of the undercover investigators attended an “action planning” meeting during which everyone was asked to put their cell phones or other electronic devices into a green bucket for security reasons. The investigator goes on to explain that he was able to obtain sensitive information regarding the location of the upcoming Cushing protest, which would mark the culmination of the week of training. “This investigator was able to obtain an approximate location based off a question that he asked to the person in charge of media,” he wrote. He then wryly notes that, “It did not appear…that our phones had been tampered with.”

(The memo also states that organizers at the meeting went to great lengths not to give police any cause to disrupt the gathering. The investigator writes: “We were repeatedly told this was a substance free camp. No drug or alcohol use would be permitted on the premises and always ask permission before touching anyone. Investigators were told that we did not need to give the police any reason to enter the camp.” They were also given a pamphlet that instructed any agent of TransCanada, the FBI, or other law enforcement agency to immediately notify the event organizers.)


excerpt from undercover investigation report


The infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance action camp and pre-emption of the Cushing protest is part of a larger pattern of government surveillance of tar sands protesters. According to other documents obtained by Earth Island Journal under an Open Records Act request, Department of Homeland Security staff has been keeping close tabs on pipeline opponents — and routinely sharing that information with TransCanada, and vice versa.

In March TransCanada gave a briefing on corporate security to a Criminal Intelligence Analyst with the Oklahoma Information Fusion Center, the state level branch of Homeland Security. The conversation took place just as the action camp was getting underway. The following day, Diane Hogue, the Center’s Intelligence Analyst, asked TransCanada to review and comment on the agency’s classified situational awareness bulletin. Michael Nagina, Corporate Security Advisor for TransCanada, made two small suggestions and wrote, “With the above changes I am comfortable with the content.”

Then, in an email to TransCanada on March 19 (the second day of the action camp) Hogue seems to refer to the undercover investigation taking place. “Our folks in the area say there are between 120-150 participants,” Hogue wrote in an email to Nagina. (The Oklahoma Information Fusion Center declined to comment for this story.)

It is unclear if the information gathered at the training camp was shared directly with TransCanada. However, the company was given access to the Fusion Center’s situational awareness bulletin just a few days before the Cushing action was scheduled to take place.

In an emailed statement, TransCanada spokesperson Shawn Howard did not directly address the Tar Sands Resistance training camp. Howard described law enforcement as being interested in what the company has done to prepare for activities designed to “slow approval or construction” of the pipeline project. “When we are asked to share what we have learned or are prepared for, we are there to share our experience – not direct law enforcement,” he wrote.


excerpt from undercover investigation report
 
At least one of the investigators seemed to have gained the trust of the direct action activists.
The evidence of heightened cooperation between TransCanada and law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma and Texas comes just over a month after it was revealed that the company had given a PowerPoint presentation on corporate security to the FBI and law enforcement officials in Nebraska. TransCanada also held an “interactive session” with law enforcement in Oklahoma City about the company’s security strategy in early 2012. In their PowerPoint presentation, TransCanada employees suggested that district attorneys should explore “state or federal anti-terrorism laws” in prosecuting activists. They also included profiles of key organizers and a list of activists previously arrested for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in Texas and Oklahoma. In addition to TransCanada’s presentation, a representative of Nebraska’s Homeland Security Fusion Center briefed attendees on an “intelligence sharing role/plan relevant to the pipeline project.” This is likely related to the Homeland Security Information Sharing Network, which provides public and private sector partners as well as law enforcement access to sensitive information.

The earlier cache of documents, first released to the press by Bold Nebraska, an environmental organization opposed to the pipeline, shows that TransCanada has established close ties with state and federal law enforcement agencies along the proposed pipeline route. For example, in an exchange with FBI agents in South Dakota, TransCanada’s Corporate Security Advisor, Michael Nagina, jokes that, “I can be the cure for insomnia so sure hope you can still attend!” Although they were unable to make the Nebraska meeting, one of the agents responded, “Assuming approval of the pipeline, we would like to get together to discuss a timeline for installation through our territory.”

The new documents also provide an interesting glimpse into the revolving door between state law enforcement agencies and the private sector, especially in areas where fracking and pipeline construction have become big business. One of the individuals providing information to the Texas Department of Homeland Security’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division is currently the Security Manager at Anadarko Petroleum, one of the world’s largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies. In 2011, at a natural gas industry stakeholder relations conference, a spokesperson for Anadarko compared the anti-drilling movement to an “insurgency” and suggested that attendees download the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.

protestors occupy tree
 
The infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance action camp and pre-emption of the
Cushing protest is part of a larger pattern of government surveillance of tar sands protesters.
 
LC Wilson, the Anadarko Security Manager shown by the documents to be providing information to the Texas Fusion Center, is more than just a friend of law enforcement. From 2009 to 2011 he served as Regional Commander of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees law enforcement statewide. Wilson began his career with the Department of Public Safety in 1979 and was named a Texas Ranger — an elite law enforcement unit — in 1988, eventually working his way up to Assistant Chief. Such connections would be of great value to a corporation like Anadarko, which has invested heavily in security operations.

In an email to Litto Paul Bacas, a Critical Infrastructure Planner (and former intelligence analyst) with Texas Homeland Security, Wilson, using his Anadarko address, writes, “we find no intel specific for Texas. There is active recruitment for directed action to take place in Oklahoma as per article. I will forward any intel we come across on our end, especially if it concerns Texas.” The article he was referring to was written by a member of Occupy Denver calling on all “occupiers and occupy networks” to attend the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance training camp.

Wilson is not the only former law enforcement official on Anadarko’s security team; Jeffrey Sweetin, the company’s Regional Security Manager, was a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration for more than 20 years heading up its Rocky Mountain division. At Anadarko, according to Sweetin’s profile on Linkedin, his responsibilities include “security program development” and “law enforcement liaison.”

Other large oil and gas companies have recruited local law enforcement to fill high-level security positions. In 2010, long-time Bradford County Sheriff Steve Evans resigned to take a position as senior security officer for Chesapeake Energy in Pennsylvania. Evans was one of a handful of gas industry security directors to receive intelligence bulletins compiled by a private security firm and distributed by the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security. Bradford County happens to be ground zero for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, with more active wells than any other county in the state. In addition to Evans, several deputies of the Bradford County Sheriff’s office have worked for Chesapeake — through a private contractor, TriCorps Security — as “off-duty” security personnel. TransCanada has also come to rely on off duty police officers to patrol construction sites and protest camps, raising questions about whose interests the sworn officers are serving.

Of course for corporations like TransCanada and Anadarko having law enforcement on their side (or in their pocket) is more than just a good business move. It gives them access to classified information and valuable intelligence — essential weapons in any counterinsurgency campaign.

Adam Federman, Contributing Writer, Earth Island Journal

Adam Federman is a frequent contributor to Earth Island Journal. You can find more of his work at adamfederman.com</

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Moral Imperative of Activism

CommonDreams.org


Published on Monday, August 12, 2013 by Common Dreams

 
That America is in deep moral and legal trouble was pretty much obvious to everyone before Edward Snowden released official documents showing the extent to which the U.S. government has been playing fast and loose with the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.
 
 
The 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march was a key point in the civil rights movement. (File: Wikimedia)
 
Snowden’s revelations – as explosive as they are – were, in one sense, merely the latest challenge to those of us who took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That has been a commitment tested repeatedly in recent years, especially since the 9/11 attacks.
 
After all the many troubling disclosures — from torture to ”extraordinary renditions” to aggressive war under false pretenses to warrantless wiretaps to lethal drone strikes to whistleblowers prosecutions to the expanded “surveillance state” – it might be time to take a moment for what the Germans call “eine Denkpause,” a “thinking break.” And it is high time to heed and honor the Noah Principle: “No more awards for predicting rain; awards only for building arks.”
 
This is our summer of discontent. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether that discontent will move us to action. Never in my lifetime have there been such serious challenges to whether the Republic established by the Founders will survive. Immediately after the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin told a questioner that the new structure created “a Republic, if you can keep it.” He was right, of course; it is up to us.
 
So let’s face it. The Obama White House and its co-conspirators in Congress and the Judiciary have thrown the gauntlet down at our feet. It turned out that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. As Annie Dillard, one of my favorite theologians, has put it, “There is only us; there never has been any other.” And as one of my favorite activists/prophets continued to insist, “Do not say there are not enough of us. There ARE enough of us!”
 
It seems we are guided far more by profits than by prophets. And without prophetic vision, the people perish.
 
Besides threats to basic constitutional rights and gross violations of international law, there are other pressing issues for Americans, especially the obscene, growing chasm between the very rich and the jobless (and often homeless) poor. There is widespread reluctance, even so, to ask the key questions?
Is it right to fire teachers, police and firefighters; to close libraries; leave students in permanent debt; gut safety-net programs – all by feigning lack of money? Yet, simultaneously, is it moral to squander on the Pentagon and military contractors half of the country’s discretionary income from taxes – an outlay equivalent to what the whole rest of the world put together spends for defense?
 
It seems we are guided far more by profits than by prophets. And without prophetic vision, the people perish.
 

Profit Margin

 
America’s lucrative war-making industry operates within a fiendishly self-perpetuating business model: U.S. military interventions around the world (including security arrangements to prop up unpopular allies and thus to thwart the will of large segments of national populations) guarantee an inexhaustible supply of “militants, insurgents, terrorists or simply ‘bad guys’” – a list that sometimes comes to include American citizens.
 
These troublemakers must be hunted down and vaporized by our remote killing machines, which inflict enough destruction and stir up enough outrage to generate even more “militants, insurgents, terrorists or simply ‘bad guys.’”
 
And, in turn, the blowback toward the United States — the occasional terrorist attack — creates enough fear at home to “justify” the introduction of draconian Third Reich-style “Enabling Act” legislation not very different from the unconstitutional laws ushering in the abuses in Germany 80 years ago.
 
With only muted murmur from “progressive” supporters, the Obama administration has continued much of the post-9/11 assault on constitutional rights begun by George W. Bush – and in regard to Barack Obama’s aggressive prosecutorial campaign against “leakers,” Obama has taken these transgressions even further.
 
Are we to look on, like the proverbial “obedient Germans,” as Establishment Washington validates the truth of James Madison’s warning: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
 
Yet, while countless billions of dollars are spent on “security” against “terrorism,” little attention is devoted to the truly existential threat from global warming. Can we adults in good conscience continue to shun the dire implications of climate change?
 
This question was again brought home to me personally on Aug. 6, as our ninth grandchild pushed her way out into a world with challenges undreamed of just decades ago. When she is my age, will she rue joining us last Tuesday? I can only hope she will forgive me and my generation for not having the guts to face down those whose unconscionable greed continues to rape what seemed to be a rather pure and pleasant planet when I made my appearance seven short decades ago.

 

Prophets on the Margin

And, then there is the worship of “free market” idolatry which has savaged America’s Great Middle Class and expanded the ranks of the desperate poor. The late Rabbi Abraham Heschel had challenging words for us: Decrying the agony of the “plundered poor,” Heschel insisted that wherever injustice takes place, “few are guilty, but all are responsible.” He added that, “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.”

 
“Success or efficiency are placed where they belong: in the background. They are not irrelevant, but they are far from central." –Daniel Berrigan
 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned: “A time comes when silence is betrayal … We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak…. There is such a thing as being too late…. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity…. Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”
 
Amid these daunting challenges – endless war, encroachment on liberties, environmental devastation and economic disparity – there is also the question: Are our churches riding shotgun for the System.
As truly historic events unfold in our country and abroad, I often think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who founded the Confessing Church as an alternative to the overwhelming number of Catholics and Lutherans who gave priority to protecting themselves by going along with Hitler. How deeply disappointed Bonhoeffer was at the failure of the institutional church in Germany to put itself “where the battle rages.”
 
This is the phrase Martin Luther himself used centuries before: “If, I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield, except there, is mere flight and disgrace if one flinches at that point.”
 
No one has put it better than a precious new friend I met on a “cruise” in June/July 2011 hoping to reach Gaza – author and poet Alice Walker – who said: “Activism is my rent for living on this planet.”
 
As some of you know, that attitude found her a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope” — the U.S. Boat to Gaza. On July 1, 2011, we made an activist break for the open sea and Gaza but were able to sail only nine nautical miles out of Athens before the Greek government, under strong pressure from the White House, ordered its Coast Guard to intercept us, bring us back to port, and impound our boat.

 

Okay to be Angry?

Recalling the anger I felt at the time, I was reminded that, all too often, people are conflicted about whether or not to allow themselves to be angry at such injustice – whether it be in Gaza, on the Aegean, or elsewhere. I had been in that category of doubt, until I remembered learning that none other than Thomas Aquinas had something very useful to say about anger.

 
In the Thirteenth Century, Aquinas wrote a lot about virtue and got quite angry when he realized there was no word in Latin for just the right amount of anger — for the virtue of anger. He had to go back to what Fourth-Century Doctor of the Church John Chrysostom said on the subject: “He or she who is not angry, when there is just cause for anger, sins.”
 
Why? Because as John Chrysostom put it, “Anger respicit bonum justitiae, anger looks to the good of Justice, and if you can live amid injustice without anger you are unjust.”
 
Aquinas added his own corollary; he railed against what he called “unreasoned patience,” which, he said, “sows the seeds of vice, nourishes negligence, and persuades not only evil people but good people to do evil.”
 
Frankly, I have not thought of us activists being virtuous — but maybe we are, at least in our willingness to channel our anger into challenging and changing the many injustices here and around the world. There should be no room these days for “unreasoned patience.”
 
One saving grace peculiar not only to the ancient prophets and theologians but to the Alice Walkers and Medea Benjamins of today is that they did not get hung up on the all-too-familiar drive for success. That drive, I think, is a distinctly American trait. We generally do not want to embark on some significant course of action without there being a reasonable prospect of success, do we? Who enjoys becoming the object of ridicule?
 
The felt imperative to be “successful” can be a real impediment to acting for Justice. One prophet/activist from whom I have drawn inspiration is Dan Berrigan. I’d like to share some of the wisdom that seeps through his autobiography, To Dwell in Peace.
 
Berrigan writes that after he, his brother Phil, and a small group of others had used homemade napalm to burn draft cards in Catonsville, Maryland, in May 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, Dan mused about why he took such a risk:
“I came upon a precious insight. … Something like this: presupposing integrity and discipline, one is justified in entering upon a large risk; not indeed because the outcome is assured, but because the integrity and value of the act have spoken aloud. …
“Success or efficiency are placed where they belong: in the background. They are not irrelevant, but they are far from central. I was in need of such reflections as we faced the public after our crime. … All sides agreed — we were fools or renegades or plain crazy. …
“One had very little to go on; and one went ahead nonetheless. … The act was let go, its truth and goodness were entrusted to the four winds. Indeed, good consequences were of small matter to me, compared with the integrity of the action, the need responded to, the spirits lifted.”
The more recent prophets and activists I have known have generally been able to do this — to release the truth of the act to the four winds. And I am sure that helps them avoid taking themselves too seriously.

 

Anticipate the Jut-Jaw

Here’s how Dan Berrigan recounts the immediate aftermath of the action at Catonsville:

 
“We sat in custody in the back room of the Catonsville Post Office, weak with relief. …  Three or four FBI honchos entered portentously. Their leader, a jut-jawed paradigm, surveyed us from the doorway. His eagle-eye lit on Philip. He roared out: ‘Him again! Good God, I’m changing my religion!’
 
“I could think of no greater tribute to my brother.”
 
The Berrigans help affirm for me that this God of ours is a God of laughter, and we are the entertainment. And that’s just one reason a light touch seems to be required. Will we be successful? Wrong question. The right one is will we be faithful? Will we dare to go with the Berrigans to where the battle rages.
 
I am very much looking forward to being able to refresh my spirit, and also my sense of humor, with some later-day prophets at the upcoming Conference on the Moral Imperative of Activism, Aug. 16-17, at the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York.
 
Let me close with a poem written by the German writer Peter Gan in 1935 during the Third Reich. I think it summons us in a thoughtful way to contemplate who we are and what we are called to do – today.
 
But first the most important thing:
 
“What are you doing in these great times?
“Great, I say, for times seem great
to me, when each man driven
half to death by the era’s hate,
and standing in the place he’s given,
“Must willy-nilly contemplate
no less a thing than his own BEING!
A little breath, a second’s wait
May well suffice – you catch my meaning?”
 
 

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Thousands in Asheville Declare: 'This is a Movement'



Moral Monday demonstrations come to mountains as protests 'follow the legislators home'

- Lauren McCauley, staff writer 
 
 
 


Over 5000 protesters packed downtown Asheville Monday to add their voice to the growing Moral Monday demonstrations. (Photo: @NoShock/ Twitter)“It’s nothing like being in the mountains with folks who know how to fight,” Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, told a crowd of over 5,000 who packed into Asheville's Pack Square Park Monday evening.

As the Raleigh-based state legislature departed for their summer break, Moral Monday protesters took their demonstration on the road. Monday marked the 14th straight week of calling out the GOP-majority legislature and governor’s attack on education, social and economic equality and voting rights.

The Asheville Police Department gave varying estimates that the crowd swelled to anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 people.

Cheering on the rousing speakers, protesters sang and carried signs focusing on the many issues currently being wracked by the state GOP: “Don’t steal our water,” “Protect voting rights, “Stop killing public education.”

"If all we do is despair—and even all we do is rally—we will not have met the challenge before us today,"Julie Mayfield, co-director at WNC Alliance, told the crowd. "Everyone has a role. Find yours and together we can put North Carolina back on track."

Later, the Citizen-Times reports, Barber led the crowd in new rendition of a civil rights song, “Ain’t Gonna Let Apodaca Slow Us Down,” —referencing Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Henderson County Republican.

The local NAACP and the other groups behind the demonstrations have vowed to bring the movement to all 13 of North Carolina's congressional districts.
As Barber said during a Monday afternoon news conference, their goal was to "follow the legislators home."

“You can’t do wrong in Raleigh and then hide back home,” he declared during the rally.

Advocating for members of the crowd to get more people registered to vote, Barber said that by taking the protests on the road the people of North Carolina will prove to the government that there is widespread support behind the Moral Monday demonstrations, AP reports.

“This is no momentary hyperventilation and liberal screaming match,” Barber said. “This is a movement.”

Below, watch some of the rousing moments from Barber's speech before the Asheville crowd.

Asheville's Citizen-Times compiled the following video with voices from Mountain Moral Monday.

_____________________