FBI documents just released under the FOIA by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund reveal that the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential terrorist organization, even though the organizers had explicitly called for all protests to be peaceful, and never condoned the use of violence in any Occupy protests. The documents are heavily redacted but what can be ascertained from reading them is scary, indeed.
As early as August 2011, the FBI had its agents and offices in “high gear” as they conducted surveillance against the OWS movement in New York and across the country even before encampments were erected. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), released this statement:
“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.
These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”
Though the documents are heavily redacted, the PCJF has discovered that on August 19, 2011,
the FBI met with representatives from the N.Y. Stock Exchange to discuss the upcoming protest. By September, the FBI had informed businesses on Wall Street that they might be the subject of the protest.
But the most frightening piece of information reveals that someone – exactly who is redacted – was planning to engage in sniper attacks against the leaders of OWS in several Texas cities including Houston, Austin and Dallas. The memo in question states:
“‘________’ intended to ‘gather intelligence against the leaders of the movement, obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.’”
The implications are chilling.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/1...s-were-coordinated-assassinations-considered/