The Wrongologist

The Keystone Pipeline has been off the radar for a few months, but The Guardian brought it back this week with an article describing the FBI’s bad behavior towards activists who are against Keystone:

The FBI breached its own internal rules when it spied on campaigners against the Keystone XL pipeline, failing to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened files on individuals protesting against the construction of the pipeline in Texas, documents reveal.

The documents connect the investigation of anti-Keystone activists to other “domestic terrorism issues” in the agency. The FBI files also suggest that the Houston part of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.

The Guardian hired Mike German, a former FBI agent, to help decipher the documentation. German said they indicated that the agency had opened a category of investigation that is known in agency parlance as an “assessment”. An “assessment” was an expansion of FBI powers after 9/11. Assessments allow agents to open intrusive investigations into individuals or groups, even if they have no reason to believe they are breaking the law. German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said:

It is clearly troubling that these documents suggest the FBI interprets its national security mandate as protecting private industry from political criticism

The Wrongologist wrote about this very issue in February 2015, making several points:

• The FBI was meeting with and surveilling anti-Keystone pipeline activists in the US.
• The FBI indicated publicly (and untruthfully) that they could only conduct investigations when they had reason to suspect criminal activity.
• The FBI failed to disclose that they had changed their mission statement. Instead of listing “law enforcement” as its primary function, as it had for years, the FBI fact sheet started listing “national security” as its chief mission.

At the time, we reported that the FBI was essentially doing pre-emptive security work for a Canadian corporation. From Charlie Pierce:

The FBI has no business dropping in on citizens who have not committed a crime, nor are they suspected of having committed one, and especially not at the behest of a private multinational concern.

That would be a foreign private concern. More from Pierce:

Names are going into a file…This never has worked out well in the area of political dissent in this country, and, given the fact that we now have a staggering network of covert domestic intelligence-gathering and a huge government law-enforcement apparatus, it’s unlikely to work out well in the future…

Finally, the new Guardian report states that the FBI said it was compelled to

take the initiative to secure and protect activities and entities which may be targeted for terrorism or espionage.

So, here we go. The FBI, never a friend of civil liberties, has once again violated the law by spying on activists in the absence of any reasonable suspicion that these pose a threat to life and/or property. They shouldn’t be in a position to conduct an unauthorized witch hunt and they shouldn’t be able to just say there is a threat of terrorism.

How convenient that the Houston FBI office didn’t seek approval in advance for their investigation. Plausible deniability for those up the chain of command preserves cushy government pensions.

Our security state says it requires all of this very intrusive information-gathering in order to protect us. Yet we read again and again that some terrorist or another was known to law enforcement prior to their criminal acts, just as the FBI missed clear opportunities to stop the Boston Bombers.

We could all learn from Al Swearengen in Deadwood:

I don’t like the Pinkertons. They’re muscle for the bosses, as if the bosses ain’t got enough edge.

There is a name for what happens when the government’s law-enforcement powers are put at the direct convenience of private corporations. Fascism.

See you on Sunday.