NY Cartoonist Blasts

NYPD On Once-Secret

Intel Unit Surveillance

Draws Link Between Republican

Convention and Burglary of His Home

 

By Joshua B. Good

Thursday, May 17, 2007

 

      Cartoonist Ted Rall criticized the police Thursday (May 17, 2007) after he learned a New York City Police Department intelligence unit was keeping tabs on him.

      And he suspects the surveillance may have included a 2002 burglary where someone entered his home.

      “My telephone provider has confirmed that my service has been intercepted repeatedly. There was also a hilarious incident in which I caught and chased a fake phone-company guy fiddling with the switch box in my basement,” Rall wrote in an email to www.bannedmagazine.com. “Memo to moron NSA/NYPD/Karl Rove/Whoever: I don't care that you're tapping my phone, just try not to make so much noise on the line. Thanks.” 

     On Wednesday (May 16, 2007) the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) released hundreds of once-secret documents that detail police surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican National Convention.

      One page included information about Rall, a syndicated cartoonist whose work has appeared in 140 publications including Time Magazine and the New York Times. The police intelligence files quoted him as writing that the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004 could be as violent as the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago during the Vietnam War. Rall said the police misquoted him.

      “They're not intelligent,” Rall wrote. “First they misidentified my syndicated column as a website (presumably blog). Then they misquoted the content. Finally they identified me as something I'm not: an activist. I'm a cartoonist and a columnist and occasional author and freelance journalist. If these are the guys charged with keeping New York safe from another 9/11, we should be worried.”

      Rall said he did not report the burglary of his basement to police because at the time he said he was getting threatening phone calls at home. His caller ID showed the phone calls were coming from NYPD police precinct stations, Rall said.

      Rall also questioned why the police would target liberal peace activists instead of targeting real terrorists or violent groups. (story continues below cartoon)

Example of Ted Rall’s comic strip censored by Time Magazine. Source: www.tedrall.com

      The documents reveal a pattern of surveillance on peaceful groups, including an assessment of the potential threat of bicyclists. Police were concerned bicyclists would clog the streets, arm themselves with wireless internet cameras and aerosol chalk devices to write graffiti in the streets.

      “Current intelligence suggests that bicycles may be used during “direct action protests” during the August 2004 Republic [sic] National Convention,” reads one line of the heavily redacted report.

      The New York Police Department (NYPD) had fought to keep the files secret.

      “They argued that release of the documents would make it impossible to get a fair jury,” said Maggie Gram, a spokeswoman for the NYCLU.

The police documents were compiled on a variety of protest groups by the NYPD intelligence unit. The NYCLU is suing the NYPD for allegedly violating the constitutional rights of war protestors and other demonstrators during the summer of 2004 Republican National Convention.

“The pre-convention surveillance was aimed solely at maintaining civil order,” David Cohen, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence, claimed after the police spying efforts were first revealed. Cohen is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official.

      NYCLU’s executive director, Donna Lieberman, called the police surveillance unlawful.

"These documents paint a picture of a surveillance program that was broad, clumsy, and often unlawful," Lieberman said in a press release. "The NYPD failed to differentiate between unlawful behavior and behavior that is not only lawful but should in fact be cherished and protected. Today the public can finally bear witness to that failure."

The NYCLU posted the documents on their web site. They were heavily edited, with huge sections blacked out on orders of a federal judge.

The documents show police monitored legitimate protest web sites and other groups. The documents:

 

    * Noted a "Bands Against Bush" concert at the Knitting Factory in New York City on October 11, 2003.

 

    * Noted an anti-RNC meeting at Judson Memorial Church at 55 Washington Square Park South for Oct. 22, 2003.

 

    * Noted "United for Peace and Justice New York" was organizing a bus trip to Washington, D.C. to protest Iraq war on Oct. 25, 2003.

 

    * Noted the death of Fresno (California) Sheriff Deputy Aaron Kilmer and how his newspaper obituary alerted Peace Fresno activists that he had infiltrated their group.

 

    * Noted an anti-RNC meeting at St. Marks Church in Manhattan for November 12, 2003.

 

    * "Intelligence sources told NYPD about "No RNC" meeting held at 241 Thompson Street on November 11, 2003. Participants discussed ongoing organizing of unions, community groups, anarchists and peace groups to come together in order to oppose the RNC in NYC.”

 

    * Kept track of “Not In Our Name,” an anti-war group. The police files noted their protest of a speech by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and a rally for the Bill of Rights in December of 2002.

 

    * Noted that New York City Councilman Charles Barron planned to attend a rally and call for the Republican National Convention to be held somewhere else unless Republicans were willing to address issues about AIDS, housing and welfare.

 

    * Labeled “Operation Copwatch” as an extremist group that planned to photograph undercover police officers, publish the photos on the Web and mark undercover police with “ultraviolet paint or by shooting them with paint ball guns.”

 

    An argument could be made that some of the surveillance was legitimate. For example the documents include information about:

 

    * Daniel Andreas San Diego, a California animal-rights activist wanted by the FBI on suspicion he detonated two bombs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

    * How a group calling itself the "Auto Brigade" planned to block streets in New York City during the convention.

 

    * Reports about how a British journalist, Ryan Perry, got a job at Buckingham Palace in London and got within feet of President George W. Bush.

 

    * Details of the tactics of violent anarchists.

 

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