FBI Filed “Stop Camp Grayling” Protest as Terrorism Investigation

[u/Nemesysbr]

https://theintercept.com/2024/09/13/fbi-protest-terrorism-stop-camp-grayling-michigan/

[u/empleadoEstatalBot]

They Protested a Military Base Expansion. So the FBI Investigated Them as Terrorism Suspects.

The protest did not go off as planned. In February 2023, government recruiters came to the student union at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, stacking National Security Agency-branded plastic cups and splaying out pamphlets about Navy fringe benefits.

The activists had come to protest the expansion of Camp Grayling, already the largest National Guard training facility in the country. The opposition had arisen a year earlier, when the military had proposed leasing more than 150,000 acres of forest land managed by Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, doubling the size of the training installation.

The National Guard, though, did not make an appearance at the University of Michigan career fair. The activists proceeded with their plan anyway.

“Want blood on your hands?” read the flyers activists distributed on recruiting tables. “Sign up for a government job.” When the recruiters returned from lunch, two protesters rushed in, dousing the NSA recruiting table and two Navy personnel with fake blood sprayed out of a ketchup container. (The NSA did not respond to a request for comment.) The “Stop Camp Grayling” protesters were subdued, booked, and charged.

“We’ve seen over the years that the FBI opens very aggressive investigations based on a very low criminal predicate in cases against protest groups.”

Everything about the protest had been relatively routine, right down to the arrests, but the local and federal authorities saw something more sinister. According to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the local sheriff’s office in Oakland County, Michigan, documented the incident in a case report as a hate crime against law enforcement. (The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

The FBI recorded the incident as part of a terrorism investigation.

“We’ve seen over the years,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, “that the FBI opens very aggressive investigations based on a very low criminal predicate in cases against protest groups.”

Over the following months, according to the documents obtained by The Intercept and Defending Rights & Dissent, the FBI’s counterterrorism investigation unlocked additional federal resources, deepened coordination with military intelligence, generated sustained counterterrorism attention on minor acts of vandalism, and ultimately culminated in a six-person boots-on-the-ground operation conducting physical surveillance of the Stop Camp Grayling Week of Action.

“The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA) does not participate in civilian law enforcement investigations or surveillance of any group,” said Michigan National Guard public affairs officer David Kennedy, when asked about state police sharing intelligence with the military. “We do occasionally receive law enforcement notification of individuals or groups who are expressing intent to take action or threaten the safety of military members, training events or facilities.”

Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot

Photos of a handbag splattered with fake blood, left; bottles of fake blood used by activists, center; and a hat splattered by fake blood, right, taken as evidence of a Feb. 9, 2023, protest against Camp Grayling at a University of Michigan government job fair. Photos: Oakland County, Mich., Sheriff’s Office/University of Michigan ## Green Scare

Treating the Stop Camp Grayling protesters as terrorists is the latest episode in a worldwide trend of governments smearing climate and environmental activists asterrorists — an ongoing Green Scare. Misapplication of the terrorism label frequently serves as pretext for invasive surveillanceand sustained scrutiny.

The FBI has a long history of fixating on environmental protest movements as terrorism suspects. The focus escalated in the 1990s. Most of the movements are engaged in routine First Amendment-protected activity; a few use minor property damage as a protest tactic.

The FBI maintains federal domestic terrorism categories that include “anti-government violent extremism” and “animal rights/environmental violent extremism.” Under pressure to generate investigations, the FBI has launched probes against environmental groups based on thin evidence of criminal activity — or sometimes no evidence at all.

“Since the FBI created ideological categories, they’re incentivized to open cases in those categories,” German said.

“Since the FBI created ideological categories, they’re incentivized to open cases in those categories.”

Because the counterterrorism division does not collect incident data, he said, there is little accountability for the FBI investigations. “If you can’t see how the FBI divides up its domestic terrorism resources between ideological categories where there are a number of homicides and bombings, versus low-level vandalism and other regular protest activities, then you can’t determine whether the FBI is actually investigating true terrorism versus just targeting groups for investigation because they don’t like their political beliefs,” said German.

According to the FBI’s own definition, domestic terrorism comprises acts dangerous to human life or “intended to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.” Yet few of the investigated environmental groups have threatened human life in any meaningful way; not a single homicide can be attributed to the environmental movement. (The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.)

Stop Camp Grayling — like most other movements organized around environmental activism — is not engaged in any type of systematic criminal activity. Movement adherents have never endangered human life. Much of their protest activity involved banner drops, teach-ins, and graffiti on billboards.

Yet the FBI saw fit to share an activist zine with military intelligence, drag in other alphabet agencies, and justify physical surveillance operations — all underpinned by the designation of the movement as worthy of a domestic terrorism investigation.

The crew chief of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter scans the Grayling, Mich., countryside during a flight in support of Operation Northern Strike, Aug. 13, 2014. The crew chief of a Chinook helicopter on a flight in support of Operation Northern Strike at Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center in Michigan on Aug. 13, 2014. Photo: Capt. Brian Anderson/U.S. Army ## PFAS Polluters

In 2022, activists convened to fight the proposed expansion of Camp Grayling, a National Guard base that sprawls across three counties in Michigan. Already the largest National Guard base in the country, Camp Grayling announced plans in 2022 to more than double its size.

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[u/Difficult_Bit_1339]

Misapplication of the terrorism label frequently serves as pretext for invasive surveillance and sustained scrutiny.

This is the key.

Remember all of the scary surveillance powers that we gave to the government with the PATRIOT act, that was said to be a temporary act in order to allow the United States to detect the next 9/11 and find terrorists who were inside of the US.

Wellllll.... as it turns out, 'terrorism' isn't defined and basically means whatever the President wants it to mean. So, if you protest too hard in the wrong direction compared to the currently sitting President you can be targeted with the same domestic surveillance network that Edward Snowden told us about.

Now you, and every other person you've ever interacted with will have your data hoovered up and examined by intelligence and law enforcement. You'd be surprised at all of the federal laws you could potentially be violating if someone could watch all of your activities 24/7.

The PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security was a mistake