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News :: Miscellaneous |
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FBI Raid and Gag Order on Seattle IMC |
Current rating: 0 |
by anon
(No verified email address) |
24 Apr 2001
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A little more info on what is going on in Seattle. |
Published on Tuesday, April 24, 2001 in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
FBI Raids Indy Media Center
Stolen Security Plan for Quebec Meeting Was Put on Internet Here
by Paul Shukovsky
Security plans intended to protect Western leaders attending a trade summit in Quebec City were stolen from a car there over the weekend and posted, hours later, on a Seattle-based Web site, authorities said yesterday.
On Saturday night, FBI agents raided the offices of the Independent Media Center in downtown Seattle, seizing computer-log records, according to federal sources.
No arrests have been made.
Center spokeswoman Sherry Herndon said she and other staff have been told "not to talk about" the incident under threat of being held in contempt of court.
She referred inquiries to attorney Bob Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, who also declined comment.
He said the court order that was served on the IMC "contains a fairly broad gag order; therefore, we cannot talk."
The three-day summit, which experienced mass protests similar to those that rocked Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization conference, ended Sunday without serious security incidents. Virtually every head of state in the Western Hemisphere with the exception of Cuba's Fidel Castro was in attendance.
No mention of the FBI raid could be found yesterday on the IMC Web site. But the organization's home page carried a boldface note stating, "Everything is fine at the Seattle IMC. We will keep you posted on any further developments."
One federal criminal justice source said the speed with which the sensitive stolen document appeared on the Internet speaks to the sophistication of the movement that is opposed to unrestricted global trade.
"The fact that you have something of this magnitude out there on the Web, it really shows these groups are strong, resourceful and resilient," the source said.
The IMC calls itself "a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grass-roots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues."
The organization has committed "no clear-cut violation of U.S. law" by posting the document on the Web, and the action may be protected as free speech, according to federal criminal justice sources.
President Bush, who attended the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit, was not placed at risk, according to one source.
The breach of security, however, is another embarrassment for the Canadian government, which recently lost a highly sensitive, anti-terrorism document. It was stolen from a government official's car while he was attending a hockey game.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police referred a call for comment on the IMC incident to Quebec Provincial Police, which was in charge of security at the summit. No one was available to comment on the matter yesterday at police headquarters in Montreal.
©1999-2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer |
See also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0424-04.htm
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Comments on This Situation by TPR |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Apr 2001
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From The Progressive Review Website, April 24:
TPR: THIS IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and disturbing story, for what apparently occurred was a de facto lock-down of one of the few non-corporate and independent news sources during the events in Quebec. It was clear - as we noted over the weekend - that the IMC was under some sort of censorship. The aforementioned disclaimer appeared early but, in fact, the Seattle IMC has yet to keep its readers "posted on any further developments" and other IMC sites were markedly less informative than they had been during the Seattle, Philadelphia, and Washington demonstrations. As this is written, Tuesday morning, the IMC sites are still outdated or mute on developments . . . Note: part of the M.O. of law enforcement during the Washington, Philadelphia, and Quebec demonstrations was to engage in clearly unconstitutional activities such as peremptory raids on demonstration centers, illegal arrests, and so forth, knowing that nothing could be done about them until the event being protested was safely past. |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
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Maybe The Reports The FBI Wanted to Bust? |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Apr 2001
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The following two links take you to stories up on the Seattle IMC site. They MAY be the root of the issue as far as the FBI is concerned. Then again... |
See also:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=2836&group=webcast
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This Article May Also Be Part of the Issue |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Apr 2001
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This article, a copy of which is posted on the U-C IMC site, may also be part of the siutation in Seattle. It was originally posted on the CMAQ site, but disappeared sometime during Saturday evening from there. Copies of it are also up on other IMC sites.
You will note that there is reporting on what could be considered a threat to Pres. Bush. That is all that it is and certainly it is NOT a threat to the president. It is simply a news report. |
See also:
http://urbana.indymedia.org/active/news/display.php3?article_id=593
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Link To Seattle IMC Story About "Raid" |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Apr 2001
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More info here, including some comments from Declan McCullagh.
It should be noted that there are two "justifications" offered for the raid. One is the alleged "threat" to the president. The other involves stolen security plans in an incident that supposedly occurred in Quebec, Canada. Either one of these incidents COULD have been concocted by the FBI itself as an basis for its subsequent action at the Seattle IMC, whatever that turns out to have been.
I think it may be that both these excuses were little more than pretextual reasons to disrupt and discredit operation of the IMCs during the actions in Quebec around the FTAA. Unless there is significant evidence offered that this is not in fact the case, I think that observers familiar with the FBI history of operating to disrupt "enemies of the state" by actions such as COINTELPRO will find many parallels in the current situation.
There is practically NO justification in US law for the prior restraint of a news-gathering organization. Any other U.S. news organization would find the fact that they couldn't report on a raid on their own newsroom ridiculous. |
See also:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=2972&group=webcast
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Gag Order Lifted |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Apr 2001
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Follow the link below for the latest. The gag order has been lifted and it seems that this whole affair is little more than a pretext to impose prior restraint on a news organization and to intimidate those reporting on the actions in Quebec during the FTAA summit. |
See also:
http://urbana.indymedia.org/active/news/display.php3?article_id=653
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bound and gagged |
by Gray Banner
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 May 2001
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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer article didn't "clear things up" as stated on the front page, it muddled things up further by repeating rumors. What actually happened seems to be laid out rather detailedly in Seattle IMC's statement of last Friday, after the gag was removed. Must have been a fucked up week in Seattle watching the rumors fly and not being able to publish corrections. |
