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From the Start, Federal Agents Demanded a Role in Suppressing Anti-Racism Protests
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/federal-agents-portland-seattle-protests.html
Twin government memos show how a gung-ho federal law enforcement response to anti-racism protests may have been driven by a shaky understanding of the demonstrations’ roots.
Federal agents on Saturday outside a federal courthouse in Portland, Ore.Credit...Mason Trinca for The New York Times
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Sergio Olmos, Mike Baker and Adam Goldman
July 28, 2020 Updated 6:49 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — From the earliest days of the recent protests against police brutality and racism, some top federal law enforcement officials viewed the demonstrators with alarm and called for an aggressive federal response that two months later continues to escalate.
A memo from the deputy director of the F.B.I., dated June 2, demanded an immediate mobilization as protests gathered after George Floyd’s death while in police custody a week earlier. David L. Bowdich, the F.B.I.’s No. 2, declared the situation “a national crisis,” and wrote that in addition to investigating “violent protesters, instigators” and “inciters,” bureau leaders should collect information with “robust social media exploitation teams” and examine what appeared to be “highly organized behavior.”
Mr. Bowdich suggested that the bureau could make use of the Hobbs Act, put into place in the 1940s to punish racketeering in labor groups, to charge the protesters.
“When 9/11 occurred, our folks did not quibble about whether there was danger ahead for them,” he wrote, telling aides that the continuing coronavirus pandemic should not hold them back. “They ran head-on into peril.”
</snip>
Twin government memos show how a gung-ho federal law enforcement response to anti-racism protests may have been driven by a shaky understanding of the demonstrations’ roots.
Federal agents on Saturday outside a federal courthouse in Portland, Ore.Credit...Mason Trinca for The New York Times
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Sergio Olmos, Mike Baker and Adam Goldman
July 28, 2020 Updated 6:49 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — From the earliest days of the recent protests against police brutality and racism, some top federal law enforcement officials viewed the demonstrators with alarm and called for an aggressive federal response that two months later continues to escalate.
A memo from the deputy director of the F.B.I., dated June 2, demanded an immediate mobilization as protests gathered after George Floyd’s death while in police custody a week earlier. David L. Bowdich, the F.B.I.’s No. 2, declared the situation “a national crisis,” and wrote that in addition to investigating “violent protesters, instigators” and “inciters,” bureau leaders should collect information with “robust social media exploitation teams” and examine what appeared to be “highly organized behavior.”
Mr. Bowdich suggested that the bureau could make use of the Hobbs Act, put into place in the 1940s to punish racketeering in labor groups, to charge the protesters.
“When 9/11 occurred, our folks did not quibble about whether there was danger ahead for them,” he wrote, telling aides that the continuing coronavirus pandemic should not hold them back. “They ran head-on into peril.”
</snip>
6 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The feds new full well what "the demonstrations' roots" were all about -- and were willing to do everything necessary to crush them, including deliberately spinning a false narrative about them.
