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EARLY THIS MONTH the federal government launched the latest crude offensive in its so-called war on terror. Titled the October Plan, the program called for "aggressive - even obvious - surveillance" of a wide range of individuals (regardless of whether or not they're suspected of any criminal wrongdoing) until the Nov. 2 presidential election, according to an internal document leaked to the press.

 

The plan - a collaboration between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other agencies - involves renewed scrutiny of mosques and interrogations of people whose national origin, religious faith, or political leanings might, in the eyes of the feds, indicate even the most far-flung relationship to "terrorism."

 

Immigrants and others interviewed by the FBI have been "questioned about immigration status - theirs and others' - and about their political and religious views," the National Lawyers Guild's Stacey Tolchin said at an emergency press conference called by the San Francisco branch of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, the NLG, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

 

For staffers at these organizations, responding to these kinds of crackdowns has become alarmingly routine. This is the fifth round of FBI "informal interviews" targeting immigrants based on their national origin, religion, and, increasingly, their political views.

 

No one knows just how many have been deported as a result of the interviews or of the various dragnets conducted over the past three years. Local NLG attorney Nancy Hormachae reported that at least 13,000 people were forced into deportation hearings as the result of the notorious Special Registration program alone. And the fact that none of these campaigns has proffered a single al-Qaeda operative hasn't deterred the Bush administration a bit.

 

So far, immigrant Muslims and those from the Middle East and Central Asia have suffered the brunt of the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties. But as NLG immigration attorney Mark Van Der Hout told me, "Going after immigrants is just the first step towards going after U.S. citizens."

 

Indeed, a look at the past three years shows that Attorney General John Ashcroft's offensive has widened to include a range of citizens whose only real crime is their opposition to the Bush administration's policies.

 

The FBI Comes Calling

 

President George W. Bush, Aschroft, and company have made it easier to spy on everyday citizens without probable cause of criminal activity, even allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans dubbed "enemy combatants," without charges or access to a lawyer. They've eviscerated laws meant to keep a wall between the CIA and the FBI and erected an extensive domestic-spying infrastructure, enlisting private citizens and relying on private industry to a degree never seen before. Today federal agencies are maintaining a grand total of 10 domestic watch lists.

 

The Bush administration has shifted federal funding away from traditional law enforcement and toward domestic spying, explained John Crew, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California specializing in police practices and surveillance issues. "A lot of this activity is, in fact, being carried out by local police working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force," he told me, explaining that those agents are considered "federalized." They report to the FBI. Local city officials - even local police chiefs - are often not aware of what these "special officers" are doing.

 

As the Bush administration loosened professional standards for law enforcement, it simultaneously increased financial incentives for conducting surveillance, Crew continued. "To qualify for grants, [local law enforcement] must have organizations in their locale that are threats," he said. "They have to justify their own budget by amplifying the threat factor."

 

Here in San Francisco, the FBI was to assign 27 special agents - two with supervisory powers - to the San Francisco Police Department, according to a November 2002 agreement between the two agencies. The SFPD was to assign one investigator from its Intelligence Unit to coordinate supervision of the special agents alongside the FBI's two supervisory special agents.

 

"We usually don't know what they're really up to until many years later, if ever," Crew said.

 

Details of just how law enforcement is making use of its expanded powers remain clouded in secrecy. But one thing is clear: it doesn't take much to earn a surprise visit from federal agents these days.

 

Just ask San Francisco resident Denver Duffer. Duffer was questioned by a state trooper and a cop in Blair, Neb., during a three-week road trip last month. He had stopped to admire "a beautiful old railroad bridge over the Missouri River," wrote former roommate and Daily Journal staff writer Peter Blumberg in the Daily Journal, and had taken a few photos on his point-and-shoot. The officers had received several calls from concerned citizens reporting that a bearded Arab had been photographing the bridge's foundations.

 

After grilling Duffer and rifling through his car and luggage, the officers let him go. But three weeks later, two FBI special agents appeared at Duffer's home.

 

The G-men let him off the hook after questioning him and Blumberg for 20 minutes and looking at the panoramic photos Duffer had shot during his trip. But the visit raised a disturbing question: how did a false tip, checked out and then dismissed by local cops in Nebraska, wind up on the desk of FBI agents in San Francisco?

 

Just a week before Duffer's Nebraska run-in, 19-year-old Derek Kjar of Salt Lake City had also found himself being grilled by two agents - at least one from the Secret Service - after a neighbor called the feds to report a bumper sticker on Kjar's car that read, "King George - Off with his head."

 

"They said it was 'borderline terrorism,' " Kjar told Matthew Rothschild, a reporter for the Progressive's online McCarthyism Watch.

 

Media reports have documented dozens of such incidents over the past three years.

 

More- The Feds are spying on
- and harassing -
political activists
With a fury not seen since the 1960s.