Statement Against FBI Raids

by John Heuer, NC Peace Action and Veterans for Peace, delivered at emergency demonstrations held in Durham and Raleigh, NC on 9/27 and 9/28, respectively

Former FBI agent, Coleen Rowley reported in the Huffington Post on 9/25 that a DOJ Inspector General’s report critical of FBI investigations of peace groups in the US, released this past week, did not faze FBI investigators who just last Friday raided homes in Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, and confronted peace activists in California and here in NC.  The IG’s report was scathing in its criticism of the FBI for targeting such groups as Catholic Worker peace magazine; a Quaker activist, the Thomas Merton Center, … and of a small student group of anti-war activists in Iowa City, Iowa who were targeted for 9 months in 2008.”

Last Friday morning, NC peace activists were confronted by FBI agents at their homes during a declared investigation into material support of terrorists.

Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, writing on 9/25 for Information Clearing House reports that:

‘“Material support” is another of those undefined police state terms. In this context the term means that Americans, who fail to believe their government’s lies and instead protest its policies, are supporting their government’s declared enemies and, thus, are not exercising their civil liberties but committing treason.”

The government’s big lie is that US wars and occupations abroad make Americans safer, when the opposite is true.  Not only does US military aggression recruit people to the ranks of terrorists, but the wars and occupations squander resources much needed here at home.  The reign of US militarism must end.  It is through the dedicated efforts of those peace activists targeted by the FBI, who protest these wasteful and inhumane wars that could someday shatter the illusion that there is such a thing as a good war.

As Benjamin Franklin told us over 200 years ago, there never was a good war, or a bad peace.  As citizens, whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated and harassed by rogue police and FBI agencies.  We must stand together to defend our liberties.