Seriously. I know that being a Republican and all, you are predisposed to both extra-legal surveillance and lying about said activities, but please, for the love of Fiorello LaGuardia, please stop bullshitting me. It's unseemly and it makes you look like an even bigger ass. Today I read in the New York Times that you had to unleash the NYPD on all those "potential terrorist" and "anarchist" groups that may have been "planning to cause or take advantage of any disruptions", but that "We were not keeping track of political activities" and "We have no interest in doing that.”

Bullshit. You know it and so do I.

“We had a fundamental responsibility to learn whether groups might include any potential terrorists or anarchists planning to cause or take advantage of any disruptions,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a news conference. Toward that end, he said, the Police Department monitored those who said they intended vandalism or disruptions and, he added, “in a few instances, we did keep track of groups or individuals who did plan to come to New York for the R.N.C. convention and who might have been planning violent acts.”

...

But the records show that the police did covertly monitor political activity. Virtually every intelligence report, even those about expressly peaceful groups, described the political viewpoints of the organizations.

For example, a Feb. 6, 2004, police report said that Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar organization, would speak at a conference later that month at City University Graduate Center. Her presence, a headline in the report said, “indicates a reinforcement of ties between organizers and expanding activist youth movement.”

Stu Loeser, Mr. Bloomberg’s chief spokesman said: “We weren’t seeking political information. We were seeking security information. It wasn’t because of the political views expressed. The only concern was what security ramifications came from the activities of those groups.”

I'm not buying it, Mr Mayor. Prove me wrong. Release the surveillance records. I'm quite curious to see what intelligence the NYPD may have gathered on the Protest Warriors, the only group I saw all that week engage in violence of any sort. My guess? Nada.

There were indeed terrorists in town that week, folks responsible for mayhem on a global scale. There were individuals and organized groups and garden variety criminals in New York that week that had committed multiple acts of violence upon hundreds of thousands of innocents at home and abroad. They weren't the ones in the streets. They were meeting in Madison Square Garden.

X-posted from the albany project

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| | | | | | | |