corrente

Why this just ran today when the DNC was nearly a month ago, I do not know. However I wonder if these FBI guys got their training on that team that spent a year investigating whorehouses in New Orleans at John Ashcroft's behest when they could have been looking for Mohammed Atta:

(via Kansas City Star)

Two Kansas City men were among at least a dozen activists in Kansas and Missouri interviewed by FBI counterterrorism agents before the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Spokesmen for the bureau said such questioning is routine when authorities receive credible information involving potential violence.

But activists question why they were interviewed and said they thought the FBI was trying to intimidate them to discourage them from organizing or participating in political protests.

In Kansas City, two activists who received visits from agents said they had never heard of plans for violence and don't know why they drew the FBI's interest.

Roommates Nate Hoffman and Jeff Kinder, both 21 and economics students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said they were first approached by agents July 23.

Kinder said they asked if he intended to do anything violent or had heard of anyone planning violence at the Democratic or Republican conventions and that it was a felony to withhold information.

Kinder, who said he used to consider himself an anarchist, told the agents he knew nothing about planned violence. He says he still doesn't.

“Everybody I know is trying to build a mass movement, and you can't build a mass movement in America by blowing stuff up,” he said.

Hoffman met with the agents in a Kansas City coffeehouse but refused to answer their questions without a lawyer present.

“They told me that in their experience that when somebody didn't want to talk to them that meant they probably had something to hide,” he said.

The agents gave him a business card and said to call them or they would find him the next week. Hoffman said he never called and hadn't heard from them.

So they hassle and intimidate two college roomies, threaten them with words like "felony," and then neither follow up on things or apologize. What was this "credible evidence" they had which directed them to this particular "dozen activists" in Kansas? Membership in an antiwar group? Previous arrests? Electronic chatter in Arabic for chrissakes? Or was it just a pissed-off nerd down the dorm room hallway angry about late night pizza deliveries? We'll never know. Maybe the FBI should hire somebody to read Orcinus on a regular basis if they really want to go after domestic terrorism.

Update: Link to Orcinus fixed, thanks Matt Stoller in comments for reminding me of the famous rule "i before e except after n."