Political Profiling
The most troubling aspect of watchdog opportunism is their infiltration of law enforcement. Watchdog organizations feed law enforcement agencies information in order to prompt them to go after their enemies, real and imagined. By alleging âdangerousnessâ on the basis of mere assumed values, opinions and beliefs, they put entirely innocent citizens at risk from law enforcement error and misconduct.
Watchdog groups can have a profound influence on law enforcement tactics. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for example, publishes newsletters and other material, often giving these law enforcement agencies names from their private intelligence files accompanied by suggestions of dangerousness. While government agencies are prohibited from engaging in "racial profiling," watchdogs engage in political profiling and publish manual distributed to law enforcement who by law cannot compile the manuals themselves.
The issue of serious watchdog impropriety arises in the context of any alliance with the police agencies of government, especially when dealing with political minorities, and agenda-driven private interest groups - which is what watchdog organizations are.
Profiled groups
The following list is taken from Understanding the Right Wing, by Scot Nakagawa written about 1999 and lists various groups classified as "right wing" and "proto-facsist". This list and accompanying search engine terms have been expanded in the following years. Nakagawa accredits Political Research Associates (Chip Berlet, Surina Khan, and Jean Hardisty, [ed. note:now retired]), the Coalition for Human Dignity (Jonathan Mozzochi, Steven Gardiner, and Gillian Leichtling), People for the American Way, The Institute for First Amendment Studies, Sara Diamond, and the Western States Center (Tarso Ramos).
All these groups and the person associated with them have been the target of "political profiling", as discussed by Laird Wilcox. Dr. Dobson and Paul Weyrich, among several others, have been viciouosly smeared in Wikipedia, in violation of Wikipedia's own policies on Neutral Point of View {NPOV}, WP:What Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT), WP:Attribution,and a host of other policies.
- Alliance for America
- Evergreen Foundation
- Sea Lion Defense Fund
- Environmental Conservation Organization
Wise use movement targeted
A particularly shocking and dangerous example of guilt-by-association targeting and profiling occurred when two New Mexico grandmothers found themselves suspected of being terrorists after appearing on a radio talk show where they criticized the federal government and the United Nations. Kay Stone and Jean Vallance were investigated by New Mexico Department of Public Safety (State Police) after appearing on KINN radio in Alamagordo in June, 1998.
State police Lt. Bill Bowers called the station and spoke with talk show host Mike Shinaberry, who was asked about the couple and Maude Rathgeber, the Otereo Republican party chairwomen, who had also been on the show in the past. According to Shinaberry:
| â | It bothered me that anyone would be the subject of an investigation simply because they got on the radio and said what they believed... None of them ever came close to espousing violence. [1] | â |
According to The Dallas Morning News, which covered the story from the beginning:
| â | Maj. Michael Francis, another state police officer...said the inquiries into Ms. Stone and Ms. Vallance sprang from the activities of a Domestic Terrorism Task Force, comprising local, state and federal agents. | â |
The two women were also investigated by the military officials at a nearby Air Force Base:
| â | Six days later, on June 17, Mrs. Vallance said she received a phone call from Special Agent Amanda Finerty, from the office of special investigations [OSI] at Holloman Air Force Base.
Mrs. Vallance, a retired nurse who is married to a civilian employee at Holloman, said Agent Finerty asked about her religious affiliation and whether anyone was âplanning somethingâ against German pilots [stationed at the base]. |
â |
All of this came about by the issuance of a manual entitled The Extreme Right: An Overview containing in large part material from a leftist "Watchdog" organization to law enforcement agencies. [2] According to news sources:
| â | The 73-page document included profiles of fringe groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, as well as skinheads and extremists who believe each race should have its own land in the United States. Lumped into the manualâs description of terrorists, racists and other pariahs is an excerpt on the so-called âwise useâ movement, which advocates more local control over federally owned lands. | â |
Shinaberry was spurred to investigate this manual. Speaking again with Lt. Bill Bowers he was told âthat the federal government had asked state police to create a -- he used the term intelligence databaseâ -- to make lists of people who might be radicals.â He also noted that the manual suggests an anti-government continuum of groups that apparently run from the most peaceful to those with a reputation for violence, with no distinction made between them. As it happened the contents of the manual were leaked to the public after the police inquiries into the two women.
Ranchers and loggers erupted in anger at the manualâs juxtaposition of the wise use movement with Nazi and Klan groups....Local government officials, concerned about the impact of federal policies on rural economies, also objected to the manual.
| â | âThey labeled us as dissidents when all we went to do is participate in decisions about how federal lands are used,â said Adam Polley, a Catron County official in western New Mexico. | â |
Darren White, the Governorâs cabinet secretary for the state police, apologized for the manual and issued a written apology dated 9 July 1998:
| â | âI recognize that across New Mexico thousands of farmers, ranchers, miners, loggers and others are committed to preserving a way of life free from unnecessary regulation,â he wrote. âI believe free speech and the spoken word sustain our freedom.â | â |
The "Watchdog" organization manual and others like it continue to be circulated among law enforcement officials nationwide, even though its effect is to target ordinary American citizens on the basis of the values, opinions and beliefs. [3] The Wise use movement was the target of political profiling and placed on the this leftist Watchdog list because if frequently takes positions contrary to the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society. [4]
References
- â NM Women Worry Theyâre On Secret List âRadicalsâ, Scott Parks, Dallas Morning News, 13 September 1998.
- â Laird Wilcox,The Watchdogs: A Close Look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups, Editorial Research Service, 1999. ISBN 0-993592-96-5.
- â Laird Wilcox, The Watchdogs.
- â ATTAC Report.