DHS Turns Over Occupy Wall Street Documents to Truthout

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) closely monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement, providing agency officials with regular updates about protests taking place throughout the country, responding to requests from fusion centers for intelligence on the group and mining Twitter and other social media for information about Occupy's activities, according to hundreds of pages of internal documents DHS released to Truthout Wednesday morning in response to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

While the nearly 400 pages of documents do not contain any clear-cut evidence showing that DHS worked with local law enforcement and local government officials on the coordinated crackdown of Occupy encampments throughout the country last October, the materials provide deep insight into the agency's interest in OWS and its response to internal requests for intelligence on the group and fears from some agency officials that the agency's actions may have risen to the level of unconstitutional surveillance.

For example, in response to a media inquiry from the Huffington Post, DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler told reporter Sean McCormack on background November 18 that Federal Protective Services (FPS) "has only been involved in one instance in removing protestors, in Portland, OR."

"FPS was assisting Portland Police Bureau at the federally-owned Terry Schrunk Plaza where FPS arrested several people," Chandler wrote.

In a November 16 email to nearly a dozen DHS officials, Kris Cline, deputy director for operations of FPS, elaborated on the incident, stating that on "November 1, 2011 at approximately 4:30 a.m. FPS and Portland Police Bureau officers moved into Terry Shrunk [sic] Park in downtown Portland to evict a number of 'Occupy Portland' protesters who had set up tents in the federal park."

"Approximately 12 tents had been set up and about 20 protesters were present," Cline wrote. "FPS personnel ordered the protesters to depart since overnight camping is not allowed in the park and about half of the people present complied and departed. 10 protesters refused to leave and were arrested for failure to comply with the lawful order of a Federal police officer." [emphasis in document.]

Read More: Homeland Security: The Occupy Files

Chandler added in his email to the Huffington Post that DHS "is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large."

Chandler and other DHS officials provided identical statements and background information to numerous other journalists who sought comment from the agency about whether it played a role in the dismantling of Occupy encampments, the documents show.

Chandler was unclear on how to respond to those media queries. So on November 16 he sent an email to DHS official Robert Davis inquiring about DHS's "relationship with cities dealing with 'occupy protestors.'"

"[H]ow would we describe our activities?" Chandler asked.

Davis told Chandler DHS is "treating all 'Occupy' demonstrations as peaceful."

"We are working with [General Services Administration, the agency that approves permits for protests on federal property] and each city government to ensure that all parties concerned are safe and secure," Davis said in an email reply to Chandler. DHS has held "standard coordination calls and face-to-face meetings with our partners to ensure that the proper resources are available for operations such as street closures, etc."

One DHS official told Chandler to emphasize one of the background bullet points the agency had been providing to reporters pertaining to the Portland incident and "make it clear how rare the federal involvement is."

Andrew Lluberes, DHS's director of communications for Intelligence and Analysis, added, however, according to another internal email, that the agency could not say if fusion centers or other DHS divisions worked with local law enforcement to dismantle the Occupy encampments.

DHS's Intelligence and Analysis division "scrupulously avoided any connection with the Occupy movement/protests/dismantlings," Lluberes wrote in a November 16 email sent to nearly a dozen DHS officials. "We cannot speak for any individual fusion center or other departmental component, but we issued no product to our customers and held no conf calls with our field [intelligence offices] on the subject."

There are also several documents identified as "Prism Demonstrations Abstract" from the US Secret Service's intelligence division describing OWS activities on certain days in September and November 2011. One of the Secret Service documents was prepared following a protest that took place in New York City last November, during an appearance at Goldman Sachs headquarters by former President George W. Bush.

"On 11/02/2011, one hundred (100) individuals associated with 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrated at a [Former President of the United States] George W. Bush site in New York City," states the November 3, 2011 Secret Service report. "The demonstrators were peaceful and protested corporate interests in US government. It should be noted demonstrators spread word of Bush's presence at the site via Twitter. There was some media attention to the protest and use of Twitter by demonstrators."

DHS also scrubbed one of its intelligence bulletins from its website following a media inquiry last September because at least two agency officials believed it blurred the lines of monitoring protesters constitutionally protected speech.

First Official Release of OWS Documents

This is the first official release of government documents related to OWS since the launch of the movement last year. Truthout was the first news organization to file a FOIA request with DHS for OWS-related documents. Specifically, we requested from DHS:

"All records, including emails, memoranda, letters, audio/video, transcripts, reports, including Threat Assessments, related to the protest movement known as "Occupy Wall Street.'"

A DHS FOIA officer asked Truthout if we could narrow "the scope of [our FOIA] request to include responsive records from senior DHS officials only" due to numerous requests for OWS documents the agency received, which had "overwhelmed" DHS staff.

Narrowing the scope of our request, DHS said, would speed up the response time. We agreed. However, Truthout has since filed a separate FOIA request for all OWS-related documents from DHS field offices. Moreover, Truthout also filed a FOIA request for the "processing notes" to determine how DHS handled our original FOIA request.

In a letter to Truthout, James Holzer, the director of DHS's Disclosure and FOIA Operations, said "a search for documents responsive to your [FOIA] request produced a total of 408 pages."

"I have determined that 58 pages of the records are releasable in their entirety, 340 pages are partially releasable, and 10 pages are withheld in full" under certain FOIA exemptions, Holzer wrote.

Those exemptions include (see the letter below DHS sent to Truthout for a full description of exemptions cited):

Exemption 7 – Protects records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes the release of which could reasonably be expected:

7(C) – to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of a third party/parties (in some instances by revealing an investigative interest in them).

7(E) – would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.

Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(E): Law enforcement manuals, records pertaining to Watch Lists.

Eric Neuschaefer, a DHS FOIA program specialist, said the agency expects to release a second set of OWS-related documents to Truthout sometime in mid-April. He added that the agency will release files on a "rolling" basis once they are processed and cleared by other DHS offices.

In preparing these documents for release, DHS worked with its Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), according to that component's 2012 FOIA logs, which identifies requests for OWS documents this reporter filed.

According to the logs, CRCL withheled certain information, citing two exemptions in its "partial grant" of documents in response to Truthout's FOIA request.

Exemption 5 – Protects the integrity of the deliberative or policy-making processes within the agency by exempting from mandatory disclosure opinion, conclusions, and recommendations included within inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters.

Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 5: Draft documents and recommendations or other documents that reflect the personal opinion of the author rather than official agency position.

Exemption 6 – Protects information that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of the individuals involved.

Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 6: Social Security Numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers, certain identifying information regarding Department employees.

In addition to OWS documents, Truthout also filed a separate FOIA request with DHS for documents related to "US Day of Rage," a movement that preceded OWS. US Day of Rage coordinated a day of protests on Wall Street last September against the use of corporate money in US elections. Neuschaefer said records related to US Day of Rage are included in the batch of OWS documents released Wednesday.

FBI Denies Truthout's Appeal for OWS Documents

Meanwhile, the FBI maintains it still cannot locate any OWS records responsive to a FOIA request Truthout filed with the agency last October.

As Truthout previously reported, the FBI responded to our FOIA request two weeks after we filed it by stating the agency was "unable to identify main file records responsive to the FOIA."

We immediately appealed the decision to the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy (OIP) and requested the FBI conduct a broader search for documents given that a report published last October by Gawkein other that Jordan T. Lloyd, a member of the FBI's cybersecurity team in New York, received dozens of emails about Occupy Wall Street and that Loyd responded to at least one of the messages.

On February 7, Justice Department attorney Sean R. O'Neill, denied our appeal and affirmed the FBI's position that the agency could not locate responsive records on OWS.

"After carefully considering your appeal, I am affirming the FBI's action on your request," O'Neill wrote in a letter to Truthout. "I have determined tha tthe FBI's action was correct and that it conducted an adequate, reasonable search for responsive records."

Truthout has since filed a separate FOIA request with the FBI for processing notes to determine how the agency handled our FOIA request for OWS documents. Furthermore, we also requested a copy of the administrative file from OIP related to the denial of our appeal.

OWS Records Also Sought From NYPD

Finally, on January 29, Truthout filed, under New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), a wide-ranging request for OWS documents, including video, audio, photographs, emails and threat assessments, with the New York Police Department (NYPD) and its Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The most violent crackdowns on OWS have taken place in New York City.

In a February 13 letter sent to Truthout, Lt. Richard Mantellino, a records access officer in NYPD's legal bureau, said, "Before a determination can be rendered, further review is necessary to assess the potential applicability of exemptions set forth in FOIL, and whether the records can be located."

Files:

DHS Response to Truthout FOIA Request: Cover Letter (Occupy Wall Street)
DHS Reponse to Truthout FOIA Request: Cover Letter (US Day of Rage)
DHS Response to Truthout FOIA Request: Documents, Part 1
DHS Response to Truthout FOIA Request: Documents, Part 2
DHS Reponse to Truthout FOIA Request: Documents, Part 3
DHS Response to Truthout FOIA Request: Documents, Part 4
DHS Response to Truthout FOIA Request: Documents, Part 5

Jason Leopold is lead investigative reporter of Truthout. He is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir. Visit jasonleopold.com for a preview. Follow Jason on Twitter: @JasonLeopold.

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