[Vision2020] Oakland Attorney Siegel, Lawyers Guild's Boghosian: Homeland Security "Fusion Centers" Coordinate Attack on Occupy

[Ted Moffett]

Ever heard of Homeland Security "Fusion Centers?"  It's news to me...

105 page pdf not directly dealing with current Occupy protests, but
relevant nonetheless:
Heidi Boghosian and the National Lawyer's Guild:
Government Tactics that Suppress Free Speech:
http://nationallawyersguild.org/NLG_Punishing_Protest_2007.pdf

----------------------------
Civil Rights Legal Groups Demand Records on Federal Law Enforcement
Involvement in Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy Movement
Salem-News.com
PCJF and NLG Mass Defense Committee File Multi-Agency Requests
Nov-17-2011

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november172011/occupy-foia-lawsuit.php
----------------------------
http://www.eurasiareview.com/18112011-police-state-tactics-oped/

Police State Tactics

by Dave Lindorff

November 18, 2011

The ugly hand of the federal government is becoming increasingly
suspected behind what appears to be a nationwide attempt to repress
and evict the Occupation Movement.

Across the country in recent days, ultimatums have been issues to
groups occupying Portland, OR, Chicago, IL, San Francisco, Dallas, TX,
Atlanta, GA, and most recently New York, NY, where the Occupation
Movement began on September 17. The two most recent eviction efforts,
in Oakland and New York, have been the worst.

The police attacks have had a lot in common. They have been
“justified” based upon trumped up pre-textural claims that the
occupiers are creating a health hazard, or a fire hazard, or a crime
problem, generally on little or no evidence, or there has been a
digging up of obscure and constitutionally questionable statutes, for
example laws outlawing the homeless. Then the police come in, usually
in dead of night, dressed in riot gear and heavily armed with mace
weapons, batons, plastic cuffs and tear gas, or even assault rifles in
some cases and so-called flash-bang stun grenades–all weapons to be
used against peaceful demonstrators.

So violent has been the response that some returned veterans have
condemned the police for using weapons and tactics that are not even
permitted by occupying troops in war-torn countries.

“We definitely feel, especially in a movement like this that has
arisen so quickly in a number of cities, that there will be a
coordinated national effort to try and shut it down,” says Heidi
Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, which has
been playing a key role providing legal services to the new movement.

“We see the scapegoating of these movements, the attacks at night, and
in general tactics designed to terrorize and to scare protesters away.
I can’t see this as anything other than centrally coordinated.”

One indication of that coordination may have been a conference call
among 18 city mayors which was confirmed by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan in
a radio interview on San Francisco station KALW. Dan Siegel, an
Oakland attorney who worked as an advisor to Quan, but who resigned in
disgust after Oakland police and law enforcement personnel from a
number of surrounding jurisdictions brutally drove occupiers there out
of their park using tear gas, supposedly non-lethal ammunition (bean
bags and rubber bullets) and flash-bang grenades in a night-time raid
in the early hours of November 14, says that phone conference call
took place, significantly, while Quan was in Washington, DC.

Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 25, Quan authorized the first brutal
police assault on Occupy Oakland. It led, among other things, to the
critical wounding of Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran who was among
the protesters, and was hit in the forehead by a police tear gas
cannister fired at close range.

Who organized that critical conference call? Was it Quan or one of the
other mayors, or was it someone in the federal government? Siegel says
he doesn’t know, and Quan isn’t saying.

But both Siegel and Boghosian say they strongly suspect federal
involvement in the planning of the recent spate of police violence
against occupiers. Says Siegel, “It’s only logical to assume that the
‘Fusion Centers’ are involved, especially after the Oakland occupiers
shut down the port in Oakland.”

Some 72 Fusion Centers, located around the US and funded by the US at
a cost of half a billion dollars, are a post 9-11creation of the new
Homeland Security Department. Bringing the FBI together with local law
enforcement departments, they both collect and share domestic
intelligence, and can serve as command centers to direct local law
enforcement in helping implement national law enforcement goals. There
are also many Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which directly link the FBI
with urban police departments.

Says Boghosian, “What we are seeing here is the Miami model, with
various levels of law enforcement, local, state and federal, all at
work. It would be shocking if federal law enforcement were not seeing
this occupy movement now as a national security threat.”

Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s
National Mass Defense Committee, based in Washington, agrees. “These
crackdowns on the occupation movement certainly appear to be part of a
national strategy to crush them,” she says. “We haven’t yet found
overt evidence of federal involvement, but the fact that in rapid
succession local authorities have taken action raises the specter of
coordination.”

She adds, “There is absolutely no legal justification for the
involvement of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in this movement. These
demonstrations are not terrorist activities, and police should not be
treating them as such, yet all over the country the police are
treating the protesters as if they are criminals. The similarity of
the response everywhere to the movement makes it appear that there is
a coordinated strategy.”

Meanwhile, Siegel, now back in private practice, says that since the
riots that followed the killing of Oscar Grant by a BART transit cop,
who shot Grant fatally in the head after he had been arrested, subdued
and handcuffed for a turnstile jumping violation, federal law
enforcement officials have been observed actively involved in police
activities in the Oakland area.

Some Oakland residents have reported seeing federal vehicles and
possibly also National Guard equipment during the police actions
against occupation demonstrators, too, though National Guardsmen can
only be legally activated by a governor, and California Gov. Jerry
Brown, a former mayor of Oakland, has not publicly issued any such
order.

Rick Ellis, a journalist with the Minneapolis office of the news
outlet Examiner.com, is reporting that an unidentified US Justice
Department official has confirmed what Boghosian, Siegel and
Veheyden-Hilliard say they suspect is the case: that each of the
recent brutal police evictions and attacks on occupation groups “was
coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other
federal police agencies.”

Ellis writes, “According to this official, in several recent
conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to
seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on
zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to
demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in
riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press
relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict
protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least
likely to be present.”

Given how things have played out, it certainly looks like the
suspicions were correct, and that Ellis’s source is telling the truth.

President Obama has a lot to answer for. So do the mayors who have
been overseeing the oppressive operations locally.
-----------------
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). He can be reached at
dlindorff at mindspring.com
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett