Spying on a Sportswriter

July 23, 2008
By: Dave Zirin

My work organizing against the death penalty earned me some unwelcome – and unconstitutional – attention from the authorities. This is an outrage that affects each and every one of us. They picked on the wrong sportswriter and on the wrong group of activists.

Finally, at long last, I have something in common with Muhammad Ali.

No, I'm not the heavyweight champion of the world, but, like "the Greatest," I have been a target of state police surveillance for activities--in my case, against the death penalty--that were legal, nonviolent and, so I assumed, constitutionally protected.

In classified reports compiled by the Maryland State Police and the Department of Homeland Security, I am "Dave Z." This nickname was given by an undercover agent known to us as "Lucy." She sat in our meetings of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, smiling and engaged, taking copious notes about actions deemed threatening by the former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich. Our seditious crimes, as Lucy reported, involved such acts as planning to set up a table at the local farmers market and writing up a petition. Adding a dash of farce to this outrage, she was monitoring us in the liberal enclave of Takoma Park, Maryland, a place known more for tie-dyeing than terrorism. Incidentally, current Governor Martin O'Malley says he opposes this kind of surveillance. He also opposes the death penalty. No word yet on whether he, too, is being spied upon.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the ACLU, we now know that "Lucy" was only one part of a vast, insidious project. The Maryland State Police's Department of Homeland Security devoted nearly 300 hours and thousands of taxpayer dollars in 2005 and 2006 to harassing people whose only crime was dissenting on the question of the war in Iraq and Maryland's use of cruel and unusual punishment.

My friend Mike Stark, a board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, is at times referred to in Lucy's report as a "socialist" and an "anarchist." One can only assume this is the pathetic, time-honored tradition of reducing people to simple caricatures, all the better to garner Homeland Security grant money.

Veteran Baltimore peace activist Max Obuszewski, who has initiated a lawsuit against the Maryland State Police, has also consistently been shadowed by authories. His "primary crime" (their terminology) was entered into the homeland security database as "terrorism-anti govern[ment]." His "secondary crime" was listed as "terrorism-antiwar protestors." The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA). A respected peace organizer of many decades is identified as a terrorist, his actions listed as criminal, for doing nothing more than exercising his rights.

Former police superintendent Tim Hutchins defended these totalitarian practices in the Washington Post saying, "You do what you think is best to protect the general populace of the state." The article mentioned that Hutchins is now a federal defense contractor. I guess the global war on terror is just the gift that keeps on giving for the Hutchins family.

But "protect the general populace" from what? The surveillance continued even after it was determined that we were planning nothing more dangerous than carrying clipboards in a public place. Hutchins and the Ehrlich administration have undertaken an ugly violation of our civil rights, manipulating fears of terrorism to stamp out dissent.

This is COINTELPRO, pure and simple. Like the infamous counter-intelligence program whose heyday many assume was a relic the 1950s and 1960s, it's an effort to harass the innocent and breed paranoia, all for daring to question power.

Governor Ehrlich and Tim Hutchins follow in the footsteps of those who hounded Martin Luther King and facilitated the death of Malcolm X. They are not unlike those who drove the great actor, college football superstar and activist Paul Robeson toward the mental breakdown that claimed his life. When Robeson's files were opened under the Freedom of Information Act, the results were terrifying.

As his son, Paul Robeson Jr. has written, "From the files I received, it was obvious that there were agents who did nothing but follow every public event of my father, or even of me.... It took on a life of its own.... Over time, even for someone as powerful and with as many resources as my dad had...the attrition got to him."

Today Robeson is honored on a US postage stamp, but he moral midgets who destroyed him went unpunished. The ACLU, to its credit, is going on the offensive. As ACLU lawyer David Rocah said at a news conference in Baltimore on Thursday, "To invest this many hours investigating the most all-American of activities without any scintilla of evidence there is anything criminal going on is shocking. It's Kafkaesque."

Unfortunately for people like Governor Ehrlich, it is also "the most all-American of activities" to take the constitution and use it as their personal hand wipe.

As the great political philosopher Ice T once wrote, "Freedom of speech.... just watch what you say." Well, now is exactly the time not to watch what we say. I'm angry. I'm angry for my friends, who trusted "Lucy" and others. I'm angry that my tax dollars went to paying the salaries of people who spy and intimidate those exercising their rights. I'm angry that Barack Obama just voted to increase the power of the federal government to disrupt people's lives. And I'm angry enough that I'm joining a lawsuit initiated by the ACLU. "Homeland Security" picked on the wrong sports writer. They also picked on the wrong group of activists. We will not be silenced.

[People who want to express their outrage can contact the office Governor Martin O'Malley. We should demand a full investigation of the MSP, public release of all documents obtained through this illegal activity, and a specific commitment that the antideath penalty and anti-war movement will not be targeted. Call the office of the governor at 1-800-811-8336, or submit a comment online at http://www.governor.maryland.gov/mail]