Activists call for probe into intelligence bulletins
By Elizabeth Skrapits (Staff Writer)
Published: September 16, 2010

http://citizensvoice.com/news/activists-call-for-probe-into-intelligence-bulletins-1.1014272

Although they accept Gov. Ed Rendell's apology, local natural gas drilling activists want an investigation into why the state Office of Homeland Security was spying on them.

"This has angered me more than anything so far," Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition member Janine Dymond of Harding said Wednesday. "We're not even against drilling. We're against the regulation of this industry and the loss of our rights. But we're labeled as potential terrorists."

Read the Aug. 30 bulletin

Rendell said Tuesday he had just learned through an article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News that the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency's Office of Homeland Security had been receiving intelligence bulletins listing numerous groups including anti-war activists, Tea Party movement members and Marcellus Shale drilling opponents as possible security threats.

Rendell apologized to the groups targeted in the bulletins, noting that protesting is a constitutional right. He is canceling the $108,000-a-year contract with the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, an American and Israeli nonprofit corporation with offices in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., London and Jerusalem.

However, Rendell said he would not fire Department of Homeland Security Director James F. Powers Jr.

"Obviously I'm thrilled that Rendell apologized and everything, but I still think (Powers) needs to be fired," Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition co-founder Dr. Thomas Jiunta of Lehman Township said. "For people exercising their right to free speech and opinions about natural gas drilling to be put on the same level as terrorists is not only extreme, but unconscionable. I think there definitely needs to be an investigation."

Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields also called for an investigation Wednesday, possibly through council's authority under the city's home rule charter or through special counsel hired by the state, according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Dymond applauded Shields' action, saying she was concerned about the fact that the bulletin exists and was being delivered to the natural gas drilling industry.

"The whole picture is so alarming that our government is so in the gas companies' pockets. That's what this whole thing is pointing to," she said.

Activist Michell'e Boice of Harveys Lake is concerned the idea of government surveillance might intimidate people who are reluctant to speak up.

"While this agency is charged with protecting us from terroristic attacks, they are too busy spying on those citizens they are supposed to protect," Boice stated. "To be supplying this information to a private industry is absolutely unacceptable."

The bulletin was first leaked earlier this month on the Susquehanna County gas drilling online forum through member Virginia Cody of Factoryville, who received it from one friend and sent it to another to post, according to her husband Patrick Walker.

Shortly afterward Cody received an e-mail from Powers, who was notified by the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response that the bulletin was posted in a "pro-gas drilling website."

"He didn't do his research very well," Walker said. "If he'd read a few posts, he would have known otherwise."

In the e-mail to Cody, Powers said the information in the bulletin was not for the public domain, but "solely meant for owners/operators & security personnel associated with our critical infrastructure & key resources."

Powers concluded in the e-mail, "We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies."

"That sentence in particular struck us as very biased," Walker said. "You have to worry when Homeland Security takes a biased position, because they have all kinds of powers of surveillance, arrest, detention - it's alarming."

In response to an e-mail request for information, Office of Homeland Security Press Secretary Maria A. Finn stated, "This agency is absolutely not biased in any way to any group or persons; the collection of open source information in the Intel Bulletin was passed on purely for public safety situational awareness."

She said the Office of Homeland Security has not yet released a statement regarding the bulletin.

The Associated Press contributed to this report