From: Portside Moderator [mailto:moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG]
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 9:42 PM
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: Government Informer Infiltrated Minnesota Activist Groups

Government Informer Infiltrated Minnesota Activist Groups

Secret government informer “Karen Sullivan” infiltrated Minnesota activist
groups

By Nick Pinto
January. 12 2011
City Pages
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/01/secret_government_informer_karen_
sullivan.php

The Twin Cities activists who had their homes raided by the FBI last
September are starting to learn more about why they’re being investigated by
a Chicago grand jury in relation to material support of terrorism.

Lawyers for the activists have learned from prosecutors that the feds sent
an undercover law enforcement agent to infiltrate the Twin Cities Anti-War
Committee in April 2008, just as the group was planning its licensed
protests at the Republican National Convention. Going by the name “Karen
Sullivan,” the agent blended in with the many new faces the Committee was
seeing at meetings in the lead-up to the RNC. But she stayed active
afterward, attending virtually every meeting.

“She presented herself as a lesbian with a teenage daughter, and said she
had a difficult relationship with her daughter’s father, which is one of the
reasons she gave us for not being more transparent about her story,” says
Jess Sundin, a member of the Anti-War Committee and one of the activists who
has received a subpoena from the Chicago grand jury. “It was a sympathetic
story for a lot of us.”

Sullivan told the group she was originally from Boston but that she had had
a rough childhood and was estranged from her family. She said she had spent
some time in Northern Ireland working with Republican solidarity groups.

Sullivan at first said that she didn’t have any permanent address in the
area, but she eventually got an apartment in the Seward neighborhood. She
claimed to be employed by a friend’s small business, checking out foreclosed
properties that he might buy. The cover story of a flexible job schedule let
her attend all the meetings she wanted to, and to have individual lunches
with other activists.

“She really took an interest,” Sundin said. “It raised some suspicions among
other members at first, but after the other undercover agents from the RNC
Welcoming Committee came out, and no in our organization did, we figured we
didn’t have any. Besides, we didn’t think we had anything we needed to be
secretive about.”

Sullivan began to take on more responsibilities with the organization,
chairing meetings, handling the group’s bookkeeping, and networking with
dozens of other organizations.

In the summer of 2009, Sullivan joined two other Twin Cities activists in a
trip to visit Palestine. Somehow, when they landed in Tel Aviv, Israeli
security forces knew they were coming, and that they were headed to
Palestine.

The three women were told they could get on the next plane back home or they
could face detention. Sullivan took the flight. The other two women chose
detention and were ultimately deported.

Attorneys for the activists have also learned that prosecutors are
especially interested in a small donation the women intended to give to
their host organization in Palestine, the Union of Palestinian Women’s
Committees. The group is registered as an NGO with the Palestinian Authority
and not listed as a terrorist group by the United States.

Last fall, Sullivan disappeared from the Twin Cities, telling her fellow
activists that she had some family business to take care of. She never came
back. On September 24, the FBI launched a series of early morning raids on
the homes of members of the Anti-War Committee and the Freedom Road
Socialist Organization.

The FBI would not confirm or deny Sullivan’s identity as a government agent
or comment on this story by the time of publication. The U.S. Attorney’s
office in Chicago has said it will not comment on anything related to the
grand jury investigation.

Last fall the Justice Department’s Inspector General released a scathing
report that criticized the FBI for invoking anti-terrorist laws to justify
their investigations and harassment of groups including Greenpeace, People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Catholic Worker.

“This is exactly what the Inspector General’s report was talking about,”
Sundin told City Pages this morning. “The FBI doesn’t have the right to spy
on us.
It’s an abuse of our democratic rights. We’re supposed to have freedom of
association, not, ‘You can associate but we’re going to spy on you.'”

___________________________________________

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