Are we to Nixon yet?

The ACLU released this today, and reading the documents they released with it, I agree with them.

PITTSBURGH – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania today released new evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting investigations into a political organizations based solely on its anti-war views.

Two documents released today reveal that the FBI investigated gatherings of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice just because the organization opposed the war in Iraq. Although previously disclosed documents show that the FBI is retaining files on anti-war groups, these documents are the first to show conclusively that the rationale for FBI targeting is the group's opposition to the war.

(The article link is a regular web page. All document links past this point are PDF, but they're very short. 2 minutes to read them all.)

Two very short collections were released. One is a collection of four witness statements that start "Source, who is not in a position to testify, provided the following information," with all other details redacted except for a reference to the Merton group. That sounds like a spy inside the group to me....

The second document is an advisory synopsized, "To report results of investigation of Pittsburgh anti-war activity." In one monitored event the group was handing out leaflets and and an "SA" (I'm assuming special agent) was tasked with photographing the group doing so.

And there were two pages not released.

This is the freakin' FBI conducting surveillance on a group they refer to as pacifist whose only apparent provocation was speaking out against the Iraq war.

We're all criminals now.