By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials under then-President Donald Trump compiled intelligence dossiers on individuals who were arrested at Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, in accordance with a newly unredacted internal review.
The 76-page report is an internal review by DHS of actions carried out by its Office of Intelligence and Evaluation in June and July 2020, when militarized federal agents were deployed to Portland against people protesting police abuses within the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.
When the dossiers were being compiled, some DHS analysts voiced concerns over the legality of collecting intelligence “on protestors arrested for trivial criminal infractions having little to no connection to domestic terrorism,” the DHS report said. A number of the employees even refused to participate.
Surveillance of Portland protesters in 2020 “included lists of friends, family and social media associates for individuals who posed no threat to homeland security,” the office of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, who obtained the report, told reporters.
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“Political DHS officials spied on Oregonians for exercising their First Amendment right to protest and justified it with baseless conspiracy theories,” Wyden said.
Brian Murphy, who was then the acting undersecretary of DHS’ intelligence unit, insisted on calling violent protesters “Violent Antifa Anarchists Inspired,” regardless that “overwhelming intelligence regarding the motivations or affiliations of the violent protesters didn’t exist,” in accordance with the report.
Top DHS leaders even wanted the department’s Office of Intelligence and Evaluation to create dossiers on everyone participating within the Portland protests, but Murphy advised that the unit could only have a look at individuals who were arrested.
The dossiers are often known as baseball cards or more formally as Operational Background Reports. They were previously normally compiled on non-U.S. residents or only on Americans with “a demonstrated terrorism nexus.”
The DHS report was previously released last 12 months but had more redactions. The less-redacted version, which Wyden’s office provided to journalists on Thursday, also shows the baseball cards — which were normally one-page summaries — included any past criminal history, travel history, “derogatory information from DHS or Intelligence Community holdings,” and publicly available social media. Draft dossiers included family and friends of protesters as well.
Wyden credited current Undersecretary for Intelligence and Evaluation Kenneth Wainstein for reviewing the Trump administration’s “unnecessary redactions” and releasing the unredacted report.
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