VAAPCON part 1

Pro-Life/VAAPCON/Return of the Janet Reno DOJ?
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VAAPCON summary:

* "In August 1994, the Attorney General established the Task Force on Violence Against Abortion Providers (often referred to as "VAAPCON"). VAAPCON was charged with determining whether there was a nationwide conspiracy to commit acts of violence against reproductive health care providers."

* "In January 1995, President Clinton directed each of the 93 United States Attorneys to establish a local task force to coordinate law enforcement efforts relating to clinic violence. These working groups have remained in place since that time, and include representatives from state and local law enforcement as well as representatives from the FBI, ATF, and US Marshals Service. They are designed to maximize the level of coordination and communication among law enforcement officials in the field. They are also intended to improve communications between providers and law enforcement to assess and address threats and other security risks more effectively.

* "As VAAPCON was phased out in 1996, the responsibility for coordinating the law enforcement response to clinic violence was transferred to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Cases were worked according to normal procedures in the Criminal and Special Litigation Sections in cooperation with United States Attorney's offices and investigative agencies. To help ensure effective communication, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights established a Working Group on Abortion Violence with participants from the Criminal and Special Litigation Sections, the FBI, ATF, the USMS and the Executive Office for the United States Attorneys. The Working Group met monthly to facilitate coordination on a national level...."

* "In February of 2006, after a long and expensive legal battle, racketeering charges against Joe Scheidler and other pro-lifers were thrown out by an 8-1 vote of the US Supreme Court."

* "After the FBI failed to find enough evidenceof a conspiracy, they said, some agents became increasingly disgruntled with the Justice Department's efforts to build a case. Playing off the investigation's code name VAAPCON, for Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy, they nicknamed the probe "Crapcon." The federal grand jury in Alexandria was finally disbanded in January 1996, and Cheryl Richardson, who had stubbornly refused to testify, was released from prison."

* "The Clinton-Reno probe resulted in no negative information about any of the targets. [Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America] believes the true purpose was to quiet the pro-life movement."

* "Although some within the FBI objected to the scope of the database ordered by the Justice Department shortly after the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrance Act of 1994, or FACE, these objections were overruled by senior Justice Department lawyers."

* "When rumors about Reno’s witch-hunts first surfaced, she flatly denied that such a campaign even existed. But documents were eventually uncovered that proved she was lying through her blood-stained teeth. The project even had an official name. It was called, VAAPCON and I know, first-hand, that it led to at least one pro-life organization having its mail illegally opened and its phones illegally tapped. This happened despite the fact that this organization had no ties to even one single act of violence, had never endorsed violence and was not associated with one person who was accused of committing violence. The reason I know this is because the organization I’m talking about is Life Dynamics. And we were certainly not the only targets. In the ensuing years, I have been told by other pro-life leaders that they too had the same experience."

* "Immediately after taking office, Clinton and his Attorney General, Janet Reno, began paying off their campaign debts to the abortion lobby. While Clinton got legislation passed to sweep the streets clean of peaceful non-violent picketers, Reno literally turned the Attorney General’s office and the FBI into a private police force for the abortion industry. By the way, that analysis did not originate with me; it was given to me by an FBI agent who told me that he was sick and tired of being sent out to investigate “pro-life terrorists” only to find some 70-year-old nun in tennis shoes whose act of “terrorism” was praying the Rosary in front of some godless abortion mill."

* "Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Clinton Justice Department and FBI on July 9, 1999 to uncover documents on a Justice Department/FBI database on pro-life leaders -- which is called VAAPCON. Judicial Watch requested documents related to this database back in March, but the Clinton Administration has yet to produce one single document, even while admitting "voluminous" documents exist.

* "Judicial Watch was anonymously informed of the database's existence. Judicial Watch understands that the database was created, using abortion clinic violence as an excuse, over the objections of some in the FBI, but that the upper levels of the Clinton Justice Department ordered its creation anyway. Specifically, some were concerned that the database violated the FBI's own rules and regulations related to keeping data on American citizens. Judicial Watch has information that the database contains biographical information on well known pro-life leaders.

* "VAAPCON was the name of an 18-month task force"

* January 2000: "Because he believed himself to be a likely target of the Clinton Administration, Dr. Jerry Falwell, Chancellor of Liberty University, and founder of "The Moral Majority," filed a Privacy Act request to determine whether or not The White House and Clinton Justice Department had files on him and his ministries. Typically, both entities stonewalled – effectively confirming that illegal files are being kept on Dr. Falwell and his ministries. To get at the truth, Judicial Watch and Jerry Falwell, Jr., an attorney in Lynchburg, Virginia, and son of Dr. Falwell, filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia."

* "Then how to explain newly obtained internal Justice Department documents that lay out justification for "intrusive investigative activity" by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the U.S. Postal Inspection and U.S. Marshals services and other federal law-enforcement agencies to compile dossiers on groups as divergent as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Rifle Association and the Women's Coalition for Life?

* from Insight Magazine: "News alert! has obtained hundreds of pages on this secret project called VAAPCON, an acronym for Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy, sometimes just shortened to VAAP. These never-before-seen records detail not just suspected criminal activities by some factions of the antiabortion or pro-life movements, but also the political activities, biographies and lobbying efforts by some of the most well-known - and law-abiding groups - in the country."

* "Larry Klayman, general counsel of Judicial Watch, whose group obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, asks: "What in the world are Janet Reno, Hillary, Bill and their VAAPCON task force doing using law-enforcement personnel to infiltrate, collect and assemble database information of this type? We were told by one source that some in the FBI objected to the monitoring of these groups on legal and ethical grounds but were overruled by upper levels at Justice."

* "What is curious to even two senior federal law-enforcement officials, one at the FBI and one at the Justice Department, is that the database is under the auspices of the Criminal Division and that virtually all entries are part of what's called an "FI" tag - that is, a "full-investigation" label. "This is wrong and it ought to be exposed for what it is, a political witch-hunt," said a concerned FBI agent.

* "Mixed in with the bishops, for example, is information on violent groups and astounding details on surveillance and monitoring techniques by a variety of federal law-enforcement agencies. This includes tracking mail sent to or received from all manner of organizations in contact with people in the federal database, including the NRA, Nynex Telephone Corp. and even the Blind Work Association in Binghamton, N.Y."

* "The existence of the database was revealed in an exclusive report by Insight June 23 (http://www.insightmag.com) outlining details of this previously rumored but heretofore unconfirmed secret project run by the FBI under the auspices of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

* "Besides political and biographical information on such people and groups, the FBI also appears to have included extensive telephone, credit card, financial and even lobbying records on people and groups. In one case, involving the National Right to Life Committee, or NRLC, an extensive investigative file dates back to 1978 on suspected fraud and other wrongdoing.

* "Though there does not appear to be a direct attack on religious or First Amendment freedoms, the FBI task force has used "intrusive" means to obtain information once normally associated with terrorist groups or other subversives.

* "It wasn’t the inclusion of suspected criminals or the infusion of old files on such activities that we objected to," a senior FBI agent told Insight. "It was the collection of political and personal information on people such as the cardinal that many of us found objectionable. It should not be in the database or passed over to Justice for general reading – this is obviously political in nature and something we work hard to avoid."

* In responding to a request from Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., for information on reports that the feds were targeting pro-lifers, the FBI insisted that it only tracks individuals or organizations known to be or suspected of being involved in criminal activities, according to Insight magazine.

* "As a result of the FBI’s failure to admit that VAAP was tracking innocent members of the pro-life movement, Congressman Taylor told Insight he and other members of Congress are determined to dig deeper into the matter."

* "The Judicial Watch group said it had obtained hundreds of pages from the Justice Department project called VAAPCON, or Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy. They said the documents lay out justification for “intrusive investigative activity” by the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, US Postal Inspectors, and US Marshals."

* "While the FBI’s first search for documents did not uncover any records pertaining to Falwell, later searches did reveal such records. From October 1999 to September 2000, the FBI released documents to Falwell that it had found pertaining to him. The FBI first searched its Central Records System (“CRS”) using its Universal Index and then conducted a more particularized search for documents using computer systems called Rapid Start-VAAPCON and VAAPCON Application.

* "In 1994, the FBI began an investigation into violence against health care providers called VAAPCON (Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy). Rapid Start VAAPCON and VAAPCON Application were internalized computerized sub-systems of the Central Records System. These computer sub-systems were used by the FBI as management tools to assist with the organization of information within the CRS. The court assumes that when Falwell refers to the VAAPCON database in his complaint, he means these computer sub-systems"

* "This investigation was called Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy (VAAPCON) and was first exposed by the watchdog organization, Judicial Watch, from information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and from a source inside the FBI.

* "FBI investigators complained that they were being required to look into pro-life organizations with no known relationship to violence against abortionists or clinics. After several months of monitoring the mail and phone calls of pro-lifers and finding no evidence of a conspiracy, the FBI wanted to drop the investigation. However, orders from the Clinton-Reno Justice Department insisted they continue, and the investigation dragged on for another year. Finally, the investigation was called-off without discovering any conspiracy.

* "One FBI source contacted for the New York Post article confirmed the investigation, pointing out that, "this is a highly political, highly corrupt administration." Officials at the Department of Justice minimized the claims, asserting that "the bottom line is we have very, very strict guidelines on investigations of groups. We do not and cannot investigate a group unless there is a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed." That was a lie. Individuals and groups reported on the VAAPCON database included the late John Cardinal O'Conner (Archbishop of the Diocese of New York), the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the National Council of Catholic Bishops, and Feminists for Life, all of which had explicitly renounced violence and had no history of connections with illegal activity..."

* "That operation, allegedly begun by then-Attorney General Janet Reno in August 1994, was dubbed VAAPCON, assigned the number MC-111 (Major Case 111) and was aimed at investigating "the so-called religious right in America and possible ties to violent acts," the paper said.

* "The Gazette learned that FBI MC-111 (MC stands for “major case”) evolved from VAAPCON – a project Reno started in 1994. At Reno’s instruction, the FBI began gathering intelligence on right-wing religious groups and cults that espoused the same hate rhetoric found at Pastor Butler’s Aryan Nations in Idaho and at Christian Identity enclave Elohim City in Oklahoma. But critics charge that in practice, Reno and the FBI took the project much further – gathering a vast database of intelligence on people active in the anti-abortion movement with absolutely no history of criminality. Reno said she suspected some of these groups were doing more than preaching racial separatism and anti-abortion politics. She told senior FBI agents to look into the possibility that a conspiracy was at work inside the so-called Christian-right movement in America, a conspiracy possibly linked to the surprising growth of the armed militia movement."

* "A few months after the bombing in Oklahoma City, MC-111 was quietly shut down. Officials reported they could find no such “right-wing conspiracy” in America. The FBI’s VAAPCON Task Force investigation and MC-111 remained secret until a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group, Judicial Watch, discovered faint clues of the surveillance operation. Following up on a tip, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request and received a tiny number of documents related to the covert operation. Although the government refused to release all the records requested, what the agency did release was sufficient to confirm rumors of the Reno’s efforts to infiltrate and monitor the activities of various Christian-based organizations. While the Department of Justice acknowledges today that the VAAPCON Task Force investigation once existed, it continues to withhold some 100,000 documents, representing the fruits of the pervasive project, citing “privacy considerations” as the rationale for the continued secrecy."

* "A 1969 Freedom of Information request by Judicial Watch obtained hundreds of pages of Justice Department documents. These revealed that VAAPCON had been invoked to authorize spying on at least 900 groups and individuals. Its targets ranged from the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Feminists for Life to the National Rifle Association and the Christian Coalition."

* "To put VAAPCON in perspective imagine the Bush administration targeting the Sierra Club, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Al Gore to deal with the issue of the Unabomber or environmentalist violence in general. Then imagine this being done while al Qaeda was actively plotting to destroy America."

* "VAAPCON was also designed to help enforce FACE, the Clintons’ 1994 law called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. FACE is a peculiarly anti-First Amendment law that denies the right to free speech to certain groups but not others. Union protestors could legally block an abortion clinic access with a picket line while carrying signs that read: “Abortion Workers on Strike for Higher Wages! Local 69, AFL-CIO.” But those same protestors could be arrested and imprisoned if their signs read, “Mothers, think twice before aborting your baby.”

* "Conspiracy statutes have long been used as heavy artillery to ratchet up penalties for offenses. If, for instance, a six-year-old boy steals a piece of chewing gum, he has committed a misdemeanor, but if he conspires with a second boy to steal the stick of gum, the conspiracy could become a felony.

* "But merely to be under surveillance, as the ACLU is fond of saying, casts a chilling shadow of implied guilt or suspicion over its targets. Questioned by Congressman Charles Taylor, R-NC, the FBI told him the VAAPCON “database only contained information on groups known to be or suspected of being involved in criminal activities.” By letting the public know that belonging to a peaceful organization or church opposed to abortion could get you a government dossier, the Clintons apparently were also trying to chill free speech and anti-abortion activism.

* "So if you were close to the late Cardinal O’Connor, or called him to discuss personal or family problems – even personal sins – to him, you may have been wiretapped and recorded by the Clinton’s VAAPCON surveillance. In that sense, the Clinton administration may have literally bugged the confessional.

* "The ACLU has voiced no objection to this, nor has it demanded that VAAPCON tapes and dossiers be destroyed as unconstitutional invasions of religious privacy.

* "The VAAPCON database information included much more than abortion issues and questions of potential protests and violence. Its dossiers also carried a wide array of information about the positions targeted groups and individuals took on such issues as homosexuality, school prayer, the Clinton administration, and other issues having nothing to do with terrorism. These were political dossiers, as Insight documented, that could be used to identify and target ideological opponents of the Clintons."

* "Later in 2000 when [Insight magazine] asked two FBI officials if the information on these peaceful groups if still collected, they both answered yes and that information was being added continually, although one admitted that the information on them probably should not be in there."

* "Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America -- whose group was among those targeted -- explains tactics during that campaign included wiretaps, mail monitoring, and infiltrators. "It was a campaign of investigating and, frankly, intimidating pro-life and religious leaders," says Wright. "The Department of Justice [under Attorney General Janet Reno] investigated groups like [us], the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Christian Coalition, National Right to Life, and even the [late] Catholic cardinal of New York, John O'Connor."

* "Feminists for Life, a totally peaceful women's rights organization that you've probably heard of, was on the VAAPCOM list for being investigated. Its director said this: “I remember, when I first came on this job in 1994, I heard clicks on my phone all the time. It was a chronic joke – `Oh, there goes the FBI again.' But then, about the time the FBI shut down the VAAPCOM investigation, the mysterious clicking stopped.” Being told that they were not being investigated was not very comforting to them.

* "Tom Ficken, president of Judicial Watch, which is investigating this, said, “These groups have reason to be concerned. Remember, we only have a paltry amount of these documents. Well over 100,000 of them continue to be withheld by this administration. There's a lot of VAAPCOM information still being kept secret, and it may take a Congressional investigation to find out what really happened here.”

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the more than 900 targets of all this surveillance included:

Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson
Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York John O’Connor
National Conference of Catholic Bishops
the National Rifle Association
National Right to Life
Concerned Women For America
Americans United for Life
Feminists for Life
Women's Coalition for Life
American Life League
the Christian Coalition
Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America
Life Dynamics