MORE PROBES FOUND OF LATIN POLICY FOES FBI SURVEILLANCE CALLED PERVASIVE

Ross Gelbspan

Boston Globe June 18, 1988

Newly released documents indicate that the FBI conducted at least four investigations into opponents of the Reagan administration's Central America policies, in addition to one probe already under scrutiny by the FBI director and Congress.

An analysis of the documents, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, indicates the FBI also investigated:

- Critics of Reagan administration policies in Nicaragua;

- Groups planning or conducting demonstrations against US policy in Nicaragua;

- Opponents of US policies in El Salvador in two investigations captioned: "Salvadoran Leftist Activities in the United States" and "International Terrorism Investigation re: Leftist Guerrilla Activities in El Salvador."

The FBI also mounted a separate investigation into members of TecNica, a group that sends engineers to Nicaragua to work on small-scale development projects, according to sources familiar with FBI operations.

Benjamin Linder, a 27-year-old American engineer who was killed last year by contra forces, was working with a group affiliated with TecNica.

Two congressional committees and FBI director William Sessions already are investigating the bureau's conduct in its probe of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.

The newly released documents were analyzed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a public-interest lawyers group based in New York City.

"This is much more widespread than the files on CISPES indicate," said David Lerner of the lawyers group. "The FBI's surveillance of opponents of all of Reagan Central America policies is pervasive. Anyone active in opposing US policy in all of Central America seems to have been a target."

"What is especially disturbing is that this stuff keeps happening," said Lerner, who cited a recent break-in in Cambridge and two incidents within the last month of activists' mail being opened and tampered with. "More serious efforts need to be made to get to the bottom of this," he said. But an FBI spokeswoman in Washington vigorously denied that the bureau's investigations are politically motivated.

"We don't go after people because of politics. We go after people we suspect of committing a violation of US law," Sue Schnitzer said. "FBI investigations cover both right- and left-wing groups. We don't pick a target because of their political views, but because of an allegation of criminal activity."

Schnitzer said she could not discuss the specific investigations listed in the recently released documents. But she noted that, in addition to international and domestic terrorism, the FBI is also charged with foreign counterintelligence investigations.

She emphasized that a decision by the FBI to investigate a group or individual "depends on the veracity of an allegation and whether or not the bureau has jurisdiction, not on political considerations."

Ann Mari Buitrago, a Freedom of Information Act specialist who works with the Center, said it is impossible to determine the number and extent of the various FBI investigations because most of the documents have been blacked out.

She noted that markings on one 1984 document indicated the FBI may have been conducting as many as seven investigations, including the CISPES probe. Markings on that 1984 document, which was recently released by the Boston FBI office, indicated that copies of the teletype went into six related files.

Buitrago said that, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests she has filed with the FBI, the bureau has indicated that 15 field offices hold files under the "Nicaragua Terrorist" caption and 18 offices hold files under the title of "Nicaraguan Proposed Demonstrations in the US."

But Buitrago, who heads the Fund for Open Information and Accountability Inc., said the documents are so heavily censored that they indicate very little of substance.

One document released last month is captioned "Nicaraguan Terrorist Matters: International Terrorism -- Nicaragua." That teletype, a report from the Chicago FBI office to FBI headquarters, deals with a 1986 demonstration in Chicago by Pledge of Resistance, a group which mobilized against the administration's pro-contra policies around 1985.

The "Nicaraguan Terrorist" document was assigned the number 75 by the FBI's Freedom of Information office. By contrast, the CISPES investigation documents released by the FBI last January indicate a file of more than 600 documents.

"The investigation of opponents of Nicaragua policies may or may not be the same size as the CISPES investigation," Buitrago said yesterday in a telephone interview. "There's absolutely no way to tell. "We have no idea when the Nicaragua investigation began," she said. "The 75th document in the series could be from the second week of the investigation. We just can't know from these documents."

In 1985, under questioning from Congress, former FBI director William Webster acknowledged that FBI agents interviewed more than 100 US citizens who had visited Nicaragua, as well as their friends, landlords and employers, in some cases.

Webster indicated at the time that those FBI interviews may have been requested by either the CIA or the National Security Council.

The FBI has maintained that its interviews of US visitors to Nicaragua were prompted by foreign counterintelligence concerns, such as fears that travelers may have been asked by Nicaraguan officials to obtain information or spy on the United States.

One document recently released by the Pittsburgh FBI office is captioned: "Salvadoran Leftist Activities in the US." Another recently released document on "International Terrorism Investigations re: Support of Leftist Guerrilla Activities in El Salvador" was released by the FBI Boston Office to Julie Meyers, a member of CISPES and a founder of the New England Central America Network in Cambridge.

Meyers, 31, who currently lives in Washington and works with the CISPES office there, said she lived in Boston from 1982 until the end of 1986. During that time, she staffed the NECAN office in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church and also served as a regional CISPES representative.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Meyers said "the documents indicate quite clearly that the FBI is continuing to investigate activists who are doing completely legal work."

Meyers said she believed the FBI is continuing its surveillance of activists "because of cross-references to other investigations and files which no one has mentioned." The bureau has said it closed the CISPES probe in 1985.

Meyers blamed Congress for failing to take what she called the FBI's harassment and surveillance of activists seriously.

"Why should the FBI stop these actions? There's no one who seems to want them to stop," she said.

The existence of FBI files on TecNica volunteers was confirmed by sources who declined to be identified. The group attained notoriety in April 1987, when FBI agents in five cities visited employers of 12 of the group's volunteers and had them call the volunteers into their offices.

The FBI agents then dressed down the volunteers for "helping the communists" and warned them not to return to Nicaragua, although such trips are legal. [Table]