[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:14551] Kansas City: The Anarchists' Datebook

Thu Aug 5 08:53:26 CDT 2004

>Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 00:52:07 -0500
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>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:14551] Kansas City: The Anarchists' Datebook
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>The Anarchists' Datebook
>
>The FBI's anti-terrorism task force goes Info-shopping.
>
>BY NADIA PFLAUM
>nadia.pflaum at pitch.com
>The Pitch
>
>When 21-year-old Nate Hoffmann called his 
>roommate, Jeff Kinder, and told him that the FBI 
>was looking for him, Kinder thought Hoffmann was 
>being paranoid. He reconsidered when a black 
>Ford Explorer tailed him as he pulled into his 
>West Plaza driveway.
>
>When Kinder stepped out of his truck, two men in 
>dark suits approached him. They introduced 
>themselves as Ryan C. Lamb and Eduardo D. 
>Velasquez from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task 
>Force. They asked where Hoffmann was.
>
>It was around noon on Friday, July 23, and 
>Kinder, also 21, had just returned from classes 
>at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. 
>Hoffmann wasn't home, which was normal; he has 
>two jobs. He works at the Applebee's on Rainbow 
>in Kansas City, Kansas -- and he's one of the 
>organizers of the collectively run Crossroads 
>Infoshop at 1830 Locust, which sells leftist 
>books and posters and serves as a meeting place 
>for a mostly high school- and college-age 
>clientele.
>
>The agents asked Kinder three questions that 
>anyone who hangs out at the Infoshop can now 
>recite in various forms: Do you know of anyone 
>planning organized violence at the Democratic 
>National Convention, the Republican National 
>Convention or the elections? If you did know, or 
>if you were to find out about such plans in the 
>future, would you tell us? Do you know that if 
>you did have such information and failed to tell 
>us or were involved in such activities, you 
>could be charged with a crime?
>
>Kinder said he doubted that anyone he knew would 
>be planning anything violent. And he wouldn't 
>say whether he would report such information to 
>the FBI if he did have it. "I wanted to be as 
>blunt as possible," he says. "With me, [the 
>conversation] had a reasonably respectful tone. 
>I was trying not to be overly arrogant or 
>defensive."
>
>Bob Herndon, an agent at the FBI's Kansas City 
>office, says local agents conducted interviews 
>after the Boston bureau office informed them of 
>a possible plan to firebomb media trucks at the 
>Democratic convention. "Of course, preventing 
>any terrorist act on U.S. soil is the number one 
>priority of the FBI right now," Herndon tells 
>the Pitch. "So that's why we were out there 
>conducting interviews."
>
>When he heard the FBI was looking for him, 
>Hoffmann and his ex-girlfriend, fellow Infoshop 
>worker Erica Wiggins, 24, were riding their 
>bicycles. They pedaled to the Infoshop and 
>conferred with their comrades. During the 
>half-hour Hoffmann spent debating what to do, 
>Lamb and Velasquez called him four more times. 
>Hoffmann reasoned that the agents would find him 
>eventually, so he answered their next call and 
>arranged to meet them at the Broadway Café in 
>Westport. A dozen or so of Hoffmann's friends 
>agreed to meet there, too.
>
>The black Explorer was parked in front of the 
>Broadway Café when Hoffmann arrived. Lamb and 
>Velasquez sat coffeeless at a corner table. 
>Hoffmann was nervous at first, and when he sat 
>down, he started laughing.
>
>"They asked me whether they'd said anything that 
>was funny," Hoffmann recalls. "I finally said I 
>was laughing because I thought the situation was 
>so ridiculous."
>
>The agents asked him the three questions. "I've 
>been politically active long enough to know that 
>the only thing that can come from answering the 
>FBI's questions is trouble," Hoffmann says. So 
>he told them that he wouldn't respond without a 
>lawyer present.
>
>"They told me that usually when people don't 
>answer, it's because they have something to 
>hide," Hoffmann says. He says Velasquez handed 
>him his card and told him that when he got a 
>lawyer, Hoffmann should call him. He added that 
>if Hoffmann failed to call within the next two 
>days, the agents would find him again -- by 
>Tuesday.
>
>Meanwhile, Wiggins called her parents to warn 
>them that the FBI might be calling. When her 
>mother came home from work, she says, there was 
>a message from Special Agent Donald S. Albracht 
>asking Wiggins to call him. Four days later, 
>early Tuesday morning, Wiggins' parents found 
>Albracht's blue FBI business card stuck in their 
>screen door. On the back was the instruction 
>"Please call me, Erica." Wiggins has not 
>responded.
>
>The feds didn't make good on their advisory to 
>Hoffmann that they'd find him again -- the 
>following Tuesday passed without a visit. But 
>the FBI also questioned anarchists in Lawrence, 
>Columbia, Kirksville, Topeka and St. Louis, 
>according to the KC Direct Action Network, a Web 
>site that aids local activists. In Kirksville, 
>agents served several anarchists with subpoenas, 
>ordering them to report to a grand jury on the 
>same day they had planned to go to Boston to 
>protest the Democratic National Convention, says 
>Kansas City lawyer Fred Slough.
>
>"We know the FBI has a history of simply 
>disrupting dissenting groups and trying to 
>discredit them," says Slough, who was contacted 
>for advice by one of the Kirksville anarchists. 
>"There's no problem with the FBI wanting to talk 
>to them. That's the FBI's job. But these kids 
>have no duty to speak with them and shouldn't be 
>harassed if they don't. They're exercising their 
>constitutional rights."
>
>"I'm not in Boston -- I'm here," Wiggins says. 
>"That's part of why this situation is so 
>ridiculous. I'm not going to that farcical 
>protest so I can sit in the protesting pen next 
>to the media pen. I'm doing other things. I'm 
>talking to people, I'm working with labor 
>unions, doing other things to try to talk to 
>folks about the world we live in. That was 
>legal, last I heard, to talk to people."
>
>Hoffmann says he believes that the FBI 
>questioned neighbors of Wiggins' parents, 
>Hoffmann's neighbors near the Plaza and 
>Hoffmann's manager at Applebee's. They showed 
>Hoffmann's neighbors a picture of him and asked 
>Wiggins' neighbors what kind of car she drives.
>
>"People can lose their jobs. Their landlords can 
>kick them out over stuff like this," Slough 
>says. "Stuff like this could hurt these kids."
>
>Still, if a radical bookstore's success can be 
>measured in how soon it gets a visit from the 
>FBI, then the Infoshop, which opened July 2, is 
>doing well.
>
>pitch.com | originally published: August 5, 2004
>
>http://www.pitch.com/issues/2004-08-05/stline.html
>
>Related Links:
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>This story came from Infoshop News (http://www.infoshop.org/inews)
>For more, see http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/08/04/7310452

-- 

Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu