Agents to collect statue-threat data
Homeland Security guidance issued as U.S. deploys officers
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has authorized its personnel to collect information on protesters who threaten to damage or destroy public memorials and statues.
The new guidance was issued as department personnel have been dispatched to police and detain people protesting police violence.
The guidance, obtained by The Washington Post, is described as a “job aid” for personnel implementing an executive order that President Donald Trump signed last month, targeting demonstrators who threatened to remove statutes honoring Confederate officers and other people they consider racially offensive.
The document refers to guidance for “personnel collecting and reporting on various activities in the context of elevated threats targeting monuments, memorials, and statues.”
The guidance, first reported by the blog Lawfare, appears to authorize monitoring of social media posts as well as the use of public information sources to monitor individuals or groups the department believes may “damage or destroy any public monument, memorial, or statue.”
The document makes no distinction as to types of monuments and does not state that they must be on federal property. Personnel are told that they must be able to articulate why someone is a threat and cannot rely on “‘hunches’ and intuitions, which are insufficient.”
The document is unclassified and was issued by the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a phone call and email requesting comment.
Nothing in the intelligence document directs or allows the department to detain protesters. But it does say that the Homeland Security Department may collect information about “individuals or groups,” as well as their “tactics, techniques, or procedures” and refers to existing rules on what information can be collected.
The existing rules do allow the department to collect information about U.S. citizens, specifically “physical surveillance, the use of mail covers, and the use of monitoring devices,” which cannot be hidden and may include public information sources. Mail covers allow the government to record information on the outside of an envelope or parcel before it’s delivered.
Some of those collection rules are limited to U.S. citizens believed “to be engaged in or preparing for espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassination on behalf of a foreign power, organization, or person.”
Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Mo., the top federal prosecutor there said any federal agents involved in an operation to reduce violent crime in the area will be clearly identifiable when making arrests.
U.S. Attorney Timothy Garrison said in a written statement Monday that a new federal effort called Operation LeGend in Kansas City is in response to an increase in violent crime, not protests, The Kansas City Star reported.
“These agents won’t be patrolling the streets,” Garrison said. “They won’t replace or usurp the authority of local officers.”
His statement was made as protests persist nationwide against excessive police force after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In Portland, the actions of federal officers outside the U.S. courthouse have resulted in clashes between protesters and camouflaged, unidentified agents.
Operation LeGend — named after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while sleeping in a Kansas City apartment late last month — was announced on July 8 at the White House. Attorney General William Barr said he would send federal law enforcement officers into Kansas City to quell a “surge of violent crime.”
Garrison has said that the additional 225 federal agents from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will join 400 agents already working and living in the Kansas City area.