The latest front in the GWOT

Having learned that they can leave no stone unturned in The Global War on Terror™, we learn this morning that the FBI has been keeping voluminous files -- thousands of documents -- on that underground terror network known by the innocuous-sounding name, Greenpeace.

WASHINGTON, July 17 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.

The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.

[...]

At Greenpeace, which has protested both the Bush administration's environmental record and its policies in Iraq, John Passacantando, executive director of the group's United States operation, said he too was troubled by what he had learned.

"If the F.B.I. has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of information on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful activity for 34 years, it suggests they're just attempting to stifle the voices of their critics," Mr. Passacantando said.

Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the Justice Department in a highly unusual prosecution in 2003 after two of its protesters went aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner. A federal judge in Miami threw out the case last year.

A Native American group in Denver protesting Columbus Day. Antiwar protesters. Dossiers on them all. Who knew that Robert S. Mueller III, seemingly so patrician and passive, is the reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover. Like Hoover, he remains in his office despite continued screw-ups. Does he, like Hoover, have files on important members of Congress? Otherwise, why doesn't that august group investigate why the FBI and the Justice Department seem to fear the ACLU, animal rights activists, "eco-terrorists," and pacifists more than, you know, guys intent on striking inside the U.S.?