FBI Monitored Antiwar.com For Years in Error

The
Guardian is reporting that the FBI monitored the website
Antiwar.com for at least six
years. What makes the monitoring particularly interesting is that
it only began after Managing Editor of Antiwar.com Eric Garris
passed the FBI a hacking threat he received via email a day after
9/11 with the subject line “YOUR SITE IS GOING DOWN.”

As the Guardian story goes on to explain, by January
2002 this message had been characterized as “A THREAT BY GARRIS TO
HACK FBI WEBSITE” by someone at the FBI field office in San
Francisco. 

From The Guardian:

According to unredacted portions of the documents, that apparent
mix-up was the first time antiwar.com came onto the FBI’s radar – a
purview that would last at least six years.

Garris said he never heard back from the FBI, and had no reason
to believe that the incident had any broader impact, until he saw
what was in his FBI file. “It was pretty scary to think that in my
FBI file, and perhaps other government agency files, there was a
report that I was considered a threat based on that,” Garris
said.

“That may follow me for the rest of my life. Any time I interact
with any law enforcement or government agencies, they’re going to
be able to see that, and make evaluations of me based on it. It’s
very scary.”

The mix-up did not stay limited to the San Francisco field
office. In 2004, FBI officials in Newark, New Jersey, compiled a
“threat assessment” of Garris and his colleague Justin
Raimondo.

Read Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille’s blog post from last May
on Antiwar.com’s attempt to find out what the fed had on them

here.  

Read the story in full
here.