Activist's remark starts FBI probe

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam.

Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions.

And

He urged that the dam be torn out. He said he never mentioned blowing the dam up, though the corps' presentation of possible options included a picture of a dam being dynamited.

The next day, however, a local newspaper reported that Bensman "said he would like to see the dam blown up and resents paying taxes to fix dam problems when it is barge companies that profit from the dam."

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I would simply chalk this up to zealous post 9/11 stupidity except for the fact that the FBI has seemingly been far more concerned with the largely fictional eco-terrorist movement than they have been with actual terrorists for some years. My guess is that this bizarre focus is hang-over from the old COINTELPRO days during the 60s and 70s: the Counter Intelligence Program, founded by famous transvestite and longtime FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, was the outfit that wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr. as an alleged communist, and actually assassinated Black Panther Fred Hampton, among other atrocities. That is, the FBI apparently continues to have an anti-liberal culture so strong that they continue to have knee-jerk responses to even a whiff of hippy.

Typical cops.

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