The U.S. Department of Homeland Security conducted a threat assessment of local pro- and anti-abortion rights activists before an expected rally last year, even though they did not pose a threat to national security.
The DHS destroyed or deleted its copies of the assessment after an internal review found it violated intelligence-gathering guidelines by collecting and sharing information about “protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security,” according to a department memo written last year.
Though the DHS has destroyed its copy of the assessment, the local police department, which still has a copy of the report, is refusing to release it:
[A] lawyer representing anti-abortion activists who attended the rally asked Middleton police to release a copy of the assessment under Wisconsin’s open records law.
In the department’s Feb. 4 response, Capt. Noel Kakuske confirmed the department kept a copy of the report but declined to release it. He said the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which runs the intelligence center, and the Department of Homeland Security agreed the report should be withheld because it contains sensitive law enforcement information.
“Disclosure would result in the identification and public disclosure of individuals affiliated with groups on both sides of the issue, which would place them in danger from opposing radical extremists,” he wrote.
Somehow I suspect these groups feel more threatened by improper federal investigation than anything their “opposing radical extremists” could ever do.
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