Secret Service Searches Home of Protester

[chlamor]

Secret Service Searches Home of Protester


Renee Jensen of Elkins, West Virginia, likes to express herself.

She has put up as many as a dozen signs in her yard over the past year, protesting the war in Iraq, Bush and Cheney, and the crackdown on civil liberties.

<snip>

In the fall, the Secret Service gave her a call.

"They said they wanted to ask me some questions," she recalls. "I said sure. They said someone called them and said I had signs up in my yard that were threatening the President. I said I did have some signs in my yard, but I wasn't threatening the President. The worst I've ever said was that he's an Evildoer. And this Secret Service man specifically asked me about the sign about Mr. Cheney. He said, "That's from revelations." I said, "Yes, I have no desire to destroy anybody. I'm just quoting out of the Bible."  His name, she said, was Agent Brian Atkins.

Then on January 11, she had some unexpected visitors.

"I was actually taking a nap, and there was a knock on my door, there was a West Virginia State Trooper and a Secret Service agent," she says, identifying them as Trooper R. J. Boggs and Agent James Lanham. "They asked to come in.  And I let them. And they started interviewing me."

http://www.progressive.org/mcwatch04/mc042705.php

[salib]

1. The Progressive has always been THERE.

They report on what we always say SHOULD be reported on.

[Maat]

2. Ten to one ...

if she had invited her lawyer to be present - before questioning - there would have been no signing of a statement; they had no evidence to back up a charge.

Richard Jewell's lawyer told him to get up and walk out of the building when he was taken to a station and questioned.

Different circumstances, true, but ... her lawyer would have informed her of various options.

[Stuckinthebush]

4. True...but I wonder

Since she knew that she had nothing to hide and that the agents were just responding to a loony who had called them about her (which they have to do, btw), then she felt very safe in inviting them in.

Now, if she had insisted that her lawyer be present and that they not look around her house, would they have ratcheted up the investigation a notch or two? I don't know - but perhaps.

Her demeanor and actions said, "I have absolutely nothing to hide. I am a US citizen with the right to free speech." Ten to one the agent left, got a cup of coffee, wrote a one page report, and put it in a file with other cleared incidents.

Of course it is a shame that we live in a world where any crackpot neighbor can call the SS on you, but the SS is just doing their job of protecting the president - GOP or Dem...it doesn't matter to them. If this happens to one of us, my question is, "what is the right action to take?" I have no answers for this.

[Maat]

5. It's a judgment call.

As a CPS worker (I was from '93 to 2000), I would say, 'Sure. It looks good when you cooperate initially.'

After law school, and having both prosecutors and defense attorneys as my professors, I realize how many people are involved in the equation, and the policy and law behind it, and, frankly, I'd tell cops it was nothing personal, but we could resume the discussion after my attorney was present.

Sometimes cops manufacture evidence. Sometimes they engage in what I call torture and coercion, even when they are not mad at a person for non-cooperation.

But, I agree with you, it is a judgment call.

[Jensen]

3. Welcome to the New Amerika.....

where they treat you as if you were in Cuba, China or one of those other countries we are "Dying" trying to sell "Democracy"!

I miss the other America and I would like to have it back! :patriot:

[LdyGuique]

6. This is highly charged and inaccurate, Jensen

If it were China or Cuba, you can guarantee it would have involved at least a brief stay in a cell -- as in several months.

Since someone reported that she was making death threats about the president, it did have to be checked out. It IS scary that emotions have gotten so roiled up that "do-gooders" believe that they have the right to contact Homeland Security over 1st Amendment issues and make baseless claims. I do hope they doubled back and reinterviewed the instigator.