Unsealed "Terror" Affidavit Reveals Flimsiness of DeMuth Case, FBI Tactics

Among the pretrial issues to be dealt with in the Monday hearing is a motion for a bill of particulars, asking that the government be required to state precisely which acts they alleged DeMuth committed.  His legal team also has filed motions to dismiss based on several issues, including that the five-year statute of limitations on the laboratory raid had expired by the time he was charged; that neither DeMuth nor his lawyer were told he was a target of the investigation when he was initially subpoenaed and jailed for remaining silent before a grand jury, and vindictive prosecution.

(See DeMuth's entire court docket here for a fuller overview of the case so far; download the newly unsealed affidavit here.)

The lengthy 12-page affidavit dated October, 2009 and released last Friday was signed by Melissa Henderson of the Iowa JTTF.  It sought a search warrant to access DeMuth's computer, seized in a 2008 RNC raid.  If the government had stronger evidence at such a critical stage in the investigation, with the statute of limitations set to expire, they would likely have used it - but the case laid out in the affidavit is extraordinarily circumstantial.  For example, it states that "during the course of this investigation it has been found there are many connections between the attack on the University of Iowa and direct connections with the Minneapolis, Minnesota area."  A primary connection, it says, is that Interstate 35 stretches directly from the Twin Cities to St. Louis, passing by Iowa City and making travel there from Minneapolis easy.

This information in this affidavit became the basis for snaring both DeMuth and Carrie Feldman in a grand jury, charging DeMuth with conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism and jailing Feldman for months after both refused to cooperate with the repressive process, calling a former UI law student and Humane Society lawyer to the same grand jury, and mostly recently, raiding and pillaging the Salt Lake City home of Peter Young and several other animal rights/liberation proponents.

The investigation begins

The ALF raid on Spence Laboratories at the University of Iowa occurred on November 14, 2004, inflicting $500,000 worth of damage and freeing over 300 (401, according to the ALF communique) mice and rats.  That figure, Henderson notes, does not include the "years of research [sic] lost" due to the raid - a testament to the success of the action and the fear held by UI's industry backers that others would follow the liberators' lead.

The FBI suspects assistance from persons "inside the Psychology Department or university environment" due to the sophistication of the raid.  Their investigation first began by obtaining information from Yahoo, the host from which the communique email was sent, pointing to computer terminals accessed from the U of I library and law library.  On December 6, 2004, those computers were investigated.  They suspect the law library computer was used to send the communique because its browser history had been cleared.

Investigators then performed analysis on the ALF video, first seen on November 22, depicting the rescue of the mice and rats and destruction of much of the lab.  They say the video shows that all rescuers were dressed in "dark blue coverall type clothes", and used "Reverse Projection Photogammetry" to allegedly place their heights with a quarter of an inch - those none of the heights are outside of average.  The affidavit goes on to make special note that DeMuth's height is listed at 5'6" on his driver's license, close to the 5'6.5" of one of the people in the video.

The FBI then contacted retailers in the surrounding region.  They determined that on November 9, a man and woman bought four pairs of coveralls as well as sledgehammers and a wrecking bar in cash from a particular Cedar Rapids store.  The store no longer had the surveillance video from the purchase, but despite the elapsed time, the cashier helped develop a sketch of the woman only.  The sketch is what the FBI later said bore a resemblance to Carrie Feldman, who was released from jail in Iowa last month. The affidavit doesn't say if anything besides circumstance connects the purchase to the UI raid.

Photos, Phones and Facebook

The affidavit then documents the surveillance of September, 2004 events on the "Dangerous Media Tour," a radical film fest and skillshare touring the country.  It took particular interest in a documentary focusing on Huntingdon Life Sciences, the animal torture business successfully targeted by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, or SHAC.  Because of the "potential for this group [the attendees to the tour's events] to be discussing/planning criminal activities," the Joint Terrorism Task Force photographed and otherwise surveilled the tour.  They identified the woman presenting the animal liberation documentary, and tied her to SHAC, which they call an "animal rights extremist organization" because of their aboveground, legal but effective activism.

The FBI also documents a man accompanying her on the tour, who at first was unidentified.  However, after the arrest of animal liberation activist Peter Young in 2005, who was wanted in connection with mink releases dating back to 1997, investigators identified him as the person on the Iowa tour stops, based on photographs and information in his cell phone.  From here, they investigated further, finding the circumstantial evidence that brought the investigation to Minnesota: the woman had been pulled over in Iowa on October 14, driving a car rented from Enterprise out of Minneapolis and returned on November 11 (well before the UI raid).  She and Young also flew from and to Minneapolis in late October, the affidavit says, but it makes no mention about their whereabouts around the time of the raid.

The affidavit then tries to connect all this to DeMuth. It uses what now has become the standard government text on the RNC Welcoming Committee's 2007 "We're Getting Ready" video, in which it says both Feldman and DeMuth appeared, emphasizing the molotov cocktail, bolt cutters, reference to vandalism, and black masks, using the fear of a black bloc "carr[ying] out acts of violence towards law enforcement" as a hook towards gaining credibility in front of a judge.  As usual, the affidavit doesn't mention the joking context of the video, for instance that the molotovs landed in a barbecue grill.

With the investigation into anti-RNC organizing sparked by that video and aided by several confidential informants, on the Saturday morning prior to the RNC in 2008, the Ramsey County Sheriff's department raided the Food Not Bombs house in south Minneapolis, where DeMuth was living.  They found a personal journal of his, as well as the hard drive which the affidavit requests a disk image of.  It cites a few short, vague sentences from the journal, including one referring to Iowa and another referring to "P" - whom the FBI believes is Peter Young. The journal dates from 2005, when DeMuth was a teengaer and a supporter of political prisoners, but not an active animal rights activist.

The affidavit adds emphasis to the sentence, "It's been almost a year since Iowa," in DeMuth's journal, but doesn't indicate anything that could be imagined to tie him to the raid itself.  After all, the UI raid was a well-known incident even outside of animal liberation circles, notable for its sophistication and success and - as is now demonstrated - the fervor with which the state seeks to imprison people for it.

The FBI's investigation then takes a turn less like a gumshoe and more like a teenage crush, detailing DeMuth's online handles on Myspace, Livejournal and Facebook and the fact that he has shown support for animal rights and "ecological extremist" groups (presumably these are those groups that show "extreme" passion for defending the earth, not those groups, such as the companies that benefit from animal testing, with an "extreme" disregard for its well-being).  Because of DeMuth's association with Carrie Feldman, her online activity was investigated as well, leading to the discovery of a picture of Feldman with her pet rat.  This picture was later used to try and discredit Feldman in court.

For good measure to paint a particular portrait of DeMuth for the rural Iowa judge, the affidavit notes that he was a suspect in a 2006 case of property destruction ("Eco attack") at leading weapons-maker Alliant Techsystems in Edina, was arrested at a protest later that year, and also cited at a critical mass bike ride (an "organized protest").  It also cryptically states that he "is also a suspect in a Criminal Damage to Property at the St. Paul, MN Police Department for the RNCWC video" - a video which features dozens of people, including kids - "which DeMuth was suspected to be involved in."

In conclusion, the affidavit requested that the documents be sealed so as not to "jeopardize the successful progress of this investigation and possibly others" - a move which was granted until journalist Regan's successful motion.

Equally noteworthy as the techniques of the FBI's so-far-unsucessful investigation - albeit an investigation that has met the low bar of convincing several rural Iowa judges of its merits - is the understanding of decentralized radical action not seen in many such documents.  In the process of explaining the ALF, the affidavit indirectly praises the resistance to corporate-state domination of people and the planet:  

"It is also known animal rights groups along with ecological extremist groups and anarchy groups overlap and have a strong network between them and a well-built security culture among them."