MOYERS: Welcome to NOW.

While all eyes were on Super Tuesday, we were thinking about the eyes that may be on you when you least suspect it. This goes beyond President Bush's call this week to renew the Patriot Act giving the government broad powers to wiretap and investigate suspected terrorists. Going after suspected terrorists is not our subject tonight. Going after people exercising their right of free speech, is.

BRANCACCIO: We all love a spy novel. But who knew that you could be plunged into the real world of espionage just by gathering to talk about a protest march? It's one thing to carry out a war on terror. But few realize that Justice Department rules now let FBI agents go undercover to monitor citizen gatherings...whether or not there is evidence or suspicion of criminal activity. And local police are doing the same thing.

Our report was prepared by producer Brenda Breslauer.




BRANCACCIO: March 2003, five days before the invasion of Iraq, outside Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, what appears to be a garden variety antiwar protest is underway. But something in this picture is not what it appears to be.

It's that woman in yellow. She looks like a protester, but she's not.

PETERS: She sat with us, she chanted and sang with us.

BRANCACCIO: Nancy Peters was one of the organizers of that protest- she and 18 others from the Colorado Coalition Against the War in Iraq were arrested that day. Including that woman in yellow. She'd first shown up at the group's planning meeting the night before.

PETERS: We were taken away in handcuffs one by one. She was arrested, she was even given a summons just like the rest of us. But there was a mystery. Our attorneys couldn't find any police record of any arrest. There were 19 of us, they could only find 18. She was indeed an infiltrator.

BRANCACCIO: The police would later confirm she was one of theirs. Call her what you want: infiltrator or undercover investigator. Government spying at peaceful protests was big during the sixties, waned during the intervening years, but now the practice is back. The Colorado protesters were disturbed by the government's use of its extraordinary powers to monitor their activities. But a month later, when it happened a second time, there were even more serious implications. Nancy Peters' group had notified police they'd be presenting a peace resolution at the Colorado offices of US Senator Wayne Allard. But take a look at this man. He's said his name was Chris, and he had joined up with the group the night before. The nonviolent group didn't know who he was, and Peters says they were taken aback by what he had to say.

PETERS: Chris at one point, said, "Well, I don't see why we don't just form a line of the people who are going to do this protest and just kind of march on past the police. Kind of like storm them." It was ridiculous. I mean, people said "No, come on, you know, are you crazy?"

BRANCACCIO: He too was an undercover officer, and despite his apparent provocation, the protest stayed peaceful. As the others were being taken away, "Chris" was caught on camera chatting with his fellow officers. Nancy Peters put two and two together when she arrived to post bail and ran into him leaving the county jail.

PETERS: I said "Chris, you're out. Wow. What happened?" And he said "Well yeah, I've been, you know, I've been charged and I'm released." And I, "Can I see your summons?" He said, "Oh, my summons." And he starts fumbling around in all his pockets. Then he said, "Oh, you know, they didn't even give me one."

BRANCACCIO: His real name was Darren Christensen, of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's department. In court testimony, he admitted he was working undercover but denied trying to provoke the group into violence.
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