These are only a few examples of covert surveillance of Food Not Bombs. Because this is America's dirty little secret, reporters, government officials and the general American public often discounted any mention of surveillance and disruption of community groups. The most damaging examples remain secret because they are so vicious and disturbing that few Americans would believe them even though lawyers working for Food Not Bombs have thousands of documents, photos and audiotapes that verify these accounts. Most regrettable is the fact that many of the worse violations against Food Not Bombs do not have a paper trail and can only be supported by testimony from reluctant participants. For example several employees with Chevron Oil, Wackenhut Security and other large corporations have shared a number of frightening stories about their companies efforts against Food Not Bombs but it's been impossible to obtain any corroborating documentation. Another major operation was conducted by Interpol in 1995 where their top agent from Spain joined the "UnFree Trade Tour" as an anti-globalization activist. He emailed a smear campaign to an agent in New York who posted it to hundreds of activists. Each evening on the 60 day tour something odd would happen. One night a 11:30 PM an insurance agent came to measure the ceilings of the apartment where Food Not Bombs lived. There were midnight UPS deliveries to unknown people and Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry was taken into a back room at the Canadian Border where he would be shown a large stack of police files and questioned for an hour. Mr. McHenry was questioned by a group of Spanish activists at the Peoples Global Agenda Conference Europe when they saw the Interpol Agents photo in a scrap book at his table. They told Keith McHenry a number of detailed accounts of the agents efforts to harm the movement in Spain. Two of the three Americans involved in the tour have disappeared.

At the same time that Food Not Bombs is targeted as a terrorist group, governments in the United States are also working to stop us from sharing meals with the hungry and organize for peace by using state Health Department to investigate the groups distribution of food after an anonymous callers file complaints. In each case the callers turned out to have connections to the military or military contractors.

In the fall of 2009 the Food Not Bombs global coordination office in Taos, New Mexico was sabotaged. Keith hired an assistant to support the tours, help edit publications, fill orders of books and other materials and help coordinate the use of office space. During the first six months she seemed to be a real asset to the organization. The first sign of trouble occured in August when a case of books she had mailed to Keith were retuned. That same month she had been helping Keith prepare an announcement of the 30 Anniversary Tour. She also helped input new email addresses to a student list and on August 15th she was to send out the tour announcment to the list so they would be able to schedule a stop on the tour. Keith asked her to make sure he was scheduled to speak at a conference in Washington D.C. concerned that he was not listed in the emails advertising the event but his asstant reported that she had just spoken to them that morning and they were excited to have him. When he arrived the staff of the conference was suprised to see him. It turned out she had never spoken to the organizers. When he return to Taos in September excited to see hwo many schools had responded to the August 15th email so carfully written with his assistance help he learned that she had forgotten to email out the announcemnet. Keith emailed out the announcemnet that day but it was too late. Funding for honorariums had already been dedicated to other speakers so the 30th Anniversary Tour would have to vist schools for free. Even so the assistant claimed he had three paid events that month but as it turned out those schools had no idea Keith was scheduled to speak. It also turn out that assistant was not able to collect past due honorariums from the spring tour so she paid herself from money that was promised to a Princeton student who had paid for the presentation out of his own pocket. He asked Princeton to sue Food Not Bombs for the money. The assitant quite havig been caught with stealing funds from Food Not Bombs. Keith struggled to set up some presentations booking a few that provided a small fee. That November and December while Keith was on what was left of the 30th Anniversary Tour the assistant claimed she was still reponsible for the office since she was a local peace activists and invited a group of people to sell drugs out of the Taos Peace House. Several people called Keith to report that that had been assaulted by the staff. A person claiming to be an emergency room nurse called about a man who arrived with injuries he sustained while visitig the Taos Peace House. Food Not Bombs supporters emailed concerned about the violence they had witnessed at the office. Worried that these claims of violence would be used against Food Not Bombs the Taos Peace House website was updated and people were asked to stop visiting the office until the crisis was resolved. On December 6, 2009 during the regular meeting of the Taos Peace House people claimed there had never been any violence at the office. Many of those attending the meeting had not been involved in the house in September. The next morning one of the new staff people beat up a guest who had come to eat. The violence was savage and confirmed that Keith should have been worried. The peole that sabotaged the infoshop emailed the local media to claim Keith had never been involved in Food Not Bombs and was responsible for closing the house. They threatened a local progressive newspaper into publishing a letter claiming Keith sabotaged the peace house and lied about his history of working with Food Not Bombs. They called the police on him and threatened to beat him up. It is still not clear why people sabotaged the Taos Peace House and the global coordination office of Food Not Bombs. Certified letters from June 2010 were sent to Food Not Bombs from the people that sabotaged the Taos Peace House. The exact same letter was also sent to Food Not Bombs by certified mail in 2000. The Taos office was not the only infoshop initiated by Food Not Bombs to be sabotaged during that year. The Hive in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1-2-3 Community Space in Brooklyn and several other cities also lost their spaces for being too radical.

The RNC 8 resolved their case but efforts to stop Food Not Bombs continue. Nearly 30 pages of documents about Richmond, Virginia Food Not Bombs shows that the F.B.I. infiltrated that chapter. Food Not Bombs groups in Florida are also under pressure as the Republican National Convention comes to Tampa and the economy is driving the homeless towards warmer climates for survival.

As we reported above the F.B.I., Homeland Security and other agencies focus on disrupting Food Not Bombs before national political conventions. We urge the organizers in Florida and North Carolina to make sure their publications include statements supportig nonviolent direct action. We also encourage all activists to tell anyone joking about violence or suggesting the use of arson, bombs or other violence that they are not welcome at our meetings. We do not want any more Food Not Bombs volunteers to be arrested on charges of terrorism. We can see that the government is still interested in disrupting Food Not Bombs. An article on the use of GPS tracking of Food Not Bombs volunteers was published in By Kim Zetter in SPIN Magazine on May 9, 2011 Battle Brews Over FBI"s Warrantless GPS Tracking. Food Not Bombs organized a gathering in Orlando in late May 2011. The activists announced a campaign to end the criminalization of poverty that included a one night occpation of public space outside each city hall in Florida where the local government intended to pass their own law against the sharing of meals with the homeless. The city of Orlando won thier appeal against Food Not Bombs on on April 12, 2011 and cities all over Florida saw that as a green light to ban Food Not Bombs. The city of Orlando made 24 arrests in June 2011 but gave up as it became clear they would not be able to stop Food Not Bombs.

At the time we were facing arrest in Orlando a number of Food Not Bombs volunteers started to support a proposal to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. starting on October 6, 2011. This occupation was endorsed by the May Food Not Bombs Gathering. Volunteers were encouraged to help provide food and equipment. Soon after the arrests ended in Florida we recieved an announcement from Ad Busters Magazine calling for an occupation of Wall Street to start on September 17, 2011. That occupation was also supported by Food Not Bombs. I bought hundreds of pounds of rice, beans and oats to help feed the Washington D.C. occupation and set out for theeast coast. My first stop was Saint Louis to meet the local Food Not Bombs volunteers and help them with their support of the Hopeville occupation. The next day I was pulled over by the Illinois Highway Patrol as I was entering Chicago on I 55 in heavy traffic. The officer visited with me for about 30 minutes but did not give me a ticket. He just asked me questions about Food Not Bombs. This started a pattern where I was pulled over and questioned by local police every few days. I would be ticketed on occassion for minor traffic infractions that I had not acctually done. My fines added up to just over $1,000 by December. I was also questioned while sleeping in my van while parked behind an abandoned Shaws Grocery. The officer arrested me on a warrant from 1983 for a case where I had been accused of posting a flyer on a light pole.

We started to alert our supporters about National Defense Authorization Act. The occupy movement organized protests against the bill in cities all over the United States. The law had rare bipartisan support with 86 Senators and 283 Congresspeople voting to support a legislation that abandons many of the central features of the United States Constitution. They agreed to give the president and military unlimited power, including the power for the military to detain American citizens on American soil and hold them without trial indefinitely. The president can and has created a 'kill list' of Americans that are to be murdered when needed. A secret panel provides this list to the president or his staff. Weeks after Obama abolished the core provisions of the U. S. Constitution the Federal Aviation Administration opened the air space over the United States to drones. His Justice Department also provides grants to local law enforcement agencies to buy surveillance drones and the Department of Homeland Security started to implement a national surveillance program in coordination with state and local police departments. Obama also hosted a meeting of police chief"s from all over the United States on January 18, 2012 to coordinate a national strategy to silence efforts to build a grassroots movement to make America a real democracy. That same week The Aspen Institute issued a paper to Congress encouraging a new level of coordination between Homeland Security and local police. Journalist Linda Moulton Howe pointed out during the January 17, 2012 Coast To Coast AM radio program that passage of the NDAA came at an odd time since the United States had killed Ben Laden and was pulling troops out of Iraq and Afganistan. She asked each guest if they thought the president felt he needed this law to silence domestic protest to the economic crisis. Journalist Chris Hedges is among many that have written that the NDAA was passed in response to the growing influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In his January 17, 2012 interview on Democracy Now! 'Hedges speculates that since the national security establishment charged with protecting the country against terrorists was against the bill, the true impetus for its passage was the fear among corporate elites of an expanding Occupy Wall Street movement this summer, in which police could not be relied upon to suppress legitimate dissent and elites desired the power to "call out the military."'