Environmentalist's remarks draw FBI attention

Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during the Army Corps of Engineers public hearing was harmless enough: Rather than building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam. Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions. On July 25 in Alton IL the Army Corps of Engineers hosted a meeting presenting options for improving fish movement at the nearby Melvin Price Locks and Dam. The dam is considered a major impediment to roughly 36 species that migrate upstream. The corps gave a PowerPoint presentation in which they showed the various options under consideration to improve fish passage. One of the options given in the presentation was removal of the dam, though this was not the favored option for the corps. In a public comment session following the presentation, Bensman, a member of the Sierra Club and a coordinator for Heartwood, a forest-protection group, contended that dams are environmentally destructive and amount to billions in corporate welfare for boating interests. He urged the corps to remove the dam. Benman's trouble began when a local paper, the Alton Telegraph, ran an article the next day which stated "Jim Bensman of Alton said he would like to see the dam blown up and resents paying taxes to fix dam problems." Benman claims that he had never mentioned blowing up the dam. Workers at the corps' St. Louis office "took a dim view [of the article] and questioned if it was a potential threat," said corps spokesman Alan Dooley. A security officer for the corps forwarded a clipping of the newspaper article to the FBI. The corps initially denied having contacted the FBI. Kevin Bluhm, who leads the corps' public communication efforts along the Mississippi, told the New York Times that he doubted the call came from the corps. Bluhm, who was also the moderator of the Alton meeting, said he could understand why the FBI felt obliged to check Bensman out, but "if they would have asked me first, I would have said no, there's not that kind of risk there." An official statement that was released after the publication of the New York Times interview, however, contradicted those remarks, as the corps both admitted to and justified contacting the FBI: "Our security officer's determination, based on US Army regulations concerning possible threats to public facilities, was that the article should be forwarded to the appropriate federal agency, the FBI, for their consideration to determine whether there was a threat or not." On July 31, Bensman said, his home phone rang, his caller ID reading "Federal Bureau of ..." "I was kind of in a state of shock," Bensman recalls. When the FBI agent cited the newspaper article and quizzed Bensman about it, Bensman called it "absurd." "I told him, 'How could you possibl[y] think this is a terroristic threat? Don't you have something more to worry about?'" Bensman said. The FBI agent responded "we have to investigate everything." Bensman's initial response to the phone call was "just kind of disbelief, how could anyone be so utterly stupid as to think that was a terrorist threat?" For one thing, he said, it would be ridiculous for a would-be terrorist to announce explosive intentions at a public meeting, much less a meeting sponsored by an arm of the military. But when the agent said he wanted to visit him at home, Bensman became frightened. "I was thinking, I need to talk to an attorney," Bensman recalled. "And he said, 'Well, OK, I will put you down as not cooperating.'" Bensman, who wrote an account of his experience that is circulating on the internet, has been informed that the investigation was closed, and that he is no longer under suspicion by the FBI. But to Bensman, the whole ordeal "shows just how easy it is to be labeled a suspected terrorist."