The Intelligence Community Is Spying on Student Protesters

Congress is pressuring the FBI to infiltrate college protests with informants.

President Joe Biden is briefed by director Christine Abizaid on the National Counterterrorism Center Watch Floor. (Photo by: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The National Counterterrorism Center, created in the wake of 9/11 to combat al Qaeda, is now working overtime to find evidence of foreign funding of pro-Palestinian student protesters, I have learned.

The effort follows repeated calls by Congress for the federal government to investigate university protesters’ purported links to Hamas, and coincides with a push by the FBI and homeland security bureaucracies to link the campus demonstrations to foreign actors. Tempting as it might be to laugh off the specter of foreign powers directing undergraduate protesters, evidence of this would provide the legal basis for the intelligence community to spy on Americans. Absent a foreign connection, the protests are constitutionally-protected speech.

The National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC), a part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is beefing up its intelligence collection and analysis of “extremist” groups associated with domestic terrorism, particularly a domestic category called “Anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists,” according to a source inside the community.

According to the Center, the NCTC “serves as the central and shared knowledge bank on known and suspected terrorists and international terrorist groups, as well as their goals, strategies, capabilities, and networks of contacts and support."

On May 10, the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking “whether the FBI had any related undercover employees, online covert employees, or confidential human sources” among what it called “pro-Hamas protests on college campuses.”  

By sending the letter, Congress is in effect pressuring the FBI to penetrate the protests with both on-the-ground and online informants (if it hasn’t already). An obvious threat to the freedom of speech and association enshrined in the Constitution, the letter tries to circumvent these concerns by arguing that it is illegal to “endorse” or “espouse” terrorist groups — despite there being no evidence the protesters have done that. 

“While we recognize that every American has the right to peacefully protest, individuals who endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization are patently dangerous, and potentially criminal,” the letter says, citing a law prohibiting providing material support to foreign terrorist groups. (The material support provision only allows for foreign organizations to be designated, so Americans must be tied to a foreign terror group to be prosecuted.) 

But speech isn’t material support, something which is typically only something the Justice Department prosecutes with stronger evidence, like making financial contributions to a terrorist group. Nor is it “violent extremism.”

Nevertheless, the federal government is hellbent on making that case. 

On May 14, the Chairs of the House Oversight and Education Committees sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting “Suspicious Activity Reports” (SARs) on organizations participating in the protests, groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. The SARs would be based upon banking information.

“The Committees are investigating the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests with illegal encampments on American college campuses,” the letter reads. “This investigation relates both to malign influence on college campuses and to the national security implications of such influence on faculty and student organizations.”

Again, this kind of request is a pressure campaign to get the federal government to link the college protests to Hamas or other foreign bodies. But unlike the previous letter, Suspicious Activity Reports are a surveillance tool specifically designed to produce evidence of financing of terrorism.

While these letters are phrased like innocent questions — you don’t happen to have intelligence on protesters we don’t like, by any chance? — we don’t have to speculate about whether these agencies do. They’ve admitted it:

• In April, FBI Director Wray, when asked about the college protests, told NBC that the Bureau is “keenly focused on working with state and local law enforcement, campus law enforcement” and that “we do share intelligence…with campuses,” 

• White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierree, asked about the protests, said earlier this month that “the DOJ and FBI is going to continue to offer support to universities and colleges in respect to federal laws,”

• Documents obtained by Bloomberg show Department of Homeland Security agencies monitoring the protests, including the Federal Protective Service and Homeland Security Investigations.

The fearmongering about the protests having some shadowy terrorist sponsor has been a gradual crescendo ever since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Earlier it was hawkish types like Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to crack down on pro-Hamas extremism among its ranks. But since then the calls have broadened to include ordinary Americans.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a member of the Judiciary committee which oversees the FBI, has also called “to put any student who promotes terrorism on behalf of Hamas on the terrorist watchlist.” (The watchlist is maintained by the FBI and based partly on intelligence provided by NCTC.) 

And it’s not just Republican members of Congress. Democratic Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi has also sought to tie the protests to foreign governments, alternatively telling protesters advocating for a ceasefire to “go back to China” and saying some protests are “connected to Russia.”

Pelosi has also called for an FBI investigation into the financing of the protests. “I think some financing should be investigated,” Pelosi has said, “and I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”

What we didn’t know, until now, is just how high-level the intelligence community’s involvement in the protests had become. NCTC, based in McLean, Virginia was established in response to 9/11 and oversees the U.S. government's worldwide counterterror efforts — including “domestic” counterrorism, as its website notes.

But this sort of blatant involvement in policing domestic protest, seeking a foreign connection to expand government powers and surveillance? That is a new development.

— Edited by William M. Arkin