The FBI opened factually weak domestic terror probes against peaceful activists.

Evidence

Not that many changes, though: in 2010, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a report revealing FBI investigations into several activist groups initiated on “factually weak” grounds. The groups included PETA, the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh (a social justice hub), Greenpeace, the Catholic Worker Movement (a long-standing pacifist organization), and a Quaker peace activist named Glen Milner. The investigations were tagged as domestic terror probes, even when the supposed crimes were on the lines of trespassing or vandalism. This meant that people were improperly placed on terror watchlists for doing things like participating in First Amendment–protected antiwar protests. To investigate a 2002 antiwar rally organized by the Thomas Merton Center, the FBI had claimed it had evidence of a possible terrorism link. The OIG report derided the surveillance as “an ill-conceived project on a slow work day.” And in 2013, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping of American citizens were seen by many as yet more proof that state institutions were not to be trusted. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 156

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s conspiracy-thesis: documented state surveillance gives conspiracy believers genuine grounding, connecting to the vault’s authoritarianism claims and to Christian-nationalist distrust of institutions. — connects to: FBI manufactured flimsy terrorist plots to parade as investigative successes
• ADDENDUM: Supports a shared-mechanism argument that distrust of state institutions has real empirical roots, parallel to the grievance logic in the sacrifice and immodesty pieces.

Broader Connections

• FBI manufactured flimsy terrorist plots to parade as investigative successes #corroborates (0.85)