They Protested a Military Base Expansion. So the FBI Investigated Them as Terrorism Suspects.

The protest did not go off as planned. In February 2023, government recruiters came to the student union at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, stacking National Security Agency-branded plastic cups and splaying out pamphlets about Navy fringe benefits.

The activists had come to protest the expansion of Camp Grayling, already the largest National Guard training facility in the country. The opposition had arisen a year earlier, when the military had proposed leasing more than 150,000 acres of forest land managed by Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, doubling the size of the training installation.

The National Guard, though, did not make an appearance at the University of Michigan career fair. The activists proceeded with their plan anyway.

“Want blood on your hands?” read the flyers activists distributed on recruiting tables. “Sign up for a government job.” When the recruiters returned from lunch, two protesters rushed in, dousing the NSA recruiting table and two Navy personnel with fake blood sprayed out of a ketchup container. (The NSA did not respond to a request for comment.) The “Stop Camp Grayling” protesters were subdued, booked, and charged.

“We’ve seen over the years that the FBI opens very aggressive investigations based on a very low criminal predicate in cases against protest groups.”

Everything about the protest had been relatively routine, right down to the arrests, but the local and federal authorities saw something more sinister. According to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the local sheriff’s office in Oakland County, Michigan, documented the incident in a case report as a hate crime against law enforcement. (The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

The FBI recorded the incident as part of a terrorism investigation.

“We’ve seen over the years,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, “that the FBI opens very aggressive investigations based on a very low criminal predicate in cases against protest groups.”

Over the following months, according to the documents obtained by The Intercept and Defending Rights & Dissent, the FBI’s counterterrorism investigation unlocked additional federal resources, deepened coordination with military intelligence, generated sustained counterterrorism attention on minor acts of vandalism, and ultimately culminated in a six-person boots-on-the-ground operation conducting physical surveillance of the Stop Camp Grayling Week of Action.

“The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA) does not participate in civilian law enforcement investigations or surveillance of any group,” said Michigan National Guard public affairs officer David Kennedy, when asked about state police sharing intelligence with the military. “We do occasionally receive law enforcement notification of individuals or groups who are expressing intent to take action or threaten the safety of military members, training events or facilities.”

Green Scare

Treating the Stop Camp Grayling protesters as terrorists is the latest episode in a worldwide trend of governments smearing climate and environmental activists as terrorists — an ongoing Green Scare. Misapplication of the terrorism label frequently serves as pretext for invasive surveillance and sustained scrutiny.

The FBI has a long history of fixating on environmental protest movements as terrorism suspects. The focus escalated in the 1990s. Most of the movements are engaged in routine First Amendment-protected activity; a few use minor property damage as a protest tactic.

The FBI maintains federal domestic terrorism categories that include “anti-government violent extremism” and “animal rights/environmental violent extremism.” Under pressure to generate investigations, the FBI has launched probes against environmental groups based on thin evidence of criminal activity — or sometimes no evidence at all.

“Since the FBI created ideological categories, they’re incentivized to open cases in those categories,” German said.

“Since the FBI created ideological categories, they’re incentivized to open cases in those categories.”

Because the counterterrorism division does not collect incident data, he said, there is little accountability for the FBI investigations. “If you can’t see how the FBI divides up its domestic terrorism resources between ideological categories where there are a number of homicides and bombings, versus low-level vandalism and other regular protest activities, then you can’t determine whether the FBI is actually investigating true terrorism versus just targeting groups for investigation because they don’t like their political beliefs,” said German.

According to the FBI’s own definition, domestic terrorism comprises acts dangerous to human life or “intended to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.” Yet few of the investigated environmental groups have threatened human life in any meaningful way; not a single homicide can be attributed to the environmental movement. (The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.)

Stop Camp Grayling — like most other movements organized around environmental activism — is not engaged in any type of systematic criminal activity. Movement adherents have never endangered human life. Much of their protest activity involved banner drops, teach-ins, and graffiti on billboards.

Yet the FBI saw fit to share an activist zine with military intelligence, drag in other alphabet agencies, and justify physical surveillance operations — all underpinned by the designation of the movement as worthy of a domestic terrorism investigation.

PFAS Polluters

In 2022, activists convened to fight the proposed expansion of Camp Grayling, a National Guard base that sprawls across three counties in Michigan. Already the largest National Guard base in the country, Camp Grayling announced plans in 2022 to more than double its size.

As host to an annual joint exercise that draws 6,300 participants, Camp Grayling argued that expansion into protected Department of Natural Resources land would facilitate on-the-ground training while expanding airspace available for fighter jet maneuvers.

When the expansion was proposed, it drew the ire of environmental and anti-militarism activists. An alliance of local residents and activists pointed to Camp Grayling’s dismal environmental record, particularly its use of PFAS “forever chemicals” in fire suppressant foam in the ’70s and ’80s.

PFAS levels in local bodies of water had already caused health warnings, leading a state regulator dealing with PFAS to oppose the Camp Grayling expansion. The expansion would have included sensitive riparian ecosystems, leaving only a razor-thin portage as protection against contamination of two rivers leading to Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

A vigorous protest movement sprung up in Michigan. The Stop Camp Grayling protesters took their inspiration from “Stop Cop City,” the movement to block a massive police training facility to be built on public forest land at the outskirts of Atlanta.

Stop Camp Grayling came onto the Michigan State Police’s radar during a October 23, 2022, protest at the home of the Department of Natural Resources director, followed by vandalism of several historic police vehicles at the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum.

“Our troopers are frequently called upon to ensure protestors can safely exercise their rights by blocking traffic during marches and protecting protestors participating in lawful activities,” said Shanon Banner, the director of the Michigan State Police’s Communications and Outreach Division.

It wasn’t long before the state police sought help from federal authorities. After the first protest at the DNR director’s house, a senior counterterrorism analyst sought recommendations for an FBI agent to join the case. By the end of the week, an agent from the FBI Detroit field office began gathering intelligence on Stop Camp Grayling protesters.

Some of this intelligence fell squarely within the domain of First Amendment-protected activity. At one point, the FBI agent assigned to the case forwarded a zine to military intelligence headquarters at Camp Grayling. The zine criticized American militarism and detailed the ecological impacts of the proposed expansion.

The University of Michigan recruiting fair protest marked a turning point in the ways authorities — both local and federal — viewed Stop Camp Grayling protests. Within a week of the recruiting fair incident, the national FBI Counterterrorism Division became involved in the case.

Days after the fake blood incident, an Army special agent with the National Joint Terrorism Task Force wrote to an agent at FBI headquarters, according to the public records. “We noted this incident and other related activity have been documented by FBI DE in an open 266 file,” the Army investigator said, referencing a classification reserved for domestic terrorism investigations.

“I Will Be There in Person”

In April 2023, the acting director of the DNR blocked the no-strings-attached lease of 162,000 acres to Camp Grayling, attributing the decision to an inundation of public concern and opposition from tribal governments. The DNR decided instead to allow limited-use permits on 52,000 acres of public lands.

The movement had scored a victory, but for hard-line Stop Camp Grayling activists and conservation groups, the substitute DNR decision left lingering concerns over the ecological impacts of testing electronic warfare systems in the Michigan forest. The Stop Camp Grayling protesters proceeded with a week of action that included demonstrations, community building, and strategizing about next steps.

The protests, however, were on authorities’ radar well before any demonstrators set foot in the forest. Because the end of the week of action nearly coincided with the August 4 start of Operation Northern Strike, police and military officials were on high alert. Even the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Command, tasked with addressing foreign intelligence entities, was read into FBI operations on the ground.

“I’ll in turn forward their info to military intel and federal LE partners.”

The Department of Homeland Security agent working on the case decided to travel to the area. “I will be working out of Grayling this Friday through the following Friday,” Dan Lorenz, the DHS officer, wrote to an intelligence official in the state police, “so if you need anything or if I need to respond to anything I will be there in person.” (DHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

A Michigan State Police officer instructed his colleagues to collect intelligence on Stop Camp Grayling protesters they encountered. “I’ll in turn forward their info to military intel and federal LE partners,” First Lt. Scott McManus wrote.

Banner, the Michigan State Police spokesperson, said, “The Michigan Intelligence Operations Center (MIOC)” — a so-called fusion center for information sharing — “adheres to strict guidelines that prohibit the collection of information based solely on an individual’s or group’s participation in lawful activities. If criminal activities are identified, the MIOC may play a role with relevant local and/or federal partners in an effort to keep our residents safe.”

During the Stop Camp Grayling Week of Action, all eyes were on the protesters. A lawful protest, mostly involving chanting, sparked a flurry of emails. The vandalism of two billboards sent intelligence and law enforcement agencies into conniptions. “This makes the cut,” Lorenz wrote in response to a Michigan State Police write-up of the graffiti. “I will get it into reporting first chance I get.”

Eventually, the FBI decided that watching from afar was no longer sufficient. On July 26, the FBI planned to carry out in-person surveillance against Stop Camp Grayling protesters.

“Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that we will need both of you for FISUR” — physical surveillance — “on Friday,” an FBI official with the Joint Terrorism Task Force wrote to two colleagues in the Detroit field office.

Six FBI agents, including two with Portland field office designations, were sent a 13-page operation plan, along with an attached document called “Camp Attendees.docx.” The entire operation plan, beyond confirmation that six FBI agents were involved, is redacted. The Michigan State Police indicated that it withheld a significant portion of documents responsive to The Intercept and Defending Rights & Dissent’s records request, due to claimed exemptions to freedom of information laws.

The section heading in the physical surveillance plan reveal that six officers took part in the physical surveillance, with two more case agents listed. Another line lists a Michigan State Police “Contact for Traffic Stop.”

Below the list, followed by a black redaction that covers most of the page, is another section labeled: “DEADLY FORCE POLICY.”

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