How a 50 year-ish deputy sheriff infiltrated Anarchist organization

'Anarchist' looked like someone's mom

Comment: From the Star Tribune. Worthwhile read. Star Tribune links disappear after a while so read it while it is available.

Excerpts:

On Aug. 31, 2007, Marilyn Hedstrom, who appeared to be in her early 50s, walked into a run-down store-front where anarchists hung out on E. Lake Street in Minneapolis.

She introduced herself as Norma Jean.

Asked by a man at the Jack Pine Center why she was there, she said she had issues with President Bush and the Iraq war. "I told him I was interested in helping the cause and interested in participating in the protesting,"

...

What she did not tell him is that she was a deputy sheriff for the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office. Along with two other undercover sheriff's operatives and an FBI informer, she had been assigned to infiltrate the RNC Welcoming Committee, which was planning street blockades at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

She went "dumpster diving" at the group's instructions to find food for the anarchists to eat. She cooked meals for some meetings, ran errands, coordinated committee discussions and represented the organization at some gatherings of the protest movement. She became friends of some of the activists. And she, ironically, even helped on security for the anarchists, who worried that the cops were infiltrating them.

For a year Deputy Hedstrom led a double life as Norma Jean Johnson, filing her recollections, often daily, with the Special Investigations Unit, as did the other operatives.

...

"Norma Jean looked like somebody's mom," recalls Meredith Aby, a member of the Anti-War Committee, a group that occasionally met with the anarchists. "She was treated by the Welcoming Committee as if she were one of their own."

Betsy Raasch-Gilman, 56, who helped raise money with Hedstrom on the Welcoming Committee, said they sometimes discussed family and grandchildren. "To this day, I don't know how much was put-on and how much was real," she said. Raasch-Gilman learned that Hedstrom was undercover after court documents were filed

Anarchists: Who are they? What do they want?

Sheriff's investigation: Anarchists discussed kidnapping delegates

Excerpt:

• The self-described anarchist group — whose main goal was to "crash" the Republican National Convention," according to its Web site — traveled to or communicated with affinity groups in 67 cities to recruit members and raise money.
  
• Group members discussed the possibility of kidnapping delegates, blockading bridges, using liquid sprayers filled with urine or chemicals on police and throwing marbles to trip police and their horses.
  
• At an "action camp" held from July 31 to Aug. 3 in Lake Geneva, Minn., one member talked of concealing inside giant puppets "materials" that could be used on the street. Others discussed the need for Molotov cocktails, paint, caltrops (devices used to puncture tires), bricks and lockboxes for protesters to lock themselves together.
  
• Erik Oseland, one of the six group members arrested here, produced a video called "Video Map of the St. Paul Points of Interest." It included such major companies as Travelers Insurance and Qwest, hotels such as the Embassy Suites and the Crowne Plaza. Also included: the Pioneer Press building.
  

Comment: Their hypocrisy is that they wish to lawfully assemble to plan and organize, but try to thwart other organizations from lawfully assembling and organizing. The definition of "anarchist" is one who "who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power". But for them they have a ruling power, authority, and order.