Washington, September 20: The FBI gave false information to Congress and the public to justify surveillance of an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh in 2002, US media quoted a report by the Justice Department on Monday.
Inspector General Glenn Fine said the FBI had no reason to expect that anyone of interest in a terrorism investigation would be present at event sponsored a nonviolent anti-war and anti-discrimination group.
The surveillance was “an ill-conceived project on a slow work day,” AP quoted Fine as saying.
“We determined this version of events was not true,” added the official.
The report says that the FBI used scant evidence to place members of the environmental group Greenpeace on a federal terrorism watch list.
The Justice Department has called on the FBI to review its policies, especially in domestic terrorism cases.
———Agencies