A8 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, JULY 31 , 2020
BY MARISSA J. LANG,
ADAM TAYLOR
AND JOSHUA PARTLOWportland, ore. — Early morn-
ing clashes between federal agents
and protesters intensified Thurs-
day, testing the Trump adminis-
tration’s withdrawal plan and
prompting the president to threat-
en to keep federal forces in the city
“until there is safety.”
What had been an evening of
unity and triumph among protest-
ers — with songs and dancing and
people celebrating the departure of
federal forces — quickly devolved
late Wednesday into another cha-
otic night of violence and arrests, as
federal agents unleashed several
rounds of gas and a cloud of pepper
spray on the crowd.
“I was literally just commenting
that this is the way I wish all
protests were when they blasted
me,” said Adam Winther, 44, a
Navy veteran who was hit in the
leg with an exploding flash bang.
“People were dancing, there was
music, and all of a sudden the gas
started going off above us.”
The contingent of more than
100 officers from various federal
agencies including the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security were
to start leaving their positions in
downtown Portland on Thursday,
after an agreement between the
White House and Oregon Gov.
Kate Brown (D) that would re-
place them with Oregon State Po-
lice troopers.
It was unclear Thursday after-
noon if that process had begun.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D)
said he was “cautiously optimis-
tic” that federal tactical teams
were “poised to leave” their post at
the courthouse.
“Progressive cities around the
country are standing together to
defend their communities against
hostile and dangerous interven-
tions,” Wheeler said during a press
briefing. “We’re all in agreement
that since they arrived, things
have only gotten much worse.”
T he acting DHS secretary, Chad
Wolf, had insisted this week that a
federal footprint would remain in
Portland until the Trump adminis-
tration was convinced that Or-
egon authorities could handle the
situation and that federal facilities
“will no longer be attacked nightly
and set afire.” President Trump on
Thursday underscored that mes-
sage, writing on Twitter that
Brown “isn’t doing her job.”
“She must clear out, and in
some cases arrest, the Anarchists
& Agitators in Portland. If she
can’t do it, the Federal Govern-
ment will do it for her,” Trump
tweeted. “We will not be leaving
until there is safety.”
In tweets of her own, Brown
responded that “we’ve had enough
political grandstanding from DC.
The President’s plan to ‘dominate’
the streets of American cities has
failed.”
She added: “And today, federal
troops are preparing to leave down-
town Portland. We will protect free
speech and the right to protest
peacefully. The massive and non-vi-
olent protests led by Black Lives
Matter activists have inspired the
nation. Let’s get to work and make
this vision a reality.”
Wednesday night began as
most nights here do, with speech-
es ringing out across a gatheredcrowd from the steps of the Mult-
nomah County Justice Center,
which sits across the street from
the courthouse and houses the
county jail. Protesters lit up their
phones and waved them back and
forth, creating a glowing wave that
moved in time with the chant
“Black lives matter!”
Soon, the crowd began to mi-
grate to stand in front of the Mark
O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on
what Brown has said would be
federal agents’ last night protect-
ing the building.
“We are not just fighting
against the city, we are not just
fighting against Donald Trump,” a
speaker said into a microphone.
“We are fighting against all of
them!”
The weeks of confrontations
have developed a regular choreo -
graphy. The Federal Protective
Service urges demonstrators away
from the large reinforced iron
fence that surrounds the building.Tear gas and crowd-control muni-
tions are launched to push people
back. Protesters respond with leaf
blowers to push back the fumes,
while some light fireworks or at-
tempt to set fires around the build-
ing. Water bottles and other ob-
jects are thrown.
But on Wednesday night, newly
erected floodlights shone down
from the second floor of the court-
house onto the crowd. Just after
11 p.m., federal agents declared
the gathering — still thick with
moms and veterans and students
and office workers — an unlawful
assembly. Protesters were soon
ducking and dodging tear-gas
canisters flying through the air
and skittering off the pavement. A
federal officer with what appeared
to be a fog gun walked up and
down the fence line, spraying a
caustic chemical at the people
standing there.
Flash bangs and stun grenades
exploded, sending deafeningbooms echoing through the city
streets. A man with a trumpet
played the cavalry charge tune as
the pop of pellet guns and rubber
bullets punctured the night.
“Stay together, stay tight,” dem-
onstrators called out to each other,
their voices muffled by gas masks
and respirators.
Just before midnight, federal
agents in three different uniforms
surrounded the crowd on three
sides. FPS vehicles blocked road-
ways, their red and blue lights
flashing.
Protesters ran in a panic, shout-
ing warnings to all who would
listen.
“They’ve got us surrounded,” a
young woman yelled.
But the officers did not move in.
Instead, they stood at a stalemate
with protesters on side streets as
demonstrators yelled and chant-
ed. Several agents pulled people
from the crowd one by one, drag-
ging those arrested into the backof the courthouse through an open
metal gate.
Later in the night, several pro-
testers appeared to have been in-
jured. About 12:30 a.m., a man
bleeding heavily from the shin was
attended to by medics, who wiped
down his wound and bandaged
his leg. The man said he had been
shot with a rubber bullet.
As they retreated, the federal
agents fired more tear gas and
pepper balls to cover their move-
ments.
“I’ve been coming to this protest
for many days. I’ve been standing
and observing everything, seeing
what’s going on and what’s not go-
ing on,” said Azeen Khan, a 31-year-
old chef. “Tonight, there were not
fireworks going off. Tonight, there
was nothing thrown across the
fence. Nothing. They just randomly
came out and shot some people.”
Around dawn, Portland police
swept into two downtown parks
used as protest encampments and
cleared them out. City workers
removed tents and other debris,
scrubbed away graffiti and hauled
off wrought-iron benches.
Lownsdale Square and the adja-
cent Chapman Square had served
as gathering points for over 60 days.
They were cleared at the re-
quest of the Oregon State Police as
part of the plan to take over polic-
ing efforts from federal forces, ac-
cording to Wheeler.
The state police will be sending
about 100 officers from around the
state to Portland to secure the
federal courthouse, a group made
up primarily of OSP’s special ops
but also including command and
logistical personnel. State police
will be working in conjunction
with federal and local authorities,
including the Portland Police Bu-
reau, state police communications
director Mindy McCartt wrote in
an email to The Washington Post.
The “marching orders” from
State Police Superintendent Trav-
is Hampton said that the agency is
expected to “facilitate free speech
to the best of their ability and
present a refrained and propor-
tional response to the observed
criminal conduct,” McCartt said.
“Community support and com-
munication is obviously impera-
tive for OSP’s involvement to offer
any chance at success,” she said.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Trump threatens t o keep federal agents in Portland
MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A protester hides near a barrier as federal officers release tear gas during a Black Lives Matter protest Wednesday night i n Portland, Ore.ly discuss them, said they are con-
sistent with the department’s ag-
gressive tactics in Portland, and in
particular the work of the Intelli-
gence and Analysis Office, which
they worried is exceeding the
boundaries of its authority in an
effort to crack down on “antifa”
protesters to please President
Trump. He and other senior ad-
ministration officials have used
that “anti-fascist” label to describe
people in Portland and other cities
who are protesting police vio-
lence, as well as others who have
vandalized statues and memorials
to Confederate officers that they
consider racist.
The reports reflect the intelli-
gence office’s concerns about
leaks of internal information.
“To broadly disseminate an in-
telligence report, including to nu-
merous state and local law en-
forcement agencies, about a DHS
leak to a reporter strikes me as
bizarre,” said Steve Bunnell, who
served as the department’s gener-
al counsel for three years in theObama administration. If depart-
ment officials were concerned
about unauthorized disclosures,
they should refer the matter to the
inspector general or handle it in-
ternally, he said.
Disseminating the information
about internal leaks of this nature
via the intelligence reports “has
nothing to do with DHS’s original
mission,” Bunnell said.
The Intelligence and Analysis
Office has for years been the butt
of jokes among larger, more estab-
lished agencies like the CIA and
the FBI, who liken it to a team of
junior-varsity athletes. The DHS
office produces reports that are
largely based on unclassified, of-
ten public sources of information
that current and former officials
have said are of limited use.
During operations in Portland,
the office has sought to expand its
reach. Earlier this month, DHS
personnel were authorized to col-
lect information on protesters
who threaten to damage or de-
stroy public memorials and stat-ues, regardless of whether they
are on federal property, a signifi-
cant expansion of authorities that
have historically been used to pro-
tect landmarks from terrorist at-
tacks, former officials said.
The intelligence reports about
the journalists say they are “pro-
vided for intelligence and lead
purposes” and have “been deemed
necessary for the intended recipi-
ent to understand, assess, or act
on the information provided.”
One of the journalists, Times
reporter Mike Baker, co-wrote an
article on July 28 that revealed an
internal DHS memo indicating
that the camouflaged federal
agents sent to put down the unrest
in Portland didn’t understand the
nature of the protests they were
facing.
The DHS memo described the
conflict as connected to a years-
long history of violence against
government personnel and facili-
ties in the Pacific Northwest by
“anarchist extremists.” But it ac-
knowledged that “we have lowconfidence in our assessment”
when it comes to understanding
the current protests in Oregon’s
largest city.
“We lack insight into the mo-
tives for the most recent attacks,”
the memo said.
Baker included an image of that
portion of the memo in a Twitter
thread that also linked to the
Times article. The DHS intelli-
gence report included that tweet
and stated that Baker had posted
“a leaked Department of Home-
land Security (DHS) internal
product.”
A spokeswoman for the Times
declined to comment.
The other journalist, Benjamin
Wittes, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution and the edi-
tor in chief of Lawfare, had also
posted various internal docu-
ments to his Twitter feed, includ-
ing, on July 24, a memo admonish-
ing department personnel not to
give information to reporters.
“The ongoing leaks related to
our work in Portland remain of“Upon learning about the prac-
tice, Acting Secretary Wolf direct-
ed the DHS Intelligence & Analy-
sis Directorate to immediately
discontinue collecting informa-
tion involving members of the
press,” a department spokesman
said in a statement. “In no way
does the Acting Secretary con-
done this practice and he has im-
mediately ordered an inquiry into
the matter. The Acting Secretary is
committed to ensuring that all
DHS personnel uphold the princi-
ples of professionalism, impar-
tiality and respect for civil rights
and civil liberties, particularly as
it relates to the exercise of First
Amendment rights.”
Some of the leaked DHS docu-
ments the journalists posted and
wrote about revealed shortcom-
ings in the department’s under-
standing of the nature of the pro-
tests in Portland, as well as tech-
niques that intelligence analysts
have used. A memo by the depart-
ment’s top intelligence official,
which was tweeted by the editor of
Lawfare, says personnel relied on
“FINTEL,” an acronym for finan-
cial intelligence, as well as f in-
ished intelligence “Baseball
cards” of arrested protesters to try
to understand their motivations
and plans. Historically, military
and intelligence officials have
used such cards for biographical
dossiers of suspected terrorists,
including those targeted in lethal
drone strikes.
The DHS intelligence reports,
which are unclassified, are tradi-
tionally used for sharing the de-
partment’s analysis with federal
law enforcement agencies, state
and local officials, and some for-
eign governments. They are not
intended to disseminate informa-
tion about American citizens who
have no connection to terrorists or
other violent actors and who are
engaged in activity protected by
the First Amendment, current
and former officials said.
“This has no operational value
whatsoever,” said John Sandweg,
who previously served as the de-
partment’s acting general coun-
sel.
“This will just damage the intel-
ligence office’s reputation,”
Sandweg said, calling the decision
to report on journalists “incred-
ibly dumb.”
Officials who are familiar with
the reports, and who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to candid-
DHS FROM A1 great concern as it distracts from
our mission and creates opportu-
nities for others to exploit this
information for their own ben-
efit,” the unsigned memo states.
The memo was written in re-
sponse to reporting in Lawfare
and The Washington Post days
earlier about the new guidance to
collect information on people who
threatened memorials and stat-
ues. The memo defended the intel-
ligence office’s authority and said
its work had “informed our analy-
sis on the enduring threat envi-
ronment [in Portland] and dis-
rupted attempted violent attacks.”
Wittes told The Post that he
didn’t object to the department
expressing concerns about leaks
and that if officials had sent a link
to his tweet in a message to em-
ployees, he wouldn’t object.
“It’s not the sharing of my tweet
that’s disturbing. It’s the construc-
tion of it as an intelligence report
on a U.S. person that’s disturbing,”
Wittes said.
If the department was willing
to document public statements
this way, what would stop DHS
from “making a public record dos-
sier on me?” Wittes asked.
“I’m considering my legal op-
tions and will have more to say
about this at a later date,” he add-
ed.
In a subsequent tweet that was
also the subject of an intelligence
report, Wittes posted an internal
memo from Brian Murphy, the
DHS acting undersecretary for in-
telligence and analysis and a for-
mer FBI agent, announcing that
officials were changing the termi-
nology used for individuals at-
tacking federal facilities. The deci-
sion, Murphy wrote, was based in
part on the Open Source Intelli-
gence Reports that officials had
reviewed about protesters.
“We can’t say any longer that
this violent situation is opportu-
nistic,” Murphy wrote, adding that
intelligence “overwhelmingly” led
officials to believe that the attack-
ers were driven by “anarchist” and
“violent antifa” ideologies.
Murphy’s conclusions cut
against the earlier DHS memo,
which the Times reported, that
said the department didn’t have
enough information to know
whether the Portland protesters
were connected to anti-govern-
ment groups that had a history of
operating in the region.
[email protected]
Nick Miroff contributed to this report.DHS reports on journalists covering protests alarm current, former officials
PAULA BRONSTEIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Protesters l ast week i n front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Ore., which has been the site of action by federal agents.