A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2020
BY SHANE HARRISA senior Department of Home-
land Security official told a Senate
committee e arlier this month that
the department had not collected,
exploited or analyzed information
from the electronic devices or ac-
counts of protesters in Portland,
Ore.
But an internal DHS document
obtained by The Washington Post
shows the department did have
access to protesters’ electronic
messages and that their conversa-
tions w ere w ritten up in an “intel-
ligence report” that was dissemi-
nated to federal law enforcement
agencies, including the FBI, as
well as state and local govern-
ments.
In a letter sent Friday, Demo-
cratic members of the Senate In-
telligence Committee asked Brian
Murphy, acting DHS undersecre-
tary for intelligence and analysis,
about statements he made t o com-
mittee staff on July 23 regarding
the department’s intelligence ac-
tivities in Portland.
“You stated that I & A [the
intelligence and analysis office]
had neither collected nor exploit-
ed or analyzed information ob-
tained from the devices or ac-
counts of protesters or detainees.
Please confirm,” the senators
wrote.
A DHS Open Source Intelli-
gence Report dated six days be-
fore Murphy’s briefing to the com-
mittee shows that the I & A office
analyzed messages that protesters
exchanged on the Telegram mes-
saging app. They d iscussed which
routes to take during marches and
how to avoid the police.
The report describes the mes-
sages as “likely P ortland-based en-
crypted messaging app users dis-
cuss TTPs [ tactics, techniques and
procedures] t o evade law enforce-
ment when being pursued.” I t also
states that the information came
from “a Telegram chat room,”
which it described as “an instant
messaging service.”
It’s n ot clear how DHS obtained
the messages and whether an in-
formant or undercover officer had
access to the Telegram group.
Some officials familiar with the
report, who spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity to candidly de-
scribe it, questioned why I & A was
tracking the communications of
people engaged in protests that
are protected b y the First Amend-ment.
“DHS does not comment on
congressional correspondence.
We respond as appropriate,” the
department said in a statement.
The Telegram messages don’t
show the protesters planning to
harass or target police or damage
property. A significant portion of
their discussion is about how to
avoid encounters with police, par-
ticularly federal officers, who they
knew had detained protesters.
“We went down the side street
and it seemed to deter them from
following us, they retreated,” one
unidentified user said about an
earlier encounter with Portland
police. “Seems they’re less in-
clined t o go i nto residential neigh-
borhoods which makes sense.”
“Definitely a good strategy,” an-
other p erson replied. “Use more in
the future.”
The senators also asked Mur-
phy about whether I & A had
taken part in questioning p rotest-
ers when they were detained in
federal custody. They asked him
to confirm his earlier statements
“that I & A personnel have not
engaged in custodial debriefings”
and “that I & A personnel have not
interacted with protesters in anyway.”
The senators further asked
Murphy if I & A had “been indi-
rectly engaged with detainee op-
erations,” perhaps by providing
“suggested lines of questioning”
to authorities who were question-
ing those in custody.
Current and former officials
have said Murphy’s office may be
exceeding the boundaries of its
authority in an effort to crack
down on “antifa” protesters to
please President Trump, who has
broadly applied the “anti-fascist”
label t o people peacefully p rotest-
ing police violence and to others
who have vandalized memorials
and statues to Confederate offi-
cers who fought to preserve slav-
ery.
Murphy, a former FBI counter-
terrorism agent, recently tried to
broaden the definition of some
protesters in Portland from “vio-
lent opportunists” to people who
were “violent antifa anarchists in-
spired,” according to an internal
memo. Murphy argued that the
protesters attacking federal build-
ings weren’t merely taking advan-
tage of a moment but had “over-
whelmingly” been linked to radi-
cal ideologies “driving i ndividualstoward violence.”
That conclusion was undercut
by an earlier DHS analysis that
found there wasn’t enough infor-
mation about the Portland pro-
testers for the department to
know h ow they might be connect-
ed to antifa or anarchist groups
and what precisely was motivat-
ing them. Many of the protests in
Portland have been peaceful and
in response to police violence
around the country.
Sen. Angus King of Maine, an
independent senator who caucus-
es with Democrats and co-signed
the letter to Murphy, said he was
concerned that lawmakers didn’t
have enough information about
what I & A operations in Portland.
“We were hearing through the
press a bout what was going on...
and we should have been hearing
about it in the committee,” King
said in an interview.
King said he was concerned
that some I & A activities may not
be “consistent either w ith the r ule
of law or the constitutional pro-
tections of privacy.”
King also said he wanted more
information about the intelli-
gence office collecting informa-
tion on journalists.The Post reported on Thursday
that I & A had compiled intelli-
gence reports about two journal-
ists who published leaked inter-
nal documents about the office’s
operations. After the article was
published, the acting homeland
security secretary, Chad Wolf, or-
dered I & A to stop collecting
information on journalists and
said he was launching an investi-
gation into t he matter.
King declined to comment on
Murphy’s interactions with the
committee, but added, “We want
to know what was done, under
what authority, the purposes and
how extensive” the operations
were.
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.),
the intelligence committee vice
chairman, said he was “extremely
frustrated about how hard it is to
get any information, much less
full and accurate information,
about what I & A is doing in
Portland and the scope of their
activities.”
“They have a legal obligation to
keep the committee fully and cur-
rently informed, and they’re not
meeting that,” Warner said in a
statement.
[email protected]DHS had access to messages from Portland protesters, document shows
caught in a waiting game. Some
schools announced they would
begin the year with in-person
classroom cleaning. Others, in-
cluding Harvard, Rutgers and the
University of Southern Califor-
nia, pushed almost all classes
online for the fall. Many more
schools proposed a mix of online
and in-person options.
As the dates approach for stu-
dents to arrive on campuses and
begin classes, colleges and uni-
versities are still figuring out the
best way to make that happen.
They have issued plans and then
changed them in response to a
multitude of factors. Residents of
college towns fret that the influx
of thousands of young adults will
further spread the novel corona-
virus. Professors worry about
teaching large classes in stuffy
classrooms. Administrators ask
themselves whether they will
have all the cleaning, testing and
tracing capability to keep every-
one safe.
And even if everyone does ev-
erything right, it could still all go
wrong. As t he schools refine their
plans, students wait and wonder.
Should they take a gap year?
Should they find different
schools? Should they stay or
should they go?
Tr evion Collins, who is enter-
ing his sophomore year as a mass
communications major at the
University of Louisiana at Lafay-
ette, doesn’t want to think about
the possibility of not returning to
classrooms this fall.
“I really miss just getting up
and going to class,” Collins said.
“During quarantine, I lost all of
my drive to do anything.”
For now, his classes are sched-
uled to begin Aug. 17. But Collins,
19, knows that could change. The
Zachary, La., resident has
watched this summer as the virus
exploded throughout the South
and threatened to undermine all
reopening plans. His sophomore
year is still in the virus’s
crosshairs.
“We honestly don’t know what
to expect,” he said. “I hope that it
will run smoothly, but I can’t be
too sure because corona slips
through every nook and cranny
that there is. All we can do is try. I
mainly want to go back because I
hate starting things and not fin-
ishing.”
When the University of Arizo-
na sent students home and
moved to online classes in the
spring, Denice Ts inajinie, a mem-
ber of the Navajo Nation, made
the seven-hour drive to her par-
ents’ rural home on the reserva-
tion. Attending virtual classes
wasn’t as simple as waking up
and logging on to her computer.
WiFi at home was spotty, so she
had to drive 20 minutes to a gas
station on the reservation to find
a decent connection. She often sat
in her car for two or three hours
attending class and doing course-
work. She completed her exams
in the parking lot.
As she begins her senior year,
Ts inajinie, 20, is back in Tucson
living in an apartment. She has
Internet service, and she’ll need
it: The criminal justice major says
her classes will all be online.
“It’s making me sad at the
moment because I won’t really be
able to have the full experience of
my senior year,” Tsinajinie said.
“There’s a lot of mixed emotions.
And there’s also fear because of
the virus. It could be online-only
through the whole year.”
At Union College in
Schenectady, N.Y., Jonathan
Caputo also is preparing to enter
his senior year and, like Ts ina-
jinie, he’s disappointed about
what that will look like. School is
reopening in early September,
but students can decide whether
STUDENTS FROM A
to return to campus.
“I have to try and look at the
positives of the upcoming year
because I know there will be a lot
that will get me down,” said Capu-
to, 21, of Silver Lake, N.H. “It is
upsetting knowing that it’s not
going to be normal.”
A member of the cross-country
running team, Caputo h as al-
ready learned that fall sports have
been canceled. But he takes sol-
ace in knowing that he can still
practice with his teammates and
will be able to spend time with
friends.
“It’s kind of a lot, trying to look
ahead, but I can’t worry about
winter and spring terms,” he said.
“I just need to look at the fall and
try and get through the fall.”
Grace Cumming is another
athlete whose college career has
been upended by the pandemic.
She returned to the University of
Minnesota’s campus this summerto work out with her teammates
on the university’s basketball
team. The 19 -year-old rising
sophomore from Des Moines said
it has been strange being on
campus and thinking about what
the next year will bring.
Cumming and her teammates
were tested for the coronavirus
and are under the microscope of
new safety p rocedures the univer-
sity has put in place.
“We have our temperatures
taken every day, and we have to
do contact tracing,” Cumming
said. “Life looks very, very differ-
ent on campus now than it did
when we left.”
Cumming, a psychology major,
understands that students want
to be back at school and that
there’s a desire to connect with
friends and socialize in the ways
that college makes possible. But
she is not optimistic about a
return to anything that resemblesnormal.
“I definitely don’t t hink it’s s afe
to go b ack to school the same way.
It’s not realistic,” she said. “Col-
lege students are not as much at
risk as the rest of the population,
but it’s not in the interest of
public health to have in-person
classes the way they used to be.”
Raven McAuliffe planned to
move to Washington next month
from Bartlett, N.H., to join the
freshman class at George Wash-
ington University. T here wouldn’t
be an in-person orientation. Ar-
rivals were to be staggered and
masks required.
It w as a big shift from her small
town, where the coronavirus has
been much less destructive. De-
spite the restrictions and pared-
back interactions, McAuliffe, 18,
was eager to get started. A politi-
cal science major, she especially
looked forward to being in Wash-
ington in a momentous electionyear.
“My whole life I’ve wanted to
go i nto politics. It’s s omething I’m
passionate about, and there’s no
better place to go than Washing-
ton, D.C., to be part of that cul-
ture,” she said in an interview last
week. “Even though freshman
year is not going to be what I
expected, it’s still going to be this
great experience to catapult me
into the next part of my life.”
On Monday, McAuliffe learned
that the catapult had boomer-
anged, at least for now. George
Washington announced that all
classes would be online-only and
that on-campus housing would
be provided for only a small num-
ber of students.
“I was honestly really sur-
prised, because George Washing-
ton had such a thorough plan for
reopening this fall, but I still
think it was the right decision,”
McAuliffe said in a text messageMonday. “Although it is disap-
pointing to me and all my peers,
the pandemic has taken far too
many lives and I would not want
to contribute to any further
spread of the coronavirus. I’m
proud that George Washington
was able to make the responsible
choice, but I’m sad that it will cost
me my first semester of college.”
Kayah Woodford, who is enter-
ing her sophomore year at Ohio
State University, says the pan-
demic is taking away experiences
she’ll never get back.
“There’s no energy or atmo-
sphere like being on a college
campus. Everybody loves being a
Buckeye,” she said. “But covid has
been so devastating. I feel like
these are the best years of my life
and I’m missing out on them. I
crave the normalcy that I took for
granted just a few months ago.”
But if the pandemic closed
school, it opened an unexpected
opportunity for Woodford. After
George Floyd’s d eath in the custo-
dy of Minneapolis police officers,
Woodford, 18, formed an anti-rac-
ism project in her hometown of
Bexley, Ohio. The experience of
organizing and running the proj-
ect made her think about learn-
ing in a classroom vs. the real-
world experience she was gaining
this summer.
“I considered taking a year off.
My organizing effort is like a
full-time job,” she said. “I’m doing
a lot for the project, and I can only
imagine where it would go if I
could devote all of my e fforts to it.
I ask myself, ‘What’s the benefit of
taking time off and doing the
actual work instead of studying
and learning about the work?’ ”
For some college students, all
of the uncertainty about what the
school year will bring has led
them to reevaluate their options.
Chloe Fatsis, who graduated from
the District’s Woodrow Wilson
High School this year and was
accepted at B rown, had been con-
sidering taking a gap year before
the pandemic. She decided in
May to apply to take the year off
and is waiting to hear the school’s
decision. Brown has announced
that all freshmen will wait until
January to begin their school
year.
“College is expensive, and it’s
good to make sure you’re getting
the most out of it,” said Fatsis, 18,
who is considering majoring in
history. “My biggest concern was
not wanting to do online classes. I
benefit from being in a classroom
environment, talking to students
and professors. That’s really hard
to replicate online. I think I could
get more out of it by taking a year
off and learning more about my-
self.”
Back in Boise on July 15, a few
days after discussing her hopeful
plans for the fall semester, C allie
Rice learned that her trip to Los
Angeles w ould have to be post-
poned. Citing a spike in coronavi-
rus cases in Los Angeles County,
Occidental officials decided to
offer classes only online for the
fall semester.
As she read the announce-
ment, Rice said, she felt it was
“just the final nail in the coffin.”
“Ending high school online
was quite isolating, and I just felt
unmotivated,” she said. “And hav-
ing to transition to college still
online, I was worried about how
I’m going to adjust. It p ut back my
hopes for what my college experi-
ence will be like until spring
semester, when, hopefully, we can
go back to campus.”
So Rice will begin her college
career from home. She is pursu-
ing a degree in molecular biology
and said she may focus on virolo-
gy.
“It may be a really good field to
go into,” she said. “I’m sure there
will be a lot of funding for it.”
[email protected]KAYAH WOODFORDUndergraduates face a year
made unpredictable by virus
MONESHA WAUNEKAELLEN CAPUTOPRESTON COLLINS STEVE RICEMELISSA BLOCK
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Denice Tsinajinie is entering her senior year at the University of Arizona. Callie Rice will be a
freshman at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Kayah Woodford is entering her sophomore year at Ohio State University.
Jonathan Caputo will be a senior at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. Chloe Fatsis has applied to take a gap year from Brown
University in Providence, R.I. Trevion Collins is entering his sophomore year at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.