by Ben Johnson- Via Life Site News -
FBI terrorism task
force wants to question national crisis pregnancy center director
NEW YORK, May 29, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The FBI
office charged with investigating terrorism has said it intends to question the
national director of a chain of crisis pregnancy centers. The development is
the latest in what pro-life activists have charged is a pattern of intimidation
on the part of the Obama administration against pro-life activists.
Agents of the Joint Domestic Terrorism Task Force told
Chris Slattery, national director of Expectant Mother Care (EMC) FrontLine
Pregnancy Centers, only that they wanted to meet him “for a mutually beneficial
relationship.”
“In other words, if I don’t meet with them, it will not
be beneficial for me,” Slattery told LifeSiteNews.com. “I’m not sure what I’m
going to get out of it,” he joked.
The questioning comes as New York Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman has subpoenaed the group for not abiding by the standards of a
consent agreement Slattery believed expired more than 20 years ago, as well as
in relation to a question of some of its paperwork.
Currently EMC is poised to expand crisis pregnancy
centers into 10 states, including Washington, D.C.
Federal agents pressed to meet Slattery last Friday but
rescheduled when he insisted that one of his attorneys be present. Jay Sekulow of
the American Center for Law and Justice has agreed to represent him at a
national level, and Christopher Ferrara of the American Catholic Lawyers
Association has agreed to act as his local counsel.
The meeting will probably be held next week, Slattery
said.
“I thank God for the FBI,” Slattery said, noting their
good work fighting crime and legitimate terrorism. “But if the president orders
them to do something, they have to do it.”
“I do know they have been used by attorney generals in
the past for surveillance of domestic troublemakers and communists, and now we
are the communists of the modern-day, the domestic ‘people of interest,’” he
said.
The rate of federal questions, and allegations of
surveillance, of pro-life activists have led many leaders to conclude the Obama
administration is gathering intelligence on the pro-life movement.
FBI agents questioned Andy Moore, the founder of
AbortionWiki.org and the incoming director of online communications at
Americans United for Life, last July after Southwest Women’s Surgery Center, a
Dallas abortion facility, complained that Moore used a bullhorn during a
peaceful protest.
Moore said they raised the possibility the Obama
administration might deport the pro-life activist back to his native New
Zealand if he did not name the names of other pro-life activists.
They also reportedly asked, “What affiliations do you
have, including church groups” and other pro-life groups?
Moore’s mother-in-law, pro-life leader Jill Stanek, wrote
that the agents asked “inappropriate questions clearly aimed at intimidating
Andy, while also launching into a fishing expedition about me.”
Some say Attorney General Eric Holder has a vested
interest in prosecuting the pro-life movement, since his wife and sister-in-law
rented facilities to Tyrone Cecil Malloy, a Georgia abortionist accused of
malpractice, Medicaid fraud, and causing a patient’s death.
The Justice Department has intensified the number of
cases it is prosecuting under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE)
Act, something Obama’s Labor nominee, Thomas Perez, boasted about last
September.
Civil libertarians – and at least one federal judge –
wonder if it is not part of a deliberate strategy to silence sidewalk
counselors.
EMC maintains a perpetual vigil at an abortion facility
in South Bronx, Slattery said.
Last year the Justice Department had to pay $120,000 in
attorney’s fees after wrongly accusing Mary Susan Pine of “trespassing” at a
West Palm Beach abortion facility. In his scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge
Kenneth Ryskamp wrote that he “can only wonder whether this action was the
product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [facility], which
began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s
activities.”
“The Obama administration is essentially engaging in a
witch hunt,” wrote Allison Aranda, senior staff conusel at Life Legal Defense
Foundation. “From the moment the new administration took office, the DOJ has
been targeting peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors.”
However, the opposition to the pro-life movement has been
anything but localized in one agency of the Obama administration.
A series of Department of Homeland Security reports have
demonized pro-life conservatives from the earliest days of the Obama
administration. Its 2009 report on “Rightwing [sic.] Extremism” proved so
embarrassing the DHS pulled it – but others followed.
DHS and FBI agents later attended a training seminar on
alleged pro-life terrorism, hosted by Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion
Federation, and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
As recently as last November, Dr. Arlie Perliger, wrote a
paper for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) claiming that the
“pro-life paradigm” is a motivating factor in domestic terrorism.
In the last month, the administration has come under fire
for subjecting pro-life groups, as well as evangelical Protestant and Roman
Catholic organizations, to additional IRS scrutiny.
Documents to Congress show that agents improperly asked
groups petitioning for tax-exempt status to name their constributors,
activists, and allied organizations.
Among other things, the IRS asked the Coalition of Life
for Iowa, “Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s
prayers.” Congress continues to investigate the scandal.
For his part, Slattery said he plans on meeting with the
federal agents. “I have nothing to hide. I’m not afraid of them,” he told
LifeSiteNews. “I’m only afraid of sin and violating my conscience.”
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