Corporate & Government Surveillance of the Clamshell
Civil Liberties Violated: Yellow Journalism - In More Ways Than One
By Robin Read
Reports and incidents of corporate and government surveillance of the Clamshell Alliance began with the inception of the organization in 1976, increased steadily for the next year, intensified in the weeks preceding the April 1977 occupation, and continued for the next several years. Fear mongering by right wing organizations and media, fed by the surveillance and infiltration, were among the factors that led Seabrook area residents to urge the Clamshell to call off its planned massive 1978 occupation and accept the State of New Hampshire’s proposal that the organization hold a three day legal rally on the plant’s construction site. The surveillance and infiltration also consequently contributed to the organization’s internal divisions before and after the 1978 demonstration.
Days before the April 30, 1977 demonstration, a banner headline in the ultra-conservative Manchester Union Leader, New Hampshire’s only statewide daily newspaper, read “Leftist Groups Hope for Violence” and quoted Governor Meldrim Thomson as saying the occupation “was nothing but a cover for terrorist activity.” Shortly after the peaceful demonstration the Clamshell learned through New Hampshire state police documents disclosed in an unrelated civil suit that the source of the state police’s, governor’s and Union Leader’s intelligence reports was the right wing U.S. Labor Party led Lyndon LaRouche who went on to be convicted in l988 of federal charges related to illegal fundraising schemes for his campaigns for President of the United States and served six years in federal prison.
In addition, before the 1977 and 1978 demonstrations Union Leader publisher William Loeb wrote front page editorials describing Seabrook demonstrators as “stormtroopers,” the president of Public Service Company, the plant’s prime builder, warned of communists in the Clamshell, and the county prosecutor for the Seabrook area threatened to use fire hoses, tear gas and, in one press report, bullets, on Seabrook demonstrators.
The “chilling effect” of such tactics and demagoguery can discourage citizens from participating in demonstrations, meetings and other political activity out of fear of violence, personal information ending up in government files or in the media, possible job loss, and the like.
Although public opposition to the Seabrook project grew steadily from the time the project was announced in the early 1970s and increased substantially after the early Clamshell actions in 1976, it is clear that the State of New Hampshire and the utilities involved in the project were woefully unprepared for the size, organization, and impact, of the April 1977 demonstration. Their reaction approached panic. The anti-nuclear movement had suddenly grown, in their eyes, from an easily contained movement of largely politically isolated environmentalists to a potentially powerful mass movement using tactics learned and refined from the labor, civil rights, and anti-Vietnam war movements.
Their response, predictably, was to increase surveillance and monitoring of the Clamshell. Only weeks after the 1977 occupation state officials, including then attorney general and future Supreme Court Justice David Souter, met with former high-ranking federal law enforcement officials who had formed a private security firm to advise utilities around the country on security matters. The officials presented a detailed plan, which they publicly admitted included possible electronic surveillance, to the state to assist it in preparing for the 1978 demonstration that included surveillance of the Clamshell. Although Governor Thomson reportedly was interested in the plan, the company ultimately contracted with the Public Service Company for work related to Seabrook. The extent of their subsequent activities is unknown.
Only a month before the June 1978 demonstration a staff member of the Government Operations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives came to New Hampshire to investigate reports of surveillance of the Clamshell, including possible wiretapping of Clamshell members. The committee was also investigating reports of surveillance of other anti-nuclear groups and activists around the country and were looking into circumstances surrounding the death of Karen Silkwood, the Oklahoma nuclear facility worker who was killed in a automobile accident in 1974 while on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter about health and safety issues in her plant. While the investigator was in the state the office of the chairman of the New Hampshire House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee was broken into and ransacked. Files related to Seabrook financing and utility legislation appeared to have been removed, examined and returned out of place. The burglary was never solved. Days later the state police conceded it was conducting surveillance outside the Clamshell’s Portsmouth office while the organization’s coordinating committee was meeting to discuss the state’s offer of the plant’s construction site for the June 1978 legal rally rather than the planned civil disobedience action. Clamshell members had noticed a suspicious van outside the office and notified the Portsmouth police.
And in 1980, in the last known major incident of surveillance of the Clamshell, it was revealed in court proceedings that a New Hampshire State Police informant had infiltrated a Newburyport, Mass. Clamshell group that had staged a civil disobedience action at the Manchester, NH headquarters of the Public Service Company of New Hampshire. The informant was arrested with the group and had even participated in meetings of those arrested and their attorneys prior to their trials. A subsequent civil suit for violations of the group’s civil liberties resulted in the company agreeing to pay monetary damages to the Newburyport Clamshell. The organization donated the money to charity.
Large electricity generating facilities using an inherently dangerous fuel source like nuclear energy require more security than plants powered by, for instance, oil, coal, water, or wind. Nuclear plants are prime targets for terrorists. Government and plant owners can use the need for security to monitor, illegally and technically legally, the activities of legitimate opponents of a facility, particularly in the post 9/11 world. Continued and increased use of nuclear technology to generate electricity poses a serious threat to the civil liberties and right to dissent of all Americans.