According to the unsealed search warrants and supporting documents, the FBI began surveilling the FRSO shortly after the protests at the 2008 GOP convention, using a confidential informant. Whether the FBI had employed wiretaps obtained under the material support provision of the Patriot Act (as amended in 2006) is unclear. The FBI’s assertion about the group and the Anti‐​War Committee is that both acted as fronts for the funneling of money and other forms of support to Colombian and Palestinian groups labeled as foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department.

Kelly and the other political activists targeted by the FBI have long histories in the antiwar movement and related causes on the extreme political left. In 2011, Kelly settled a suit with the local police department over an excessive use of force incident during his protest outside the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Despite the FBI’s collection of over a hundred hours of recordings and its multiyear penetration of the two extreme leftist organizations, to date none of the activists have been charged with any crime.

It’s certainly not the first time the FBI has engaged in the harassment of political dissidents. Indeed, the FBI’s surveillance of antiwar activists dates back to at least World War I, to include surveillance of Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams. The bureau has been an equal opportunity abuser of the rights of antiwar activists, whether on the left (like Addams and the FRSO) or on the libertarian side of the spectrum.

These incidents, while separated in time by nearly 100 years, also share another feature. No FBI agent or manager has ever been fired or prosecuted for violating the constitutional rights of those individuals or groups wrongly surveilled, harassed or charged.

Just four days prior to the FBI raids against the Anti‐​War Committee and the FRSO, the Department of Justice Inspector General [IG] released the results of an investigation into post‐​9/​11 surveillance of peace groups and other domestic dissidents up through 2006.

As Andrew Cohen wrote in The Atlantic at the time, the IG investigation found that the bureau “engaged in tactics and strategies toward those groups and their members that were inappropriate, misleading and in some cases counterproductive. Moreover, the OIG accused FBI witnesses of continuing to the present day to thwart a full and complete investigation into the matter by offering ‘incomplete and inconsistent accounts of events.’ ”

A similar oversight investigation of the FBI’s raids against the Anti‐​War Committee and the FRSO—whether done by the IG or Congress—is long overdue. So is real accountability for government agencies whose employees flagrantly and repeatedly violate the rights of the citizens who pay their salaries.