A single-page confidential directive issued by the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC (FBIHQ) was sent to each of the 56 field offices located across the United States on or about March 23, 2009, instructing the Special Agents in Charge (SACs) of those offices to verify the date, time and location of each TEA Party within their region and supply that information to FBI headquarters in Washington.
Not all agents were privy to this correspondence, stated the source, who compared the dissemination to an older Do Not File classification.
In addition to obtaining or confirming the location and time of each demonstration, each field office was instructed to obtain or confirm the identity of the individual(s) involved in the actual planning and coordination of the event in each specific region, and include the local or regional Internet web site address, if any. The information collected by region was then reportedly sent to FBI Headquarters.
The source alleges that a second directive was issued on or about April 6, 2009 that reportedly instructed each SAC to coordinate and conduct, either at the field office level and/or with the appropriate resident agency, covert video surveillance and data collection of the participants of the TEA parties. Surveillance was to be performed from discreet fixed or mobile positions and was to be performed independently and outside of the purview of local law enforcement.
Although the level of detail collected from each operation is unclear, the information was reportedly submitted to Washington, where, at the level of the National Security Branch (NSB), this information was to include the office of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), and integrated with a restricted access database, one that reportedly is accessible to only two agencies [of the 14 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community, according to the source.]
