Iowa City protest group drew FBI attention

BY DI STAFF | SEPTEMBER

According to documents obtained by the Des Moines Register, the FBI followed a group of Iowa City political activists in 2008.

The agency feared the protesters — called the Wild Rose Rebellion — were part of a nationwide web of radicals that would disrupt the Republican Convention in St. Paul and the Democratic Convention in Denver.

The FBI trailed the group during a nine-month investigation by following protesters’ movements around Iowa City, photographing them, going through their garbage, and studying phone and motor-vehicle records.

The probe ended when bureau agents said they had found an “association with other anarchist extremist networks” but the group was not engaged in “specific criminal activity.”

David Goodner, a former member of the University of Iowa’s Antiwar Committee, obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act before giving them to the Des Moines newspaper.

— by Nina Earnest