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Federal agents
investigate Letters to the Editor in the Casper Star Tribune Cheyenne - Watch what you say. The FBI may come calling if you say the wrong thing. A man who wrote a Letter to the Editor that was printed in the Casper Star Tribune provoked the interest of federal agents because of what he wrote. Dennis Brossman of Lander, who is also chair of the Wyoming Libertarian Party, was notified by a Casper Star Tribune editor in August, that a Casper-based Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent had visited the newspaper and requested copies of letters that Brossman had written. When Brossman contacted agent Wanda Dietz, she told him that she was performing "a favor" for Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in Salt Lake City, Utah. WyomingNetwork telephone calls to the IRS's "Local Taxpayer Advocate" in Casper had not been returned when this article was posted. Brossman then contacted a Salt Lake City FBI agent, who said, "he was from the 'JTTF' or Joint Terrorism Task Force, a combined group of FBI, IRS and other agencies." Brossman says the FBI agent "assured me he'd read my letters and found them interesting, but not a threat." "He repeatedly told me that I never was under any kind of investigation, but certain people -especially three Cody-area names who responded to my letters - were." Keith Collins, of Cody, confirmed he was contacted by two federal agents. One identified himself as Dee Russell, a Utah-based special agent for the Treasury Department. Collins said they asked him about a letter to the editor he had written to the Star Tribune in response to Brossman. In the letter, Collins had used the word "collectivist" and that was the focus of the agents interest. The agents told Collins that the word "collectivist" had been used in a threatening letter to a federal agent, and they were investigating letters using the word. Collins said the incident might cause him to refrain from writing again soon. He said, additionally, that he understood 86% of the American public apparently agreed with a number of anti-terror measures undertaken recently. Brossman's claims come on the heels of a similar incident in San Francisco, Calif. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Emil Guillermo wrote Tuesday about Barry Reingold, who was visited by FBI agents for remarks he made at his health club regarding the war on terrorism. Marvin Johnson, the Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., said such incidences are "no longer unusual." He said that Attorney General John Ashcroft is seeking to lessen restrictions on domestic spying and intelligence gathering. The restrictions were imposed in the 1970's as a result of the Nixon Administration's efforts to harass political opponents and critics though use of so-called "enemies lists", and investigations by federal agencies such as the IRS. Cheyenne attorney Billie Edwards said that when such things happen in large cities, like the Reingold interview, they don't have the same impact as when a neighbor in Wyoming comes under such attention. "It's more frightening," she said. John Barksdale, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Casper, declined to comment. Brossman said he was unsure of his next step, or any legal recourse he might have. He requested anyone else who may have had similar contact get in touch with him in Lander.
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