One more weary trip around the block for assessing what happened during the WTO meetings last fall. Granted, it seems irrelevant, particularly since the WTO is never, ever, ever coming back to Seattle. But many of the lessons learned are quite relevant--particularly the accountability of our police department and the competence, or lack of it, of the city's top leadership. (That's you, Mr. Schell.)

Some interesting and largely unreported details are emerging from the testimony given to the city council's WTO investigation. The most interesting, perhaps, concerns the Investigations Ordinance--that blessed quirk of '70s law which prohibits cops from investigating and keeping files on lawful political activity. The Investigations Ordinance was signed into law for good reason: to counter decades worth of Seattle history of unlawful police repression of political dissent. It has served as an essential protection for Seattle protesters, and cops hate it.

After the WTO, the Seattle Police Department, with the able assistance of Mayor Paul "Something, Anything to Blame" Schell, called for the repeal of the Investigations Ordinance on the ludicrous grounds that it had crippled SPD's ability to find out what protesters were going to do during WTO. Schell emphasized during the debacle, and repeated thereafter, that the police were taken by surprise; they allegedly had no idea that the Direct Action Network was going to try to shut down the WTO talks, even though DAN held a press conference the previous week to announce it to the world.

And the reason they had no idea? The Investigations Ordinance supposedly barred police from gathering information on DAN and like-minded groups, or even getting info from other law enforcement agencies that were investigating them. SPD's After Action Report, released in April, devoted a whole section to this preposterous theme. Violins, please: "On balance, the Investigations Ordinance created significant problems for SPD during the planning phases for WTO. The SPD Criminal Intelligence Section (CIS) contributed little hard intelligence because of our inability to investigate any of the individuals or groups that ultimately did the most damage. This was due to the fact that these groups were politically motivated and consequently enjoyed the full protection of the ordinance..."

But the Investigations Ordinance prohibits investigating lawful political activity. It doesn't bar investigation of criminal activity, including civil disobedience. And we learn, buried farther along in the same paragraph (p. 20, The SPD After Action Report) "that SPD ultimately obtained authorizations pursuant to the requirements of the ordinance on September 28th."

In other words, they had two full months to investigate the Direct Action Network, Ruckus Society, the Eugene anarchists, and other groups identified early on as potential trouble.

And they did investigate. What we now learn from the city council probe is that SPD knew exactly what was going to happen, and told Chief Stamper and Mayor Schell beforehand exactly what was going to happen.

A recap of an 11/23/99 Intelligence Briefing Paper prepared by CIS discussed the anarchist groups and direct action activists. In the recap, we learn that "considerable specificity is evident regarding the disruptive plans set for 11/30." Police knew about the assault on the Paramount Theatre, knew that it was a pie-shaped strategy, and knew that tripods and other blockade technology would be deployed. Furthermore, according to the city council testimony, "Mayor Schell was briefed personally by CIS on 11/28." Reading between the lines, it is evident that SPD used its two months of authorized investigation to infiltrate the Direct Action Network, which wasn't all that hard to infiltrate--you could just walk in the door of the convergence center on Denny Way a week before N30 and read, on the wall, everything that was going to happen.

At another point, SPD discusses the tactics displayed at the Ruckus Society's Arlington "training camp" for direct actionists in late September. This camp was extensively reported on in the media, and it "resulted in SPD Intelligence initiating an Authorized investigation." (I.e., the waiver of the Investigations Ordinance.) Yet at that point, gathering information on the Arlington event would have been prohibited--and it is unclear whether SPD had someone attending Arlington, or took information from another agency that infiltrated it. In other words, beyond the two months in which infiltration of fair trade protest groups was legal, SPD may have jumped the gun further.

None of this was exactly secret. I had a cover story in the Seattle Weekly in August, "Shutting Down Seattle," which described exactly what the protesters intended. But from this, and the new city council revelations, we learn two things:

1) Law enforcement agencies and Mayor Schell knew ahead of time with astonishing specificity what the plans of WTO protesters were. This came due to SPD infiltration of protest groups over a period of at least two months. Claims that decision-makers "didn't know" or were "lied to by protesters" regarding protesters' intent are pure bullshit. They have nobody to blame but themselves for their perceived disaster.

2) The SPD's claim that it was crippled by the Investigations Ordinance is also bullshit. It got all the information it needed. The law worked exactly as it should, and it should be retained.

Our new police chief would acquit himself well by disavowing the SPD's efforts to lobby for the repeal of the Investigations Ordinance. The last thing needed by a police department distrusted by a wide segment of the community is for it to insist that it needs to spy on law-abiding citizens. Chief Kerlikowske should show that he trusts the citizens of Seattle, and that he trusts democracy in action.