Activists planning to protest the Keystone XL pipeline project and the tar sands oil it would carry thought they had everything figured out how to successfully pull off their peaceful demonstration earlier this year. It wasn’t until later that they realized the police also had everything figured out, too, thanks to their infiltration of the environmental group.

Members of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance gathered together for a week-long camp to discuss and prepare for their protest outside TransCanada’s strategic oil reserves in Cushing, Oklahoma.

On March 22, about 50 activists set out to block the company’s gates. But some of them didn’t make it that far, as police pulled over their cars. Other officers were waiting at the gates for the rest of the demonstrators who showed up early that morning to begin unloading equipment.

The protest was called off, and the group was left dumbfounded over how the police could have known about their plans.

Then, the Earth Island Journal obtained government documents that revealed investigators from the Bryan County Sheriff’s Department had infiltrated the group and their planning meeting.

Two deputies posed as would-be protesters, gathered information about the event and those attending the camp, then drafted a detailed report for their superiors.

Demonstrators were classified into one of five different groups, according to the undercover deputies: eco-activists (who “truly wanted to live off the grid”); Occupy members; Native American activists (“who blamed all forms of government for the poor state of being that most American Indians are living in”); anarchists (“many wore upside down American flags”); and local Oklahoma residents (who “had concerns about the pipeline harming the community”), Adam Federman wrote for the Earth Island Journal.

Federman also reported that the infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance action camp was “part of a larger pattern of government surveillance of tar sands protesters.” The publication obtained other documents showing the Department of Homeland Security has been “keeping close tabs on pipeline opponents — and routinely sharing that information with TransCanada, and vice versa.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Undercover Agents Infiltrated Tar Sands Resistance Camp to Break up Planned Protest (by Adam Federman, Earth Island Journal)

Armed, Masked Paramilitary Troops Called in to Protect Wisconsin Mining Site from 15 Protesters (by Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)             

Coast Guard Protects Oil Drilling Ships from Environmentalists (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)    

Spying on Nuns, Bike Lane Activists, and Other Security Threats (AllGov)