Prominent Lawyer To Review Spying

Gov. Martin O'Malley yesterday appointed a lawyer who has served as U.S. attorney and state attorney general to conduct an independent review of the surveillance by Maryland State Police of death penalty opponents and antiwar activists.

The investigation led by Stephen H. Sachs will focus on how and why officers assigned to the Division of Homeland Security and Intelligence used aliases to infiltrate organizational meetings, rallies and e-mail group lists of activists from Takoma Park to Baltimore in 2005 and 2006.

Sachs could expand his probe to other intelligence gathering by the state police if he concludes that other monitoring took place that was not warranted, officials said.

"We want to know why they did what they did and who they shared it with," O'Malley (D) said of the 14-month spying operation by at least two undercover police agents while Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) was governor. "I would like to be able to assure the public that this has been thoroughly investigated and reviewed."

He said he hoped the 30- to 60-day review would result in new intelligence-gathering guidelines for police "in order to safeguard this sort of waste of resources from ever happening again."

The surveillance was revealed last month in 46 pages of documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which sued the state police in June to gain access to public records on the spying.

Sachs, a Democrat and ACLU member, retired in 1999 from a Baltimore law firm, where he specialized in criminal and civil litigation and now serves "of counsel." He was U.S. attorney for Maryland from 1967 to 1970 and served two terms as attorney general in the 1980s. He said he hoped his review, conducted with Col. Terrence Sheridan, the state police chief, and Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's office, would "discover the unvarnished truth about what happened and what didn't happen."

Although O'Malley administration officials have said that undercover work is an integral part of intelligence gathering, the targeting of nonviolent protesters has alarmed many Maryland residents.

Yesterday, ACLU officials said they have heard from more than 90 individuals and activist groups across the state who fear that they, too, came under surveillance. The ACLU announced plans to seek additional records from state and federal authorities on their behalf.

"Groups all over Maryland and individuals all over Maryland want to know what happened to them," ACLU staff attorney David Rocah said. "If they could spy on [death penalty opponents and antiwar activists], they could spy on anybody." Rocah praised Sachs's appointment but said his probe should cover more than 14 months of intelligence gathering.

A preliminary review last week by Sheridan found that police did not break any laws because they monitored public meetings and rallies. Sheridan said the spying was prompted by protests surrounding two scheduled executions of men on death row. But he could not explain why war opponents also were targeted. The ACLU contends that the monitoring was illegal because no criminal activity took place and that the protesters' privacy was violated because police kept detailed records of their activities.

Gansler (D) said Sachs has a broad mandate to look into whether police used wiretaps or other surveillance that requires a search warrant.

Gansler also said he wants to know whether the activists' names were entered in federal databases of suspected terrorists.

"What were the motives?" Gansler said of the state police, who shared information on protesters with several police departments. "It raises the specter of, was this almost a police state?"

Several members of Congress and state lawmakers have called for investigations. The state Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 16. Sen. Brian Frosh (D-Montgomery), the committee chairman, called Sachs "maybe the best person in America for this job" and said Sachs's review could help his panel come up with new police policies on intelligence gathering.