This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 23rd, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When the FBI starts looking into your activities, it ought to be because of a clear suspicion

of criminal activity. That's definitely not the case

with Concerned Women of America. That conservative group has been subject to FBI snooping

without any apparent suspicion of criminality.

Caters Patrick Edington explains why that matters.

You have been engaged in a project to research and understand more clearly the nature of government surveillance of civil society groups, of other groups, certain high profile individuals, other low profile individuals who nonetheless have the potential for great impact.

And the feds in undertaking this surveillance, sometimes without any real suspicion, they

have then needled these groups or it bothered them in some way in in ways that are

untoward and not appropriate so what is the latest example here?

Well, to be fair, you know, this has been a phenomenon that has largely throughout history

been targeted at folks on the left but not exclusively and very recently we got

confirmation of that fact when the FBI to my astonishment actually turned over a redacted

so-called assessment and we'll talk about what that means in a moment an

assessment that was run against the Concerned Women for America,

one of the most venerable conservative Christian oriented female organizations,

domestic policy organizations in the country, from July of 2016.

So you know, five years ago and it was rather amazing to read this document and to see that a particular

analyst or FBI agent had taken it

upon his or herself to decide without any criminal predicate whatsoever to examine with the possibility and this is the phrase from the document,

the possibility that concern women for America was engaged in some kind of fraud.

...