Last night's PBS broadcast of 'NOW with Bill Moyers' featured a segment on "peace" protesters' meetings being infiltrated by members of local law enforcement as well as the FBI. The transcript of the show is here.

It included coverage of one Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. She had this to say among other things: "This is an effort to criminalize dissent. It's an effort from the Ashcroft Justice department specifically since September 11th, really, to intimidate people in the United States and to try and stifle dissent."

Here's how NOW with Bill Moyers identifies Ms. Verheyden-Hilliard:

"...Civil Rights attorney and activist"

and

"Verheyden-Hilliard and her husband Carl Messineo run the Partnership for Civil Justice, a public interest law firm in Washington, D.C."

As it turns out, she's also a member of the ANSWER Coalition steering committee (see the pic two below that of Ramsey Clark. If it seems there's something vaguely Soviet about those pictures, that's because there is).

Don't they think it might be slightly of interest to know that she's a member of the well-known A.N.S.W.E.R. organization?

I don't support the police or the FBI infiltrating or monitoring non-violent "peace" groups. What they really stand for can be determined and publicized by, oh, I dunno, bloggers like me.

However, I think NOW reveals its biases by attempting to hide her ties behind yet another innocent-sounding acronym.