The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is coming under new scrutiny for a series of interviews it conducted ahead of last year’s political conventions. Dozens of activists and antiwar protesters were questioned by local and federal authorities. At the time FBI officials and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the interviews were based on indications that protesters may be planning violent disruptions. Authorities said one specific threat involved plans to blow up a media van in Boston. But now the FBI has begun releasing documents connected to the conventions and they tell a different story. According to the Washington Post, the new memos provide no indication of specific threat information. Instead, one heavily censored memo from the FBI’s Denver field office, characterized the effort as “pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election.” Mark Silverstein, of the ACLU of Colorado, said “It’s absolutely clear now that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — the one right here in Denver — is collecting information about peaceful political activity that has nothing to do with terrorism.”