Opinion ID: 437447
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Tolling Doctrine Applied

Text: 141 On the basis of the foregoing, our analysis is quite straightforward. We find that the record contains overwhelming and uncontradicted evidence of defendants' efforts to construct a scheme that would remain secret and that the wrong fits neatly under the self-concealing or unknowable label. At the same time we find that three plaintiffs were on notice of their claims against the FBI, though not against the District defendants, more than three years before they filed suit, and that the statute of limitations therefore has run on those particular claims.
142 The FBI took numerous steps to assure that no aspect of its COINTELPRO program would come to the attention of the public, or, indeed, of anyone outside the FBI. Steps were also taken to limit knowledge of COINTELPRO operations even among FBI personnel. Thus, in any early FBI memorandum regarding COINTELPRO-Black Nationalist, it was written, 143 You are also cautioned that the nature of this new endeavor is such that under no circumstances should the existence of the program be made known outside the Bureau and appropriate within-office security should be afforded to sensitive operations, and techniques considered under the program. 144 IV J.A. 1728. A later airtel from FBI headquarters again cautioned the Field Office agents that COINTELPRO proposals must be designed to avoid embarrassing the Bureau. IV J.A. 1735. The record discloses numerous ways in which the FBI sought to hide its activities. Two examples suffice. First, the Bureau published The Rational Observer on unwatermarked paper [f]or the sake of security, IV J.A. 1853 (memorandum from SAC, WFO to Director, FBI), and falsely attributed authorship of the articles therein to a small group of students, IV J.A. 1854. Second, the Bureau mailed out the Give Them Bananas! leaflet 110 anonymously, in unmarked white envelopes, taking all necessary steps to protect the identity of the Bureau as the source of these leaflets. 111 These affirmative efforts at concealment leave no doubt that the FBI defendants engaged in a self-concealing wrong. There also was ample evidence to find that the District defendants on their own engaged in activities that they deliberately concealed. They sent informants into the New Mobe, WMC, BUF, ECTC, Institute for Policy Studies, WAPAC, and into the two plaintiff organizations, who misrepresented their identities. 112 Moreover, the MPD Intelligence Division shredded all its political surveillance files in 1974. III J.A. 1317 (testimony of Jerry Wilson). Whether the MPD did so for housekeeping or for concealment purposes was a question of fact for the jury. 145 The record in this case is replete with examples of efforts to prevent public awareness of the conduct at issue in this case. Our review leaves no doubt of the existence of evidence that defendants deliberately constructed schemes of such a kind that plaintiffs would not even suspect that any outsider was meddling in their lawful activities, much less that their constitutional rights were being violated. Accordingly, this case properly went to the jury under the framework established by Richards for adjudicating claims of fraudulent concealment emanating from self-concealing wrongs, and we decline to hold that insufficient evidence supports the jury's verdict on this issue. 113 146
147 Up to now, we have determined, first, that the evidence supports the conclusion that defendants concealed their activities--by contriving schemes that were by their nature unknowable--and that defendants failed to offer evidence of facts plaintiffs might nevertheless have uncovered with due diligence. Thus, unless we determine as a matter of law that plaintiffs nonetheless had notice of the cause now sued upon, plaintiffs will have proved fraudulent concealment. We turn now to this last inquiry. 148 Initially, we must make clear what we are and are not seeking. Plaintiffs recovered in the District Court on a claim that their First Amendment rights were infringed. We therefore look only for evidence of knowledge of facts about that claim. Knowledge of possible other wrongs, such as illegal wiretaps or burglaries, or of proper law enforcement activities aimed at plaintiffs, such as surveillance, surely do not create a cause of action under the First Amendment by themselves and will not meet our standard of notice. 149 The FBI defendants suggest a variety of incidents whose occurrence they believe placed plaintiffs on timely notice of their claims against the FBI. First, they point to articles by former FBI Special Agent Robert Wall, published in the New York Review of Books on January 27, 1972, and in the Potomac Magazine, a Sunday supplement to the Washington Post, on March 5, 1972. 114 The articles by and about Wall purported to describe secret FBI activities, including the existence of COINTELPRO-New Left and its intent to disrupt New Left and antiwar groups, FBI infiltration of New Left groups, the FBI's effort to exploit dissension between the New Mobilization Committee and the Black United Front arising out of the head-tax demand, the FBI's investigation of the Poor People's Campaign, and the FBI's investigation of the Institute for Policy Studies and persons associated with it. Defendants remind us that several plaintiffs admitted to reading these articles more than three years prior to filing suit. Second, other information was publicly available regarding FBI activities, according to defendants. They point to testimony in a separate civil action regarding FBI investigations of the New Mobilization Committee, and to disclosures (in unidentified publications) following burglary of an FBI office. 115 The FBI defendants concede, however, that no plaintiff admitted to being aware of such information. Third, the FBI defendants detail specific instances in which each plaintiff knew or suspected he or she was the subject of an FBI investigation or surveillance. 150 The District defendants reiterate many of the same pieces of evidence that the FBI defendants offer. They also point to a Washington Post article, published in June 1973, in which a former MPD officer described MPD efforts to infiltrate the Institute for Policy Studies and the Student Mobilization Committee, and his own (apparently unauthorized) efforts to coordinate electronic surveillance of demonstrators with federal law enforcement groups. 116 151 We are not persuaded that any of these examples, standing alone, suffices to have put plaintiffs on notice of their claims. A person's suspicion that he is a target of lawful law enforcement activity, such as surveillance, or even that his organization has been infiltrated by informants, cannot conceivably constitute notice of possible constitutional violations, without creating the anomalous situation of requiring persons to file suit on a hunch, only to be dismissed for failure to state a claim. 117 A court simply cannot require that an aggrieved party have proceeded from the outset as if he were dealing with thieves. Hudak v. Economic Research Analysts, Inc., 499 F.2d 996, 1002 (5th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1122, 95 S.Ct. 805, 42 L.Ed.2d 821 (1975). To require potential plaintiffs to spin a tale of unconstitutional activity from a mere awareness of lawful investigation would impose just such a burden of omnipresent suspicion. 152 Nor does the mere fact that a plaintiff might have read a newspaper article detailing an FBI scheme to disrupt certain organizations 118 cast upon him a duty to presume that he was a target and to file suit. In a different setting, we declined to infer notice of an accounting firm's fraudulent practices on the basis of one newspaper article criticizing certain accounting practices, and held, As a matter of law, we believe that one article challenging the accounting procedures of a reputable firm is insufficient to impute knowledge of fraud to appellants. Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. v. National Student Marketing Corp., 650 F.2d 342, 349 (D.C.Cir.1980), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 954, 101 S.Ct. 3098, 69 L.Ed.2d 965 (1981). While such an article might trigger a duty to inquire, we do not believe that such seemingly outrageous allegations as appeared, unverified, in the Wall articles on their own constitute as a matter of law notice of constitutional violations to all unidentified victims. This is particularly so in a case such as this one, in which plaintiffs' injury, at least initially, was difficult to identify and, consequently, would not necessarily have provided verification that plaintiffs were targets of the FBI's covert activities. We do not, of course, imply that an article can never constitute notice, but only that it was within the range of the jury's authority to resolve the issue. 153 Nonetheless, as to some plaintiffs, not one but several of the factors to which defendants point converged; as a matter of law, we hold that the confluence of factors placed three plaintiffs on notice of their claims. Those plaintiffs who not only read the Wall articles more than three years before filing suit, but also knew that they were subjects of FBI investigation, had enough timely information to claim that they were victims of unconstitutional FBI activities. The FBI defendants' directed verdict motions as to those plaintiffs were therefore improperly denied. These plaintiffs did not, however, have any reason to know of District involvement; therefore, their claims against the District defendants are not time-barred. 154 According to the FBI defendants, four plaintiffs, Abbott, Bloom, Booker and Waskow, were aware in early 1972 of the Wall allegations, and also of other red flags signaling a cause of action. We consider each of these plaintiffs in turn. 155 Mr. Booker: Mr. Booker testified that he read an article by Special Agent Wall in the Washington Post, evidently at the time of its publication. II J.A. 829-30 (testimony of Reginald Booker). The article specifically noted the existence of COINTELPRO and reported that the project was designed to thwart and undermine the activities of any organization that fell into the category of 'New Left.'  IV J.A. 2183, 2188 (Wall article). More specifically, the article noted that the FBI tried to create dissent among the various groups involved in the New Left to prevent them from working together, id., and it specifically gave as an example the FBI's forgery of a letter to the NMC demanding payment for Black support of NMC peace efforts. Id. Mr. Booker had been present at BUF meetings in the late 1960s focusing on whether BUF should propose that a head tax be paid by demonstrators coming into Washington, see II J.A. 811-12 (testimony of Reginald Booker), and believed no such policy ever was adopted. Id. Moreover, he had had meetings with FBI agents in which they had tried to get him to be an informant. Id. at 826. Thus, Mr. Booker was on notice both of the injury he had suffered and of the unlawful intent on the part of the FBI that made the injury actionable. The case is easily distinguishable from the situation in Richards, in which the plaintiff knew of the former (injury) but not the latter (unlawful motive), and requires a contrary result. 119 156 Mr. Abbott: Mr. Abbott is in a position similar to that of Mr. Booker. He recalls that in 1972 he read ... very avidly the Wall articles in the New York Review of Books and the Washington Post. II J.A. 934-35 (testimony of Sammie Abbott). At the same time, he had personal knowledge of the head tax issue discussed in the articles, id. at 919-20, knew the FBI was interested in using him as an informant, id. at 924, and well before 1972 he was aware that his telephone was tapped. Id. at 931-32. As with Mr. Booker, this dual awareness of injury and motive sufficed to put Mr. Abbott on notice of his constitutional claim against the FBI. 157 Mr. Bloom: Mr. Bloom is in a position like that of Messrs. Abbott and Booker. He, too, testified that he read the Wall article in the Washington Post when it was published and heard about the New York Review of Books piece. II J.A. 702-03 (testimony of Abe Bloom). He was involved in the head tax controversy discussed in the article, id. at 678-80, and he also suspected he was under surveillance. Id. at 663. Most pointedly, Mr. Bloom testified that after reading the Wall article, he came to believe that the Rev. Moore demand letter was written by an FBI agent. Id. at 702-03. With such strong evidence that Mr. Bloom knew of his injury, and of the role of the FBI in causing that injury, as early as 1972, we do not believe his claims against the FBI should have gone to the jury. 158 Mr. Waskow: The facts regarding Mr. Waskow are not so clear, and we believe his claims properly went to the jury for resolution of the fraudulent concealment issue. First, Mr. Waskow admitted that he had read articles about Special Agent Wall, but did not testify as to when he read them; nor did he describe them in sufficient detail to enable us to determine which of many articles on COINTELPRO he might have read, or whether they might have put him on notice of the intent of the FBI's COINTELPRO program. See II J.A. 902-03 (testimony of Arthur Waskow). We cannot conclude on this basis that Mr. Waskow read any article by or about Special Agent Wall more than three years before filing suit. While there was evidence that Mr. Waskow suspected that he and the Institute for Policy Studies were targets of an FBI investigation, see id. at 884, 897-99, and that he knew about the head tax issue, id. at 868, on their own such suspicions certainly do not amount to knowledge of constitutional violations. The jury could reasonably have concluded that Mr. Waskow did not know the contours of his claim until mid-1973. 159 In sum, we hold that the motions for directed verdicts on timeliness grounds should have been granted in favor of the FBI defendants only, as to plaintiffs Booker, Abbott and Bloom. As a matter of law, each of the three was on notice of his claim more than three years before filing suit. None of the other plaintiffs testified to sufficient awareness of his injury and the motive with which it was inflicted to require the issue to be taken from the jury. Moreover, we find from the record that none of the plaintiffs was cognizant of facts regarding the District defendants that should have led them, as a matter of law, to file constitutional claims against the District or its employees. The District and MPD represent a wholly separate organization from the FBI and, on the basis of Fitzgerald v. Seamans, we decline to hold plaintiffs to a constructive knowledge of the possible involvement of organizations outside the FBI. 160