My colleague Pat Pheifer reported the contents of long-awaited search warrants that enabled St. Paul police to raid the Iglehart Avenue home of Mike Whalen before the Republican National Convention. This was the raid I blogged about earlier this month, and photographed above by my colleague David Joles. Police handcuffed members of a New York media collective that monitors police conduct during protests, who were staying at the Whalen’s residence at 949-951 Iglehart. Nothing was seized, and no one was charged.

The path that led to the raid wound through a south Minneapolis bookstore, summoned the ghosts of 1970s radical movements and culminated with the delivery of suspicious packages to Whalen’s home on the Saturday before the RNC, according to the search warrants. Search warrants are supposed to be filed within 10 days after they’re executed, but nothing arrived at the Ramsey County courthouse well beyond it. At first, it looked as if they had been sealed by a judge, but as Pheifer reported, they ended up at the Ramsey County attorney somehow.

Taken out by St. Paul police officer D. Langfellow, the search warrants were signed by Ramsey County Judge Joanne Smith after officers had already surrounded the house and detained several people outside. Officers entered the house “to prevent others from leaving and the destruction of evidence,” the affidavit said.

They described the following case against Whalen as a potential terrorist:

1) He was “under investigation during the 1990’s due to a suspicion he was supporting international terrorism.” Whalen’s response: he’s been involved in Irish solidarity groups that don’t have ties to any militant group.

2) He co-owns the Arise! Bookstore in south Minneapolis. The bookstore “has postings in plain view” that advocate unlawful activities, and that the officer “has observed that there are specific postings related to the Republican National Convention that are clearly intended to call people to take violent action during the convention.” Whalen’s response: he owns the building, but hasn’t been involved with the collective that runs the store for three years.

3) Kathleen Ann Soliah/Sara Jane Olson is also a co-owner of the Arise! Bookstore. She’s the former member of the violent Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s who changed her name and lived in St. Paul for 20 years before being brought to justice. She was sentenced to prison in California in 2001 after pleading guilty to charges connected to a bank robbery in which a woman was killed and a plot to kill police officers. Whalen’s response: he bought out Soliah’s share of the bookstore deal more than a decade ago. Arise! Bookstore’s response: “Sara Jane Olson is not currently involved with Arise! Bookstore,” Amanda Luker told me in an email message.

4) A statement on the Arise! Bookstore web site “credits WHALEN with giving support and admiration” to Soliah and “advocating violent direction action against police during the 2008 Republican National Convention (paraphrased).” I couldn’t find any statement attributed to Whalen on the web site. But I did find the general statement that was quoted by Langfellow, in the bookstore’s “about us” section, stating that it supports “the struggles of oppressed and colonized peoples for self determination. Self-determination is a fundamental right to be obtained through whatever means necessary, including armed struggle.”

No one would fault a police agency from taking action if it thought 21 boxes of weapons intended for an attack on the RNC were arriving at a terrorist cell. That’s what FBI agent Scott Zimmerman, with a tip from an informant, told Langfellow. But the boxes had literature about vegetarianism and veganism, not bombs or guns.

My colleague Nick Coleman wrote about Whalen and police actions during the RNC last week.

There isn’t a word in the search warrants about the guests at the house, members of I-Witness Video, whose work helped exonerate 400 people arrested at the 2004 RNC. Despite the pre-RNC detention, I-Witness Video was able to carry out its mission at the 2008 RNC: its post-RNC roundup accuses the police of misconduct during the week’s protests in the streets of St. Paul.

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