From the CAE Defense Fund Website:
Dr. Steven Kurtz is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and a founding member, with his late wife, Hope, of the internationally acclaimed art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have hosted CAE’s participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it.
In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing to present Free Range Grain, a project examining GM agriculture, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Police who responded to Steve Kurtz's 911 call deemed the couple's art suspicious, and called the FBI. The art materials consisted of several petri dishes containing three harmless bacteria cultures, and a mobile lab to test food labeled “organic” for the presence of genetically modified ingredients. As Kurtz explained, these materials had been safely displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America with absolutely no risk to the public.
The next day, however, as Kurtz was on his way to the funeral home, he was illegally detained by agents from the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, who informed him he was being investigated for "bioterrorism." At no point during the 22 hours Kurtz was held and questioned did the agents Mirandize him or inform him he could leave. Meanwhile, agents from numerous federal law enforcement agencies - including five regional branches of the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Buffalo Police, Fire Department, and state Marshall's office - descended on Kurtz's home in Hazmat suits. Cordoning off half a block around his home, they seized his cat, car, computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife's body from the county coroner for further analysis. The Erie County Health Department condemned his house as a possible "health risk."
A week later, only after the Commissioner of Public Health for New York State had tested samples from the Kurtzes' home and announced that there was nothing in the home that posed any sort of public or environmental health or safety risk, was Kurtz allowed to return home and to recover his wife's body.
While most observers assumed the Task Force would realize its initial investigation was a terrible mistake, the Department of Justice instead chose to press their "case" against Dr. Kurtz (see below for more information on the charges). Despite the Public Health Commissioner's conclusion as to the safety of Kurtz's materials, and despite the fact that the FBI's own field and laboratory tests showed they were not harmful to people or the environment, the Department of Justice continues to waste vast sums of public money on this outrageous and politically motivated persecution.
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Clearly, this was a gross misuse of federal resources, a politically motivated attack, and a disgusting example of the ways in which the PATRIOT Act can be used to interfere in innocent people's lives.
More information on Kurtz's arrest and background can be found here and here .
Happily, Kurtz was cleared of all charges by a federal judge in April.
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