Rendell,
who claimed he'd just learned about the practice, said Tuesday that the
information was useless to law enforcement agencies and that
distributing it was tantamount to trampling on constitutional rights.
In recent weeks, several acts of vandalism at drilling sites spurred
the inclusion of events likely to be attended by environmentalists and
the bulletins began going to representatives of Pennsylvania's booming
natural gas industry.

A Philadelphia rally organized by a
nonprofit group to support Rendell's push for higher spending on public
schools even made a bulletin, as did drilling protests at a couple of
Rendell's news conferences this month as he toured the state to boost
support for a tax on the natural gas industry.

"I am deeply embarrassed
and I apologize to any of the groups who had this information
disseminated on their right to peacefully protest," Rendell said at an
evening Capitol news conference.

Rendell
called the practice "ludicrous" and said the fact that the state was
paying for such rudimentary information was "stunning."

Still,
Rendell said he was not firing his homeland security director, James
Powers, but he ordered an end to the $125,000 contract with the
Philadelphia-based organization, the Institute of Terrorism Research
and Response, that supplied the information.

The 12-page bulletin
that was issued Aug. 30 included a list of municipal zoning hearings on
Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling, a forestry industry conference
and a screening of the documentary "Gasland" as events likely to be
attended by anti-drilling activists.

Aside from the
drilling-related events, the bulletin mentioned other potential
security concerns that it said could involve "anarchists and Black
Power radicals."

It listed demonstrations by anti-war groups,
deportation protesters in Philadelphia, mountaintop removal mining
protesters in West Virginia and an animal rights protest at a
Montgomery County rodeo.

It also included "Burn the Confederate
Flag Day," the Jewish high holidays and the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan as potential sources of risk.

Rendell said he learned of
the matter from a story in The Patriot-News of Harrisburg on Tuesday
and was appalled that aides did not notify him before inking the
contract a year ago.

"I think I would have said 'no' to this
contract before we ever spent a dime and before we sent out any
information that was wrong and violative of, in my judgment, the
constitution," Rendell said.

Mike Perelman, a co-director of the
institute, would not respond to questions about the contract or the
bulletins, saying he does not discuss client matters.

Rendell
said bulletins were being used - wrongly - as a way to satisfy a
federal requirement to protect "critical infrastructure" and notify law
enforcement of credible information about real threats.

He said
he has asked several top aides, including state police Commissioner
Frank Pawlowski, to come up with a way to satisfy the requirement.

Powers did not respond to interview requests Tuesday.

The bulletins, which went out three times a week, were not intended for public distribution.

But
someone who received the Aug. 30 bulletin gave a copy to Virginia Cody,
a retired Air Force officer who lives in Factoryville and is concerned
about the rapid expansion of Marcellus Shale drilling in northeastern
Pennsylvania.

"The idea that my government thinks that what I'm
doing is worthy of anti-terrorism interest goes against everything I
stand for and everything I ever stood for," said Cody, 54.

Cody
gave the document to a friend, who posted it on an online forum largely
read by drilling opponents in the area, she said. She would not say who
gave her the bulletin, just that the person works for a private company
and was an intended recipient of it.

After it was posted online,
Powers sent Cody an e-mail saying that the bulletin was intended for
owners, operators and security personnel associated with the state's
"critical infrastructure and key resources."

He closed by saying,
"We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale
Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups
fomenting dissent against those same companies."