Declassifd Docs Show Military Ops Spied on WA Peace Groups

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I hope the government gets sued over this violation cause who knows where the military or our govt will continue to invade peace groups privacy. I gather they think everyone who protests against them are potential terrorists.

Democracy Now! Broadcast Exclusive: Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned *

Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a
Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was
actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob"
was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis.
The military's role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal
activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law
enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our
request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now, the base's Public
Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a
military operative. "This could be one of the key revelations of this era," said
Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist
organizations.

AMY GOODMAN: Right now, in figuring out how you go forward, I wanted to bring Larry Hildes back into this conversation. Information about one activist actually having a locator put in his car to figure out where he was going from one protest to another, can you tell us about Phil Chin, Larry?


LARRY HILDES: Yes, I can. And we’re actually suing about this in conjunction with the Seattle ACLU now. Mr. Chin was on his way to a demonstration at the Port of Aberdeen. It was going to be a peaceful march, not even any civil disobedience. His license plate was called in, and Washington state patrol sent an attempt-to-locate code—we didn’t know what an attempt-to-locate code was until this—saying, “There are three known anarchists in this car, in this green Ford Taurus. Apprehend them, and then let the Aberdeen police know.”


So he gets pulled over for supposedly going five miles an hour under the speed limit in heavy traffic and charged with DUI, despite the fact he hasn’t had anything to drink, hasn’t done any drugs, total—every single test comes up absolutely negative, except for the fact that he had trouble standing on one foot because he had an inner ear infection. The lab tests come up negative. And they still go forward with this, until we move to dismiss and ask what this attempt-to-locate code is. And we find out that it’s—we’ve got the tape, the dispatch tapes of them calling in this car with the three known anarchists—by the way, none of whom was Phil. But on the dashboard of the car that takes him away is a picture of Phil’s other car.

Peace

flywallyfly

Thanks for posing this. Just a drop in the bucket most likely.

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flywallyfly wrote:

Thanks for posing this. Just a drop in the bucket most likely.

Here's follow up to yesterday's show which in essence says this has been secretly going on for some time back to atleast the 70's.....Christopher Pyle, Whistleblower Who Sparked Church Hearings of 1970s, on Military Spying of Olympia Peace Activists

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to a follow-up on our exclusive broadcast yesterday. We spent the hour looking at a story out of Olympia, Washington, where antiwar activists exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard. Declassified documents obtained by the activists revealed that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis.


The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing US military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of US intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the ’70s.

Well, Christopher Pyle was a captain in Army intelligence in 1970, when he first disclosed the military’s widespread surveillance of civilian groups. The disclosure triggered fifty congressional inquiries within a month. Pyle went on to work for Senator Sam Ervin’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights and Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence, that led to the founding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Christopher Pyle joins us now from Chicopee, Massachusetts. He teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College, and he’s the author of four books. His most recent is called Getting Away with Torture.

AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, the Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, the one who put in the Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request] and found out his friend, who he thought was named “John Jacob,” was John Towery out of Fort Lewis base in Washington state.

Christopher Pyle, you’re now a professor. You were in military intelligence, a captain. When you started to uncover the military, what, almost forty years ago, investigating civilian groups, give us the history.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, I was teaching law at the US Army Intelligence School, and I was asked to teach a class on CONUS intelligence and spot reports. CONUS is the acronym for continental United States. So I delivered a lecture about the need for the use of the military to put down riots, which did not require identifying any persons. You simply go in, clear the streets, declare a curfew, quiet things down, restore order.

And an officer came up to me after class and said, “Captain Pyle, you don’t know much about this, do you?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, I can arrange a briefing.” And he did.

He took to me across the post to the headquarters of the US Army Intelligence Command’s CONUS Intelligence Section. There I discovered thirteen teletype machines reporting on every demonstration around the country of twenty people or more. The reports were coming from 1,500 Army plainclothes agents working out of 300 offices. They had it all covered.

They showed me a mug book of persons who could be rounded up in case of a civil disturbance. The military really believed that if you had a civil disturbance or a protest, it was very important to know the names of the people who might be protesting, because, you never know, they might be connected with a cadre of agitators and communists behind them.

Well, the same pattern is now developing under the Northern—the US Army’s Northern Command, which coordinates domestic intelligence work for the US Army and tries to prepare for what they call “military assistance to civil authorities.” It was out of this that the TALON reports came, but I also helped to disclose, reports on lawful, constitutionally protected antiwar activities. And so, history is repeating itself.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Perfectly law-abiding citizens.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re saying some protest happened somewhere, or a riot, and they can go to where Ralph David Abernathy is, in a wholly different place, and round him up.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Yes, today, particularly, with the power of computers and internet communications and monitoring the public airwaves, this network of seventy-two fusion centers, plus all of the subordinate groups that provide information and seek information, can follow you and me and just about anybody all around the country. They don’t have to put transponders in our cars. They could use E-ZPass on the highway. But in your case from the state of Washington, they apparently used a transponder in an antiwar protester’s automobile. This is the kind of surveillance society this country does not need.

Peace

Jeanwah

The gov't was spying on John Lennon during the Vietnam war and considered him potentially dangerous! The man who was all about spreading peace and love and because he advocated it so strongly, he was spied on to the point that he changed his mind about attending the Republican National Convention in 1972, due to informants letting him know he'd be in danger had he attended. Documents on Lennon were just release in the last year by the CIA.

That's why none of this article in the OP shocks me. Anyone perceived to be radically supporting anything other than the gov't's agenda, probably is being spied on.

Commy

Jeanwah wrote:

The gov't was spying on John Lennon during the Vietnam war and considered him potentially dangerous! The man who was all about spreading peace and love and because he advocated it so strongly, he was spied on to the point that he changed his mind about attending the Republican National Convention in 1972, due to informants letting him know he'd be in danger had he attended. Documents on Lennon were just release in the last year by the CIA.

That's why none of this article in the OP shocks me. Anyone perceived to be radically supporting anything other than the gov't's agenda, probably is being spied on.

yeah there was even a ban on john lennon's song Imagine immediately following 9/11 because it promoted peace. so clear channel or clear water or whatever company it is that owns over 1000 radio stations banned Imagine....that's how serious the authorities take liberal peace activists-and of course he ended up dead...they gotta get a war on somehow.

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Jeanwah wrote:

The gov't was spying on John Lennon during the Vietnam war and considered him potentially dangerous! The man who was all about spreading peace and love and because he advocated it so strongly, he was spied on to the point that he changed his mind about attending the Republican National Convention in 1972, due to informants letting him know he'd be in danger had he attended. Documents on Lennon were just release in the last year by the CIA.

That's why none of this article in the OP shocks me. Anyone perceived to be radically supporting anything other than the gov't's agenda, probably is being spied on.

*That's a fact Jack*: Back in 2005 Peace March here in DC to end the war in Iraq I attended with my daughter. We saw agents/govt people taking down license plates including ours. They knew for peace marches most of us parked over by Haines Point so they took down peoples plates for their own agenda. The sad thing was my daughter saw this and of course asked questions as to why they were doing such things.

The Democracy Now interviews asks those same questions as to why American citizens are spied upon solely because they want to voice a different opinion than those of the military and those who govern it.

Peace