[Vision2020] Military Documents Hold Tips on Antiwar Activities

[Tom Hansen]

>From the November 20, 2006 edition of the New York Times -

"One entry on Mr. McPhearson's group from April 2005, for instance,
described a protest at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces at which
members handed out antimilitary literature and set up hundreds of white
crosses to symbolize soldiers killed in Iraq.

'Veterans for Peace is a peaceful organization,' the entry said, but added
there was potential that future protests 'could become violent.'"

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Military Documents Hold Tips on Antiwar Activities
By Eric Lichtblau and Mark Mazzetti

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - An antiterrorist database used by the Defense
Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations
included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches,
libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents
show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that "a church
service for peace" would be held in the New York City area the next month.
Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding "nonviolence
training" sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The Defense Department tightened its procedures earlier this year to ensure
that only material related to actual terrorist threats - and not peaceable
First Amendment activity - was included in the database.

The head of the office that runs the military database, which is known as
Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been
collected in the first place.

"I don't want it, we shouldn't have had it, not interested in it," said
Daniel J. Baur, the acting director of the counterintelligence field
activity unit, which runs the Talon program at the Defense Department. "I
don't want to deal with it."

Mr. Baur said that those operating the database had misinterpreted their
mandate and that what was intended as an antiterrorist database became, in
some respects, a catch-all for leads on possible disruptions and threats
against military installations in the United States, including protests
against the military presence in Iraq.

"I don't think the policy was as clear as it could have been," he said. Once
the problem was discovered, he said, "we fixed it," and more than 180
entries in the database related to war protests were deleted from the system
last year. Out of 13,000 entries in the database, many of them
uncorroborated leads on possible terrorist threats, several thousand others
were also purged because he said they had "no continuing relevance."

Amid public controversy over the database, leads from so-called neighborhood
watch programs and other tips about possible threats are down significantly
this year, Mr. Baur said. While the system had been tightened, he said he
was concerned that the public scrutiny had created "a huge chilling effect"
that could lead the military to miss legitimate terrorist threats.

Mr. Baur was responding to the latest batch of documents produced by the
military under a Freedom of Information Act request brought by the American
Civil Liberties Union and other groups. The A.C.L.U. planned to release the
documents publicly on Tuesday, and officials with the group said they would
push for Democrats, newly empowered in Congress, to hold formal hearings
about the Talon database.

Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. in New York, said the new documents
suggested that the military's efforts to glean intelligence on protesters
went beyond what was previously known. If intelligence officials "are going
to be doing investigations or monitoring in a place where people gather to
worship or to study, they should have a pretty clear indication that a crime
has occurred," Mr. Wizner added.

The leader of one antiwar group mentioned repeatedly in the latest military
documents provided to the A.C.L.U. said he was skeptical that the military
had ended its collection of material on war protests.

"I don't believe it," said the leader, Michael T. McPhearson, a former Army
captain who is the executive director of Veterans for Peace, a group in St.
Louis.

Mr. McPhearson said he found the references to his group in the Talon
database disappointing but not altogether surprising, and he said the group
continued to use public settings and the Internet to plan its protests.

"We don't have anything to hide," he said. "We're not doing anything
illegal."

The latest Talon documents showed that the military used a variety of
sources to collect intelligence leads on antiwar protests, including an
agent in the Department of Homeland Security, Google searches on the
Internet and e-mail messages forwarded by apparent informants with ties to
protest groups.

In most cases, entries in the Talon database acknowledged that there was no
specific evidence indicating the possibility of terrorism or disruptions at
the antiwar events, but they warned of the potential for violence.

One entry on Mr. McPhearson's group from April 2005, for instance, described
a protest at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces at which members
handed out antimilitary literature and set up hundreds of white crosses to
symbolize soldiers killed in Iraq.

"Veterans for Peace is a peaceful organization," the entry said, but added
there was potential that future protests "could become violent."

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"They hate us for our freedom." - George Bush

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those
values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be
ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion
of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation
worthwhile."

- Chief Justice Earl Warren (1967)