“The Killing is Right and Proper”
By Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Blog, Nov. 29, 2009
Yesterday, Bay Area CODEPINK and I, started our caravan to Creech AFB in Nevada with a morning peace rally at Travis AFB in Fairfield, CA.
After we got there we were informed that we had to move off the base and were shown by MPs where we could protest. As good warriors for free speech and peace, we groused about it and we were moving forward to where we were supposed to go, when a very angry older man pulled up and started yelling at us to: “Don’t go, I want to counter protest you.” I told him, first of all, he shouldn’t be drinking so early in the morning, and secondly not to worry, that we were going anywhere, we were just moving about 100 yards away.
We decided to just stop and take a picture by the Travis AFB sign and then we were going to get back in our cars to caravan down to Lemoore NAS because it was extremely windy and we were running a little late anyway.
I was giving a little speech denouncing the drone-bombing program and the upcoming 50 percent troop escalation to Afghanistan, when the angry old man, now dressed in a military uniform, charged around the corner and got right into my bullhorn—I told him to get out of my face and he very violently slaps the bullhorn away from me.
Everything happened so quickly: I was so shocked that I was actually physically assaulted that I just turned away from him and that’s when my colleague, Suzanne immediately jumped to my aid and got between the man and me. He swore profusely and pushed her—and then a mini-melee ensued. The numerous MPs and POs that were there finally intervened after I asked them to stop the man from assaulting my friends. I touched no one even though I was within my rights to defend myself. The video clearly shows that the aggressor and the person who brought unreasoning anger and violence to the rally was Sgt. Phil Ward
After the mini-melee, a Fairfield Police Officer, told Suzanne and I that we couldn’t press charges against the man who physically assaulted us because it was a “he-said, she-said” situation, when at least one dozen law enforcement officers were standing around and witnessing the events AND if we did press charges, then Suzanne and I would also have to go to jail until things got sorted out! Complete bullshit.
After all that, when we were leaving, like we were asked to, I got about 2 feet out of the parking lot and I noticed one of the CODEPINK women was not in the van, so I pulled over to the side of the road to wait for her and as soon I we got rolling again, to add insult to injury, I WAS PULLED OVER and detained for about one-half hour and kept isolated in my car from the others until I was presented with a ticket for “impeding traffic!”
We dropped my daughter’s car off and I hopped in the van with a group of desperadoes, (with me being the third youngest, at 52, and six out of eleven in the van being over 70), and we headed down to Lemoore NAS and a National Guard post in Fresno. After another three- hour drive from Fresno, we landed at a cheap motel in Mojave California and I was shocked to open my email and see that I had received numerous emails attacking me for essentially “bullying” a poor, old military veteran.
I watched the news videos to confirm my recollection, which was 100 percent correct. I got to watch an interview that Phil Ward did after his attack on us and he says that the killing in the wars is “right and proper” and was exceedingly upset with Obama because he is only sending 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan when the generals asked for 40,000 more. During an interview with me, I am clearly shaken, but I say, “no matter how much violence they bring to us, we will bring them more peace.”
A thing to think about in this whole episode, is that at least one area newspaper posted that we were going to be at Travis AFB, and it only drew ONE person out to protest us who was unreasonably aggressive and almost comically out of control? Hmm—it makes one wonder what Phil Ward was up to. He charged out of his car at us from the second he got there and felt it was okay to be physically aggressive towards me and the other protestors and he did get away with it with impunity?
We will bring them more peace, but we will also bring them justice, too, as we are planning on pressing charges against Phil Ward as soon as we return from Creech AFB.
There’s scum that attack and more scum that protect those attackers.
There’s scum that take away our rights to peaceably assemble and to freedom of speech, and more scum that protect those who try to steal those rights.
We the People need to be the ones to vigorously defend our rights and defend peace on earth from everyone from Sgt. Phil Ward to President Obama who think that killing is “right and proper.”
Video of Phil Ward attacking our protest:
http://cbs13.com/video/?id=64185@kovr.dayport.com
Getting up early to stop at Edwards AFB and Nellis AFB on our way to Creech in Nevada---the other stops yesterday were uneventful and we just want to peaceably protest without any further assaults.
Showing posts with label US military bases. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US military bases. Show all posts
U.S. rushes production of 30,000 lbs bombs to use on Iran
Bunker buster carries goal of deterring Iran
By SCOTT CANON, The Kansas City Star, Oct. 22, 2009
Even as Washington emphasizes walking softly to pry Iran away from its nuclear ambitions, the Pentagon is speeding the manufacture of its own big stick.
This month, the Defense Department awarded $51.9 million to McDonnell Douglas to more quickly adapt a 30,000-pound bunker buster to the B-2 stealth bomber.
The GBU-57 bomb and the fleet of B-2s — stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base with occasional deployments to Guam and an outpost in the Indian Ocean — are widely seen as the likeliest U.S. military option for setting back Tehran’s hopes for building nuclear weapons.
“There is a certain amount of wise military planning in all this,” said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, “and a certain amount of saber-rattling.”
The weapon is behind schedule. In 2007, officials at the bomber base east of Kansas City estimated the bomb would be B-2-ready in 2008.
Budgetary hiccups pushed the delivery date to mid-2011.
Now the testing of the bomb and the delicate job of outfitting it for any of the $2.2 billion planes is, as one Pentagon spokesman said, “back on track.” It should now be ready, said Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell, “in the coming months.”
About 20 of the bombs are being made.
“This has been a capability that we have long believed was missing from our — our quiver, our arsenal, and we wanted to make sure we filled in that gap,” Morrell said at a press briefing this month. “I don’t think anybody should read anything into it beyond what it is. And I don’t think anybody can divine potential targets or anything of that nature.”
The Iranians have many uranium-enriching centrifuges at an underground location at Natanz. But on a visit to the United Nations last month, President Barack Obama announced the Iranians were building another secret nuclear facility near the holy city of Qum, this one deep in a mountain. Some speculate that the mountain facility is in response to a possible bunker buster.
The disclosure of the new facility may have put the Tehran leadership on defensive. A tentative deal cut this week calls for Iran to ship about three-fourths of its known nuclear fuel stockpile to Russia. Once there, it would be converted into metal fuel rods practical for a nuclear power plant, but not for an atomic warhead.
But the pact is shaky, and like less-successful efforts to stymie North Korea’s nuclear program, short-term advances often see reverses.
That’s where the biggest-yet bunker buster comes in. By the reckoning of military analysts, the bomb is conventional — by which they mean it does not carry a nuclear warhead. But it is unconventionally large.
The GBU-57 has the weight of about two elephants, stretches 20 feet and carries more than 5,300 pounds of explosive. Two will fit in the belly of a B-2.
Previously, the biggest non-nuke in the U.S. arsenal was the MOAB, massive ordnance air blast, or “Mother of All Bombs.” It explodes above its target.
Four tons heavier, the GBU-57 is called a MOP, massive ordnance penetrator.
Dropping such a behemoth is complicated.
“When you let go, all of a sudden the plane is 10 percent lighter than it was a second ago,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “Planes have a tendency to pitch up when that happens.”
Some published reports suggest the new bomb can burrow through 200 feet of reinforced concrete before detonating, but many analysts are skeptical. The physics of bunker busting are tricky, and even nuclear bombs can’t punch into the world’s most hardened targets.
Still, the bomb might be enough, if its shock can disturb the spinning centrifuges and make the sensitive devices wobble into self-destruction.
“Once you shake it up, it becomes like the inside of an engine that has thrown a rod. It tears itself apart,” said Owen Cote, a security analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But that’s not your only issue.”
First, he said, Obama would have to consider if U.S. intelligence is good enough to find the right targets and whether a strike would do enough damage to the Iranian program.
Then the White House would have to calculate the backlash. Iran would have the options of punishing U.S. troops in countries on either side of it, send missiles toward Tel Aviv, Israel, or sink tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
“If you can delay their nuclear program, that’s good. Time is your friend,” Cote said. “But you have to think about what (the Iranians) will do the day after you bomb them.”
*****************
Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
Is the U.S. Stepping Up Preparations for a Possible Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities?
By JONATHAN KARL, ABC News, Oct. 6, 2009
Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?
The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.
First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.
Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.
Click here to see a copy of the Pentagon's request, provided to ABC News.
The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.
'Urgent Operational Need'
The notification was tucked inside a 93-page "reprogramming" request that included a couple hundred other more mundane items.
Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).
Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.
This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.
By SCOTT CANON, The Kansas City Star, Oct. 22, 2009
Even as Washington emphasizes walking softly to pry Iran away from its nuclear ambitions, the Pentagon is speeding the manufacture of its own big stick.
This month, the Defense Department awarded $51.9 million to McDonnell Douglas to more quickly adapt a 30,000-pound bunker buster to the B-2 stealth bomber.
The GBU-57 bomb and the fleet of B-2s — stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base with occasional deployments to Guam and an outpost in the Indian Ocean — are widely seen as the likeliest U.S. military option for setting back Tehran’s hopes for building nuclear weapons.
“There is a certain amount of wise military planning in all this,” said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, “and a certain amount of saber-rattling.”
The weapon is behind schedule. In 2007, officials at the bomber base east of Kansas City estimated the bomb would be B-2-ready in 2008.
Budgetary hiccups pushed the delivery date to mid-2011.
Now the testing of the bomb and the delicate job of outfitting it for any of the $2.2 billion planes is, as one Pentagon spokesman said, “back on track.” It should now be ready, said Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell, “in the coming months.”
About 20 of the bombs are being made.
“This has been a capability that we have long believed was missing from our — our quiver, our arsenal, and we wanted to make sure we filled in that gap,” Morrell said at a press briefing this month. “I don’t think anybody should read anything into it beyond what it is. And I don’t think anybody can divine potential targets or anything of that nature.”
The Iranians have many uranium-enriching centrifuges at an underground location at Natanz. But on a visit to the United Nations last month, President Barack Obama announced the Iranians were building another secret nuclear facility near the holy city of Qum, this one deep in a mountain. Some speculate that the mountain facility is in response to a possible bunker buster.
The disclosure of the new facility may have put the Tehran leadership on defensive. A tentative deal cut this week calls for Iran to ship about three-fourths of its known nuclear fuel stockpile to Russia. Once there, it would be converted into metal fuel rods practical for a nuclear power plant, but not for an atomic warhead.
But the pact is shaky, and like less-successful efforts to stymie North Korea’s nuclear program, short-term advances often see reverses.
That’s where the biggest-yet bunker buster comes in. By the reckoning of military analysts, the bomb is conventional — by which they mean it does not carry a nuclear warhead. But it is unconventionally large.
The GBU-57 has the weight of about two elephants, stretches 20 feet and carries more than 5,300 pounds of explosive. Two will fit in the belly of a B-2.
Previously, the biggest non-nuke in the U.S. arsenal was the MOAB, massive ordnance air blast, or “Mother of All Bombs.” It explodes above its target.
Four tons heavier, the GBU-57 is called a MOP, massive ordnance penetrator.
Dropping such a behemoth is complicated.
“When you let go, all of a sudden the plane is 10 percent lighter than it was a second ago,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “Planes have a tendency to pitch up when that happens.”
Some published reports suggest the new bomb can burrow through 200 feet of reinforced concrete before detonating, but many analysts are skeptical. The physics of bunker busting are tricky, and even nuclear bombs can’t punch into the world’s most hardened targets.
Still, the bomb might be enough, if its shock can disturb the spinning centrifuges and make the sensitive devices wobble into self-destruction.
“Once you shake it up, it becomes like the inside of an engine that has thrown a rod. It tears itself apart,” said Owen Cote, a security analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But that’s not your only issue.”
First, he said, Obama would have to consider if U.S. intelligence is good enough to find the right targets and whether a strike would do enough damage to the Iranian program.
Then the White House would have to calculate the backlash. Iran would have the options of punishing U.S. troops in countries on either side of it, send missiles toward Tel Aviv, Israel, or sink tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
“If you can delay their nuclear program, that’s good. Time is your friend,” Cote said. “But you have to think about what (the Iranians) will do the day after you bomb them.”
*****************
Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
Is the U.S. Stepping Up Preparations for a Possible Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities?
By JONATHAN KARL, ABC News, Oct. 6, 2009
Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?
The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.
First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.
Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.
Click here to see a copy of the Pentagon's request, provided to ABC News.
The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.
'Urgent Operational Need'
The notification was tucked inside a 93-page "reprogramming" request that included a couple hundred other more mundane items.
Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).
Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.
This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.
Colombia Peace News & Action Alert: Say No To U.S. Military Bases in Colombia
Action Alert: Colombia Military Bases, or South American Peace?
Tell Secretary Clinton you don't want military bases in Colombia!
The plan to increase the U.S. military's presence on Colombian bases is the wrong plan, and it is provoking intense opposition in Colombia and the rest of South America. The plan would prolong the failed drug war, expand the war within Colombia that has caused such suffering, destabilize already tense regional relations, create incentives for an arms race, and violate Colombian sovereignty through immunity for U.S. soldiers' crimes. It would also violate the Colombian constitution, which prohibits the presence of foreign soldiers except in transit (and even then only if approved by the Colombian senate).
Opposition in Latin America has surprised the Colombian and U.S. governments, but so far they appear determined to forward with the deal. Colombian officials announced Friday (August 14) they had reached agreement on the bases in Washington, and only need to work out technical issues in the weeks ahead.
Yet the two governments did not sign an accord, and disclosed no information about what was agreed. What's clear is that the U.S. and Colombian governments want to stem the broad opposition that has erupted throughout the hemisphere, and projecting the idea that the deal is sealed says that opposition is futile.
But the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) also learned that the negotiations "encountered some difficulties" on at least five issues, even before South American opposition forced President Uribe to make a seven-nation tour to seek support for the plan.
We need to let Secretary of State Clinton know that this is not the way to address conflicts in the Andean nations or to help our compatriots who suffer from addiction.
Send a message to Hillary Clinton today.
Religious and Grassroots Leaders Urge Suspension of Base Talks
Bases deal "presents enormous dangers for entire hemisphere"
Over 100 religious, national, community organizations and leaders and academics called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton August 13 to "suspend negotiations for expanded U.S. military access or operations in Colombia," a plan that has generated a swell of protest among Latin American countries, including Colombia.
"It is rational for regional leaders to see the installation of several U.S. military sites in Colombia as a potential threat to their security," the groups said, because of U.S. support for trans-border attacks from Colombia, reported violations of the expiring base agreement with Ecuador, a Pentagon statement that it seeks access for "contingency operations" in the region, and the painful history of U.S. military intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean.
"To broaden relationships with South America and value respect for human rights, the United States should not create a fortress in Colombia in concert with the region's worst rights violators, the Colombian military," the letter said.
Signatories included 20 national religious organizations and leaders and 32 U.S. peace and human rights groups, as well as community organizations, academics, and international NGOs. Opposition has come from other quarters in the United States also. The Washington Office on Latin America, Mingas FTA, and the Campaign for Peace and Development, among others, have spoken out against the base deal.
Many South American presidents also have expressed opposition to the increased U.S. military presence in Colombia. Brazilian President Lula da Silva urged President Obama to join presidents from the South American Union to discuss the issue later this month in Buenos Aires, and Venezuela President Hugo Chavez said that "the winds of war are blowing" because of the plan for U.S. troops to operate in seven Colombian bases.
Background documents on the military base negotiations between the United States and Colombia.
Obama's Choice: Documents Show U.S. Seeks Colombian Bases for Training & Operations
By John Lindsay-Poland
Published by Americas Program, Center for International Policy, 13 August 2009
President Obama was forced to address the growing clamor in South America in opposition to plans for U.S. military use of at least seven bases in Colombia. The base agreement proposes to carry out regional operations with a wide and ambiguous mandate and has raised concerns among governments throughout the region. "We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia," Obama said on August 7.
But the South American presidents who met in Quito on August 10 weren't buying it. They agreed to meet again later this month to discuss the bases in Colombia. Despite a seven-nation tour by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe the previous week, only Peru openly supports the proposal. President Lula da Silva of Brazil-the continent's superpower-called for President Obama to attend the meeting, and several Latin American presidents and Colombian leaders echoed the call. Obama needs to "explain in depth U.S. policy for the region," Lula said.
 |
| Southern Command Chief Douglas Fraser and Colombian armed forces chief Freddy Padilla meet on August 4. (Source: Daylife.com.) |
His declaration came following an explosive exposé of base negotiations between the Pentagon and the State Department, and the Colombian government in the Colombian weekly Cambio. The report generated broad discontent in Colombia and the region. The article noted that the plan would include "filling the gaps left by the eventual cutting of [military] aid in Plan Colombia," according to sources cited in Washington and Bogotá.
Whether the bases are "U.S." in name matters little in practice. The proposal has always been for U.S. military use of national bases in Colombia, which is how the United States works at military bases in Honduras, Ecuador, and many other countries in the world. The Pentagon does not acknowledge having "U.S. bases" in Iraq, for example. In Ecuador, the U.S. government denied it had any military base, though now supporters of the military deal with Colombia claim the U.S. operations in Manta, Ecuador were "truly a gringo presence." Obama's announcement doesn't change the situation that has bothered so many Latin Americans and U.S. citizens who hoped for something better from Obama's government.
The issue is really the missions of U.S. forces at those bases and the message they send to Colombians and others in the region that the United States will respond militarily to every problem, from poverty to bilateral tensions. The State Department says the bases are to address narcotics trafficking and "should be viewed as nothing more than that." But the most recent military budget document and the Colombian government define the purposes much more broadly. The Pentagon seeks sites for "contingency operations, logistics, and training," and plans to deploy C-17 cargo aircraft-not used for counter-narcotics-at Palanquero air base in Colombia.
In fact, the facilities under negotiation appear to be aimed at replacing the former School of the Americas and other U.S. military training sites for Latin American armies. In a July 28 written response to Colombian senators, Interior Minister Fabio Valencia said that the agreement seeks to "deepen cooperation in areas such as: interoperability, joint procedures, logistics and equipment, training and instruction, strengthening monitoring and reconnaissance capacity, combined exercises, and especially exchange of intelligence information."
There will be an attempt to "expand training offered to other countries in the region through instruction of helicopter pilots and in human rights and international humanitarian law." Colombia is already imparting military training to jungle commandos and naval forces of other countries, Valencia says, and "plans to continue doing so with low-cost training of the same quality as that offered by countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom."
To read the rest of "Obama's Choice," click here.
Letter from the Field: "Yanquis Fuera!"
Bogotanians Protest U.S. military bases
By Sofia Larsson
It is easy to ignore things that don't affect us directly. It is easy to change TV channels if they show a war we don't want to see and it is more relaxing to listen to a good music channel on the radio than listen to a program informing us about injustices that make us uncomfortable. And even if we do listen and have opinions, most of us will not try to make the broader public listen to them.
On July 24, some 300 people gathered at the Bolivar Plaza in Colombia's capital city to protest the possible establishment of at least five U.S. military bases on Colombian territory. While negotiations between the U.S. and Colombian governments are taking place regarding the matter, political parties, NGOs, lawyer collectives, and other social movements in Colombia are working hard to inform the public about the risks that such an agreement would create -- risks they argue that many Colombians don't know about.
One of the protesters, a male student in his twenties, takes a break from the unison shouting of "Yankees, go home!" and "Multinationals out of the country!"
"After years of the war on drugs and enormous amounts of military aid from the U.S., there are still no real results," he tells me. "The drug trafficking is still big business in Colombia, so why do some people in this country want the war to continue? Why does the U.S. want the war to continue? Report after report shows that the previous military actions have not worked! As much as the military bases is an attempt to fight the drugs, it is a attempt to control this continent and the leftist governments of our neighboring countries. If this deal goes through, Colombia will end up being the Israel of Latin America!"
Four days later another protest against the American military bases takes place in the center of Bogotá. Many people stop by to look at the crowd that sings and jumps in order to convey their message to the onlookers.
One of the passersby, a middle-aged woman coming out from an office building, receives a flyer from one of the protesters. She reads it, starts shaking her head and asks me as I stand beside her: "Don't they understand that they are asking for the old Colombia back? Don't they understand that we need help to fight the guerrillas?" I don't have time to answer her as some of the protesters have heard what she said and one of them starts talking loudly in her direction: "The U.S. military have tried to help us solve the problem of drug dealing with war for many years already, without results! Why do you want our country to be a slave under the U.S. government? Why do you want to sell our country and worsen our country's relations with the rest of the continent even more? Why do you want to displace more people?" The woman shakes her head in response, says she is late for a meeting and starts walking away.
The protester who had been talking to the woman looks at me and says, "Sometimes people just don't seem to understand that there is more to Colombia than Bogotá. They don't see the war here anymore, so they think that the army and the gringos got rid of most of it, but that's not true."
I think to myself that he is right. I have worked in the field, where war and coca cultivation are very much present and cause immense problems and fear among the people living there. But that seems very far away when we're standing in the middle of a city where another kind of every-day life is taking place. So, regardless of whether one agrees or not with the message that the jumping loud crowd wants the rest of us to engage in, they remind us of problems we know exist, but can choose to ignore. They remind us of that this country needs us to stay informed and share our opinions, thoughts, and concerns.
British MPs Urge End to U.K. Military Aid
The Western hemisphere, and Colombia in particular, has recently come back into focus in British politics, culminating with a resolution in the House of Commons calling for an end to all British military aid to Colombia.
Over recent months, Britain's Foreign Office has appointed a new minister with responsibility for Latin America, Gillian Merron, and a new ambassador to Bogotá, John Dew. The changes in personnel have prompted several calls to transform British foreign policy towards Colombia, coinciding with the fallout from the so-called "false positives" scandal, whereby the Colombian army is suspected of killing over 1,000 civilians and dressing them up as guerrilla fighters killed in combat. The special envoy for the United Nations has called the practice "cold-blooded and premeditated murder" carried out in a "systematic" fashion.
These various currents converged at the end of March, when Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced the slashing of military aid to Colombia. In a letter to Liberal Democrat peer Lord Eric Avebury, Under-Secretary Merron said "our bilateral UK military project on human rights has ceased." The official British stance had previously been that military aid was destined exclusively for human rights training and assistance with de-mining. British-based NGOs such as Justice for Colombia and ABColombia had already cast doubt on this assertion. It appears that cabinet ministers now share their concerns.
Nonetheless, questions remain about the new British position. The principal reservation centres on the secretive nature of the assistance that London provides to support the "war on drugs," which has not ceased. The government will not even release the financial figures in question, such is the level of sensitivity surrounding the program. However, investigations carried out by Justice for Colombia concluded that some of the funds get mixed up in "counterinsurgency" efforts of the kind leading to the false positives.
There is pressure from within Westminster, too, to further revamp the position. A parliamentary Early Day Motion - used by backbench and opposition members of parliament (MPs) to influence and shape policy and legislation -- "calls on the Government to freeze UK military assistance to Colombia until the Colombian regime fully implements the repeated human rights recommendations made by the UN." This has attracted a large number of signatures from all sides of the House of Commons (242 at the time of writing), amounting to over one-third of all MPs.
It remains to be seen whether or not this continuing pressure will manifest itself in further changes to British foreign policy towards Colombia. It is conceivable, given the "ripe moment" for change that appears to have presented itself. The substantial further alterations called for also point the way for U.S. policymakers, since U.S. contributions to the Colombian military dwarf those of any other country, including Britain.
Protests in Colombia Increase Despite Oppression of Dissent
President Álvaro Uribe's official approval ratings may be high, but what the media tends not to report are the equally high numbers of social protests in Colombia, which undermine the claims of unwavering approval for Uribe. According to a report by the Center for Investigation and Popular Education (CINEP), social mobilization has increased during Uribe's mandate, in 2007 reaching the highest levels since 1975, amounting to an average of two protests a day.
Much of the social unrest is targeted at the president himself. CINEP's research, based upon an extensive database it has maintained since 1975, found that the national government has been the target of the majority of recent protests. The second most common target has been armed groups - military, paramilitary, and/or guerrilla - which CINEP interprets largely as protests against the failure of the government to solve the problem of the armed conflict.
Not only have numbers risen, but the motives for protests have changed in recent years. In departments (geographic regions) like Antioquia, which has one of the highest levels of social unrest in the country, the cause of the protests has changed in recent years from labor unrest to issues of human rights, justice, and reparations. Along those lines, recent years have seen a rise in protests by nontraditional social actors, like indigenous communities, afrocolombians, women, and the LGBT community. The Indigenous and Popular Minga in October of last year, a nationwide mobilization of hundreds of thousands of participants from the south department of Cauca all the way to Bogota, exemplifies the strength of such actors.
These increases are exciting, impressive, and inspiring given the Uribe administration's constant campaign to smear any opposition to his policies with the accusation of collaboration with the FARC, thus making protestors targets of retaliatory violence and unfounded legal persecution. Despite such oppression, these Colombians are bravely demanding a more just, secure, and democratic Colombia.
News Briefs
Anti-Mili
By Peter Cousins
Colombianos, las armas os han dado la independencia, las leyes os darán la libertad.
"Colombians, arms have given you independence, laws will give you freedom."
(Francisco de Paula Santander)
On the front of the Supreme Court of Justice in Bogotá's Boliva Plaza, are carved these words of General Santander, a hero of the independence era and later President of Gran Colombia. Colombia celebrates its "Proclamation of Independence" on July 20 each year. As in most countries, this sort of occasion turns into a day for the "great and the good" of State -- president, mayors, generals, flags -- to take center stage, with the added factor that, last month, the country commenced its take-off towards the bicentenary of the "Proclamation of Independence" in 2010. But in the midst of all this, Santander´s words transcend the years and have for a Colombia that is 199 years young a certain resonance, whose truth is in danger of being eclipsed. What do I mean by this? The historical and contemporary contexts will help us arrive at some sort of understanding.
To read the rest of Peter's essay, click here.
"Witness" paid to testify against Peace Community
by Moira Birss
The demobilized paramilitary chief known as "HH" testified that he gave money to Colombian army Colonel Nestor Duque to in order to bribe demobilized guerrillas into claiming that the FARC was responsible for the February 2005 massacre in which eight members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó were brutally murdered.
Read Moira Birss' blog post.
World Summit for Peace: Bogotá, Colombia-October 1-4, 2009
Pacifists Without Borders, with support from the Bogotá mayor's office, will trail blaze the pathway towards the World Summit for Peace, which will occur in the city of Bogotá, October 1-4, 2009. This citizen-led and -promoted initiative is a collective effort towards global peace and against violence, militarization, and injustice. The objective is to collectively construct a favorable setting for reflection, to exchange ideas and dialogue about peace as a social construction, derived from a system based on the principles of social justice and peaceful coexistence.
The World Summit for Peace will have two dimensions:
- The global dimension: It is crucial to lead a cultural process from Bogotá, Colombia and the Andean Region which is comprised of basic values such as nonviolence and pacifism. Bogotá will be converted into a stage from which a worldwide peace process will be constructed, promoted, and led within a global context. Moreover, the global dimension to the Summit will further permit the world community to be informed about the particular dimensions of the Colombian armed conflict.
- The local dimension: this proposed process looks to foster spaces for dialogue about the Colombian conflict and to develop strategies with the help from all international participants in order to search for a solution to the Colombian armed conflict. Furthermore, we look to provoke a collective reflection through an ample process of participation that will permit us to create the atmosphere for a solution and a post-conflict strategy.
During the summit, Bogotá will be the arena for artistic expressions. A host of such artistic expressions will permeate throughout the city, including concerts, dance presentations, theatrical performances, painting exhibitions, and alternative films from all reaches of the world. You too are invited to inundate the city with art in the name of the Global Peace!
The summit will produce five strategic documents. Three of them will be elaborated by well-known internationally recognized figures. These documents will be presented in the summit by their authors and they will be discussed in three large public assemblies. The three documents will address the central themes: justice, culture, and democracy, and their relationship to peace. We will make the effort to establish these documents as the basis for dialogue in the preliminary stages of the summit.
The fourth document is what we call the Bogotá Manifesto 2009. This will be a proposition that will emerge from the summit and will be elaborated by the promoting group and the facilitators of the event. The first draft of the manifesto will be presented and discussed through a permanent virtual online forum for a period of six months. Furthermore, the World Summit for Peace will project a strategy for the implementation of the Bogotá Manifesto as a post-summit strategy.
The fifth document will be the Pathway to Peace in Colombia: Conflict and Post-Conflict. This will be a collectively elaborated project with the wide participation of international and national participants. It will be signed by all participants as the first stage of a work in progress in order to achieve a political solution to the Colombian conflict.
There is no charge for participation in the Summit in Bogotá. To register, send an e-mail to: cumbredepaz@
The organizers want curiosity for the Summit to increase as the main event draws closer and likewise aspire to generate interest among the worldwide citizenry and institutions. Moreover, they hope to unite global support and commitment for this global cause. We hope to create strong alliances with the international media in order to promote the city's image as a city committed to Peace in Colombia and in the World.
World Peace Conference • www.pacifistassinfronteras.org • 011(571)368-1999
Please note new office address for FOR Task Force on Latin America:
Fellowship of Reconciliation • P.O. Box 72492, Oakland CA 94612 • Tel: 510-763-1403 Fax: 510-763-1409 • Web: http://www.forcolombia.org
Marines Ban Twitter, MySpace, Facebook
By Noah Shachtman, Wired.com, Aug. 3, 2009
The U.S. Marine Corps has banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks, effective immediately.
“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday. “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”
The Marines’ ban will last a year. It was drawn up in response to a late July warning from U.S. Strategic Command, which told the rest of the military it was considering a Defense Department-wide ban on the Web 2.0 sites, due to network security concerns. Scams, worms, and Trojans often spread unchecked throughout social media sites, passed along from one online friend to the next. “The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users,” a Stratcom source told Danger Room.
Yet many within the Pentagon’s highest ranks find value in the Web 2.0 tools. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The Department of Defense is getting ready to unveil a new home page, packed with social media tools. The Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook. Top generals now blog from the battlefield.
“OPSEC is paramount. We will have procedures in place to deal with that,” Price Floyd, the Pentagon’s newly-appointed social media czar, told Danger Room. “What we can’t do is let security concerns trump doing business. We have to do business… We need to be everywhere men and women in uniform are and the public is. If that’s MySpace and YouTube, that’s where we need to be, too.”
The Marines say they will issue waivers to the Web 2.0 blockade, if a “mission critical need” can be proven. And they will continue to allow access to the military’s internal “SNS-like services.” But for most members of the Corps, access to the real, public social networks is now shut off for the next year.
The U.S. Marine Corps has banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks, effective immediately.
“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday. “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”
The Marines’ ban will last a year. It was drawn up in response to a late July warning from U.S. Strategic Command, which told the rest of the military it was considering a Defense Department-wide ban on the Web 2.0 sites, due to network security concerns. Scams, worms, and Trojans often spread unchecked throughout social media sites, passed along from one online friend to the next. “The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users,” a Stratcom source told Danger Room.
Yet many within the Pentagon’s highest ranks find value in the Web 2.0 tools. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The Department of Defense is getting ready to unveil a new home page, packed with social media tools. The Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook. Top generals now blog from the battlefield.
“OPSEC is paramount. We will have procedures in place to deal with that,” Price Floyd, the Pentagon’s newly-appointed social media czar, told Danger Room. “What we can’t do is let security concerns trump doing business. We have to do business… We need to be everywhere men and women in uniform are and the public is. If that’s MySpace and YouTube, that’s where we need to be, too.”
The Marines say they will issue waivers to the Web 2.0 blockade, if a “mission critical need” can be proven. And they will continue to allow access to the military’s internal “SNS-like services.” But for most members of the Corps, access to the real, public social networks is now shut off for the next year.
Major Repression In Honduras; Curfew Still In Place After One Month
By Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, July 30, 2009
Protests in the capital of Honduras today, led by the Anti-Coup Resistance Front, were brutally repressed by the police and the army under control of the coup regime. Dozens of protesters were injured by the coup forces, several left unconscious by the repression and some remain hospitalized in critical condition.
The Honduran people have been resisting the dictatorial regime that took over last June 28 - over one month ago - which ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from power. The regime installed a national curfew in order to control protests and social movements, and impose a state of terror in the country in order to consolidate the illegal regime, which remains in place today. Throughout most of the country, the curfew is in effect throughout the night, except in the border areas nearing Nicaragua, which have been plagued with a curfew from 6pm through 6am during the past week. Last week, the curfew was 24-hours in these areas, causing millions of dollars in losses in commerce in these regions, which serve as principal routes of transit for business between Nicaragua and Honduras.
US Ambassador to Honduras, Cuban-American Hugo Llorens, travelled to Nicaragua today to meet with President Zelaya in Managua, in order to "negotiate" a solution to the crisis. Llorens reiterated Washington's "recognition" of President Zelaya as the legitimate president of Honduras, yet refused to take further steps to isolate and pressure the coup regime. Washington remains the only country in the regime that has not recognized a coup having taken place in Honduras and that has not suspended diplomatic relations. The United States is also the principal source of economic support to Honduras -both through commerce as well as aid - and none of that has been suspended. Furthermore, Washington continues to maintain its immense military presence in Honduras on the Soto Cano base, engaging in military operations and missions together with the Honduran armed forces, today under control of the coup regime.
*****************
WASHINGTON ON MAJOR OFFENSIVE IN LATIN AMERICA
By Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, July 30, 2009
Will post later today on this subject - I'm putting together some major figures ($$$) that evidence a heightened focus of US-funding - defense and diplomacy/democracy promotion - in Latin America for 2010.....
stay tuned.
PS: President Zelaya still remains at the Nicaraguan border while the coup regime banks on the passage of time allowing for their complete consolidation - at least enough to make it to the November elections. Zelaya's wife and family still remain detained by the regime's police and army forces, who had previously attempted to deceive them into crossing the border and then face expatriation - in other words, the coup regime was trying to get them out of the country and not allow them back in. Luckily, Zelaya's family realized the plan before it was fully executed, and so they remain on the other side of the border in Honduras.
The Spanish government has fully condemned the coup regime and called for the European Union to prohibit all coup regime representatives from travel to Europe.
Meanwhile, the visas "revoked" by the US State Department that belonged to 4 Hondurans were just diplomatic visas. This is standard procedure considering the individuals no longer work for the Zelaya government, which technically is the only Honduran government accredited with the State Department. Tourist visas for these individuals, however, have not been revoked, which means they are still free to travel to the US. No ban has been placed on members of the coup regime to prohibit entry to the US. That is the key. The mere revocation of diplomatic visas is by no means a sign of US pressure on the coup regime. It was minimal effort to comply with the law.
Protests in the capital of Honduras today, led by the Anti-Coup Resistance Front, were brutally repressed by the police and the army under control of the coup regime. Dozens of protesters were injured by the coup forces, several left unconscious by the repression and some remain hospitalized in critical condition.
The Honduran people have been resisting the dictatorial regime that took over last June 28 - over one month ago - which ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from power. The regime installed a national curfew in order to control protests and social movements, and impose a state of terror in the country in order to consolidate the illegal regime, which remains in place today. Throughout most of the country, the curfew is in effect throughout the night, except in the border areas nearing Nicaragua, which have been plagued with a curfew from 6pm through 6am during the past week. Last week, the curfew was 24-hours in these areas, causing millions of dollars in losses in commerce in these regions, which serve as principal routes of transit for business between Nicaragua and Honduras.
US Ambassador to Honduras, Cuban-American Hugo Llorens, travelled to Nicaragua today to meet with President Zelaya in Managua, in order to "negotiate" a solution to the crisis. Llorens reiterated Washington's "recognition" of President Zelaya as the legitimate president of Honduras, yet refused to take further steps to isolate and pressure the coup regime. Washington remains the only country in the regime that has not recognized a coup having taken place in Honduras and that has not suspended diplomatic relations. The United States is also the principal source of economic support to Honduras -both through commerce as well as aid - and none of that has been suspended. Furthermore, Washington continues to maintain its immense military presence in Honduras on the Soto Cano base, engaging in military operations and missions together with the Honduran armed forces, today under control of the coup regime.
*****************
WASHINGTON ON MAJOR OFFENSIVE IN LATIN AMERICA
By Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, July 30, 2009
Will post later today on this subject - I'm putting together some major figures ($$$) that evidence a heightened focus of US-funding - defense and diplomacy/democracy promotion - in Latin America for 2010.....
stay tuned.
PS: President Zelaya still remains at the Nicaraguan border while the coup regime banks on the passage of time allowing for their complete consolidation - at least enough to make it to the November elections. Zelaya's wife and family still remain detained by the regime's police and army forces, who had previously attempted to deceive them into crossing the border and then face expatriation - in other words, the coup regime was trying to get them out of the country and not allow them back in. Luckily, Zelaya's family realized the plan before it was fully executed, and so they remain on the other side of the border in Honduras.
The Spanish government has fully condemned the coup regime and called for the European Union to prohibit all coup regime representatives from travel to Europe.
Meanwhile, the visas "revoked" by the US State Department that belonged to 4 Hondurans were just diplomatic visas. This is standard procedure considering the individuals no longer work for the Zelaya government, which technically is the only Honduran government accredited with the State Department. Tourist visas for these individuals, however, have not been revoked, which means they are still free to travel to the US. No ban has been placed on members of the coup regime to prohibit entry to the US. That is the key. The mere revocation of diplomatic visas is by no means a sign of US pressure on the coup regime. It was minimal effort to comply with the law.
Democracy Now!: Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned
Democracy Now! July 28 2009
click here to watch video
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.
Guests:
Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia-based activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He submitted the Freedom of Information Act request that revealed his friend and fellow activist “John Jacob” was actually military spy John Towery.
Drew Hendricks, Olympia-based activist with Port Militarization Resistance. Also worked with John Towery, aka “John Jacob,” on activist causes before Towery’s exposure as a military spy.
Mike German, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He was an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004.
Larry Hildes, Bellingham-based attorney and National Lawyers Guild member who has represented Washington state-based activists with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in criminal and civil cases.
Eileen Clancy, Founding member of I-Witness Video who has documented government surveillance of activist groups for years. Her group was targeted by police raids last summer during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
********************
ANJALI KAMAT: We begin with a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. Peace activists in Washington state have revealed an informant posing as an anarchist has spied on them while working under the US military. The activists are members of the group Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, which protests military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before his true identity was revealed, the informant was known as “John Jacob,” an active member of antiwar groups in the towns of Olympia and Tacoma. But using documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], the activists learned that “John Jacob” is in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at the nearby Fort Lewis military base.
The activists claim Towery has admitted to them he shared information with an intelligence network that stretches from local and state police to several federal agencies, to the US military. They also say he confirmed the existence of other government spies but wouldn’t reveal their identity.
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.
AMY GOODMAN: 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. The statement says, quote, “John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media.” Fort Lewis also says it’s launched an internal inquiry. We invited John Towery on the broadcast, but he didn’t respond to our interview request.
In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we’re now joined in Seattle by the two activists who exposed John Towery as a military informant. Brendan Maslauskas Dunn counted John Towery, or “John Jacob,” as a close friend. But he discovered Towery’s identity after obtaining government documents under a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request]. Brendan is an Olympia-based activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. We’re also joined in Seattle by Drew Hendricks. He is an Olympia activist with Port Militarization Resistance who worked closely with John Towery, aka “John Jacob." This is their first broadcast interview since coming forward with their story.
Brendan, let’s begin with you. Just lay out how you found out about this military spy.
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, thanks for having us, Amy.
I actually did a public records request through the city of Olympia several months ago on behalf of the union I’m in, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the records request I did, I had asked for any documents or emails, etc., that the city had, especially in discussions or any kind of communications between the Olympia police and the military in the city generally, anything on anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, Students for a Democratic Society or the Industrial Workers of the World. I got back hundreds of documents from the city.
One of the documents was an email that was sent between personnel in the military, and the email address that was attached to this email was of John J. Towery. We didn’t know who that was, but several people did a lot of research to find out who that was, and they identified that person as being John Jacob.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your first reaction? Who was John Jacob to you?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He was—he said he was an anarchist. I met him over two years ago through community organizing and antiwar organizing I was involved with in Tacoma and Olympia with other anarchists and other activists.
And he was really interested in Students for a Democratic Society. He wanted to start a chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society, which is connected to SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance, with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was—you know, knew a lot of people involved with that organization.
But he was a friend of mine. We hung out. We gave workshops together on grassroots direct democracy and anarchist struggle. I mean, he was a friend. A lot of people really, really did like him. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me this week when all of this was determined.
ANJALI KAMAT: And, Brendan, what did John Towery, who you used to know as “John Jacob,” say to you when you confronted him?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, after it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn’t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, “John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?” And he told me; he said, “Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.” So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
He also—one other thing he spoke of—I don’t know if this is true. I mean, honestly, I don’t know what to believe from John, but he said that the police in Tacoma and Olympia had been planning for a while on raiding the anarchist Pitch Pipe Infoshop and also the house I lived in with several other activists in Olympia. And they had approached John several times, saying, you know, “Do they have bombs and explosives and drugs and guns and things like that?” which is just disgusting to even think that they would suggest that. They’re just trying to silence us politically. They’re going after us for our politics and for our work, you know, around Port Militarization Resistance and around antiwar organizing. And, of course, John told them, no, we didn’t have any of those stuff. He told them the truth.
But he also mentioned that there were other informants that are amongst us.
AMY GOODMAN: Brendan, we’re going to break. Then we’re going to come back to this discussion. I really want to talk to Drew Hendricks about John’s involvement in IT, in the technical aspects, the coordination of the LISTSERVs.
Today, a Democracy Now! exclusive, an exposé on a military spy in peace groups in Olympia, Washington. Brendan Dunn is our guest, Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He discovered that his friend, fellow activist “John Jacob,” was actually a military spy. And Drew Hendricks will be joining us in a minute, talking about his involvement. John Towery, their friend, “John Jacob.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a national broadcast exclusive. A military spy in the ranks of antiwar activists in Olympia, Washington.
We have a number of guests. We’ve just been speaking with Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He discovered, through an FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], that his friend, fellow activist “John Jacob,” was actually working with Fort Lewis base in Washington state, was a military spy in his organizations.
Drew Hendricks is with us, as well, in Seattle, also an Olympia activist with the same groups, Port Militarization Resistance. He worked with John Towery, his real name—“John Jacob” is how they knew him—before the exposé that has now coming out.
Drew, tell us how you met John and how he was involved in the organizations.
DREW HENDRICKS: I first met John in September of 2007, and he approached me as somebody who claimed to have base access, which turned out to be true. He did admit that he was a civilian employee for the Army. And what he was offering me were observations and inside knowledge of operations on Fort Lewis.
I let him know that I wasn’t willing to have any classified information from him and that I wasn’t engaged in espionage. I was looking for open source information and looking for insight into movements of military materials over the public roads, so that people other than myself could organize protests or organize blockades, as they might see fit, and it wasn’t appropriate for me to be involved in their plans. It was only appropriate for him let me know things that I could confirm from open ground, from public spaces. He abided by those rules, for the most part.
And he did not reveal his role to me that he was actually part of a force protection cell, that he was actually reporting to DES fusion and part of the intelligence operation of Fort Lewis. He wasn’t admitting to me that his reports were going to Washington Joint Analytical Center, which is a function of the Washington State Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Intimidation—I’m sorry, Investigation.
But he did provide what he purported to be observations of operations on Fort Lewis, and he was involved with the group for a few months before I mistakenly and stupidly, in retrospect, trusted him with co-administration of our LISTSERV, our shared means of talking to each other over electronic media.
AMY GOODMAN: And the LISTSERV involvement, how much control he had over who was involved in your groups, Drew?
DREW HENDRICKS: Well, he could tell from that access who all was subscribed to the LISTSERV. He couldn’t control who was coming into or out of meetings, but he could find out who people were, if they were subscribed to the LISTSERV. And he did challenge some people who were attempting to get to the LISTSERV for their credentials, for people who could vouch for them being people who were not law enforcement or people who were not military intelligence who were coming into that activity. He wasn’t in control of what messages people could send, but as an administrator on RiseUp, he could have unsubscribed people, and there were some people that were disruptive that he did unsubscribe, in a way that the other LISTSERV administrators, for the most part, agreed with.
He wasn’t found to be abusing his authorities as a LISTSERV administrator directly, although he probably reported that list upwards in his chain of command or his chain of employment. And that served a significant chilling role for him as a military employee. He’s a civilian employee, but he is a former military-enlisted person. And so, he understood, or should have understood, that what he was doing was legally inappropriate. I’m not a lawyer, but in my opinion and from the history I’ve read, what he was doing was rather extraordinary, from the histories that I’ve read.
ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring three others into this discussion. Joining us from Washington, DC is Mike German. He’s the National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He previously served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004.
Also joining us here in New York is Eileen Clancy. She’s a founding member of I-Witness Video, a video collective that has documented government surveillance of activist groups for years. Her group was targeted by police raids last summer during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
And on the line with us from Bellingham, Washington is Larry Hildes, an attorney and National Lawyers Guild member who has represented Washington state-based activists with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in criminal and civil cases.
Larry, I want to go to you. Can you talk about your involvement with this and on what bases you have represented these activists?
LARRY HILDES: Absolutely. Good morning, by the way.
Yeah, I’ve been—I got involved—there was a sit-in at the gate of the Port of Olympia back in May of 2006 to protest use of the port for military shipments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s been a wonderful experience. I have represented these folks through several rounds of criminal cases throughout Pierce and Thurston Counties, Tacoma and Olympia. And now we are suing, based in part on spying, in conjunction with the Seattle office of the ACLU.
And it got strange fairly early. We were in trial in March of 2007, arguing that these folks were not guilty of criminal violations for sitting at the gate, when they weren’t allowed into the port itself. The prosecutors kind of hinted that there was—that they had inside information that they shouldn’t have had. And the fourth day of the trial, as it’s clear that we have the jury, prosecutor’s office came out with a confidential jury analysis sheet that my office had done, that was circulated only on the internal attorney-client LISTSERV that was exclusively for the defense team, and announced that this was all over the internet and got a mistrial.
And we’re trying to figure out in the courtroom what’s going on here. Never seen anything like this. We know it’s not on the internet. And the person who set up the LISTSERV—so we’ve got LISTSERV stuff going on even before Mr. Towery’s involvement—person on the LISTSERV discovers that there’s two people who we never heard of, who they had not subscribed, he had not allowed onto the list. Those two turned out to be Tacoma police officers. And we’ve now found that the Tacoma police knew that this document was going to be revealed, knew it would probably be a mistrial, and was speculating—and knew exactly when it would be and was speculating what the effects would be. So, the spying started early.
It was very clear that they treated these folks—the worst thing they’ve ever done is acts of civil disobedience, peacefully, nonviolently trying to stop military blockades by standing in front of tanks and Strykers—that they were treating this like a very, very serious situation. So we knew that early. And it’s become clear that there was a lot of spying going on throughout this process. We kind of knew that this was coming.
Right now I’m defending a group of demonstrators who were arrested in Olympia in November of ’07, allegedly trying to block a troop convoy or a Stryker convoy from coming out of the port to go back to Fort Lewis to be repaired and sent back to Iraq again. And the police reports talk about—the incident commander talks about the fact that they had Army intelligence sources reporting to them detailed discussions that were going on in private meetings that Port Militarization Resistance was having, where they were discussing tactics and strategies. And based on that information, they decided that our clients from that action, who were sitting in an empty road outside of a closed gate, with no military vehicles in sight, were intending to blockade traffic and were arrested for attempted disorderly conduct, a charge we’ve never seen in our lives.
So we started trying to find out what’s going. We got the judge to agree to sign subpoenas, which were immediately refused by the head of the civil division of the US attorney’s office in Seattle, Brian Kipnis, saying they had no standing and they weren’t going to respond, and ordered the Army not to give us this information. So—
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about this US attorney. And also, isn’t he the attorney who prosecuted Ehren Watada—
LARRY HILDES: That’s exactly—
AMY GOODMAN: —the first officer to say no to going to war in Iraq, refusing to lead young men and women there for a war he felt was immoral?
LARRY HILDES: That’s exactly right, Amy. He handled the Ninth Circuit appeals and stood up in the courtroom and said, “OK, he’s had his appeal. Now we need to go forward. He needs to be prosecuted. We want a second court-martial,” and continued to argue that. And the day that the decision came—Ninth Circuit decision came down saying, “No, this was double jeopardy; you can’t do this,” he said, “Well, we’re going to prosecute him on the remaining claims anyway,” which, of course, has not happened.
He was also involved in a number of the Guantanamo cases and has been arguing that evidence of torture shouldn’t come out, because it would reveal confidential information about how Guantanamo was set up. So, his role has been, throughout this, to obstruct.
I sent him a letter saying, “OK, now we have this information. I ask for your help in investigating this, because this is a crime.” Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1887, it is a crime for the US military to become involved in civilian law enforcement. And they’ve chipped away at it, but it’s still a crime. I got a letter back now telling me I have to ask the Army. I got this yesterday, saying, “You have to go through channels with the Army.” I’ve gone through channels with the Army, and the Army has told me they’re not allowed to talk to me, because he told them not to. So we’re going back and forth with this guy.
He has been in the US attorney’s office throughout much of the Bush administration. And apparently his job is to obstruct and punish those involved in protesting the war and those protesting torture. Interesting character. I had never heard of him before this. Apparently has a close relative—there aren’t that many Kipnises, but there are some—who runs a security firm that specializes in analysis of national security issues. So it’s a cozy little family network there. So—
ANJALI KAMAT: I’d like to turn to Mike German and bring him into the conversation, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, DC. Mike German, what’s your response to all of this?
MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think his analysis is exactly right. This is a pretty clear violation of Posse Comitatus. Now, what the military would argue, and has argued, is that they have a right to engage in force protection, which obviously, in its normal understanding of that term, is a defensive sort of capability, i.e. they can put guards at the gates of military bases and protect from threats from without. But they seem to have been, since 2002, considering that as an offensive capability, where they’re actually sending operatives out to spy on community activists, which is, of course, prohibited and something that, you know, the First and the Fourth Amendment become engaged.
And, you know, this is something that we found out through a FOIA back in 2005 the military was engaged in through a group called the Counterintelligence Field Activity. And they had a database of activists called TALON that, again, collected this US person information that the military has no business collecting. And that was shut down. But unfortunately, you know, they just created a new mechanism. This appears to be the fusion centers and these fusion cells that they’re using that, they seem to think, give them a method of circumventing Posse Comitatus and the restrictions on military intelligence gathering in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean, Mike, by fusion centers.
MIKE GERMAN: About two years ago, me and a colleague at the ACLU started investigating a lot of federal money going to what were called intelligence fusion centers. And I was only two years out of federal law enforcement at that point, and I had never heard this term, so I became concerned. And what these centers are is multi-jurisdictional intelligence centers that involve state, local and federal law enforcement, as well as other government entities—you know, a lot of times there are emergency services type of entities, but actually can’t involve any government entity—but also involve oftentimes the military and private companies.
So we produced a report in November of 2007 warning of the potential dangers that these multi-jurisdictional centers had, because it was unclear whose rules applied. Were we using federal rules? Were we using state rules? Local rules? And what was military and private company—what rules govern their conduct? So we put out this report in November of 2007. At that point, there were forty-two fusion centers. By July of 2008, we had found so many instances of abuse, we put out an updated report. At that point, there were fifty-eight fusion centers. Today, the DHS recognizes at least seventy-two fusion centers. So these things are rapidly growing, without any sort of proper boundaries on what activities happen within them and without really any idea of what it is the military is doing in these fusion centers and what type of access they have to US person information.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn back for a moment to the two activists in Olympia. They’re speaking to us from Seattle today, first time they’re speaking out nationally, Brendan Dunn and Drew Hendricks. Just give us a sense, Brendan, of why you got involved in activism. People might be listening and watching right now and wondering, “I’ve never even heard of Port Militarization Resistance,” or perhaps the new Students for a Democratic Society, based on the old. What’s your background, Brendan?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, I guess I really started to get involved with activism and organizing—it was in high school, but it wasn’t until after high school, when my friend’s brother was shot and killed by the police in Utica, New York. His name was Walter Washington. And the community developed a response to that, and, you know, that’s what really started to get me thinking and actively organizing. That’s really when I got involved.
I moved to Olympia a little over three years ago. Since then, I’ve been involved with a lot, with Students for a Democratic Society. And, you know, the more police repression I’ve learned about or experienced and just repression, generally, that it’s moved me in a more radical direction. That’s when I started to pick up anarchist politics and organizing.
So I’ve been involved with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance—just makes sense to me, because the military—this is one of the most highly militarized areas of the country, if not the world, western Washington is. And it just makes sense to me that if we want to throw a gear in the war machine, the best way to do it is in our own backyard, our own towns. And in our case, it’s in the Port of Olympia, the Port of Tacoma, the Port of Grays Harbor in Aberdeen. And that’s where direct action makes sense and community struggle makes sense.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Drew Hendricks, your involvement in Port Militarization Resistance, known for trying to stop some of the—for example, the Stryker vehicles from being sent to Iraq?
DREW HENDRICKS: Yes. My primary activity with Port Militarization Resistance is as a coordinator for intelligence collection, so that people have the time that they need to make good decisions about what it is that they’re going to do. I’ve taken one direct action myself against said activity early on in the end of May 2006. I blocked a couple of gates shut overnight and was arrested during that action and found and put in jail for a few hours. But for the most part, my role has been to collect information and disseminate it to the people who need to know, so that they can make timely decisions.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to this conversation. We are doing a national exposé today on a person who worked in the military spying on peace groups in Washington state. His name—well, they thought his name was John Jacob. His name is John Towery. We asked that he come—we wanted him to come on the broadcast, but he didn’t respond to our request. We also asked the military to join us; we read the statement earlier, yes, admitting that John Towery worked with them. We’ll continue this conversation in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We bring you this exclusive on peace activists in Washington state revealing an informant posing as an anarchist has spied on them while working under the US military—the activists, members of the group Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, which protests military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, this is Democracy Now!, and we urge you to go to our website at democracynow.org, where we’re video and audio podcasting, where you can see the documents that they got under Freedom of Information Act [ed: public records request].
Anjali?
ANJALI KAMAT: The government documents also show that intelligence officers from other government and military agencies inquired Olympia police about the Washington state peace activists. In an email to an Olympia police officer from February 2008, Thomas Glapion, Chief Investigations/Intel of New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force, writes, quote, “Good Morning, first let me thank you for the effort. To the contrary you were quite the help to me. You are now part of my Intel network. I’m still looking at possible protests by the PMR SDS MDS and other left wing anti war groups so any Intel you have would be appreciated…In return if you need anything from the Armed Forces I will try to help you as well,” end-quote.
Now, we contacted the McGuire Air Base, and they also denied our interview request. They released a short statement saying only, quote, “Our force protection specialists routinely research local and national groups in response to potential risks and threats to Air Force installations and to ensure the safety of our personnel,” end-quote.
Another declassified email from February 2008 comes from Andrew Pecher of the US Capitol Police Intelligence Investigations Section in Washington, DC. The email is also addressed to an Olympia police contact. It says, quote, “I am just droppjng [sic] in to see if you had a problems with the below action that we had talked about a few weeks ago. Any information that you have would be helpful. Thank you!!” end-quote. The “action” Pecher refers to is the “Northwest DNC/RNC Resistance Conference,” an event that was held at Evergreen State College to prepare for protests at last summer’s Democratic and Republican conventions.
I want to go to Brendan Maslauskas Dunn. Brendan, how did you find this information? When you first saw this information, can you talk about your reaction?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, when it all surfaced through the public records requests, I wasn’t surprised. I guess I had been expecting this, especially with the level of activity that activists have been involved with in Olympia, in the last few years, especially. But, I mean, it still was a shock. I didn’t know it was that extensive. I guess that’s why it was a shock to me.
I didn’t know that the Air Force from New Jersey was interested in activities that activists in Olympia were involved with. And I didn’t know that the Capitol police in Washington, DC was trying to extract information from people in Olympia, as well.
So I always suspected that there was surveillance going on. It was obvious it was going on locally from local agencies and local police agencies. I had no idea how widespread it is. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have no clue what’s below the water.
AMY GOODMAN: Eileen Clancy, I’d like to bring you into this conversation. You have long been documenting police and federal authorities’ activities in antiwar and peace protests at the conventions in 2004 and then 2008. You, yourselves, at I-Witness were targeted. You were detained by police. The places that you were setting up video to video police actions on the streets were raided by the police in St. Paul. Your reaction to what you’re listening to and watching today?
EILEEN CLANCY: Well, I have to say, I think this is one of the most important revelations of spying on the American people that we’ve seen since the beginning of the Bush era. It’s very clear that there’s no such thing as one spy, especially not in the Army. So—and it’s very clear that this problem is national in scope, in that sort of casual manner that these folks are interacting with each other.
It’s really like in January 1970. Christopher Pyle, who was a former US Army intelligence officer, revealed in Washington Monthly that there was an extraordinary program of spying by the Army on political protest groups. And he said that—well, what was written in the New York Times was that the Army detectives would attend some of these events, but the majority of material that they gathered was from police departments, local governments and the FBI. And at that time, they had a special teletype, pre-internet, that connected the Army nationwide and where the police could load up their information on this stuff. They also published a small book that was a blacklist, which is similar now to the terrorist watch list, where the police share information about activists with maybe no criminal basis whatsoever. And at the time, in January 1970, Pyle said that there was a hope to link the teletype systems to computerized databanks in Baltimore, Maryland, which, of course, is the general area of the National Security Agency, which does most of the spying for—it’s supposed to be foreign, but apparently they do domestic spying, as well.
So this now, what we have here—and after these revelations, there was a Church Committee. There was a great deal of investigating that went on. And while a lot of it was covered up, the military was pushed back for a while on this front. But because now we have the capability of gathering an extraordinary amount of information and holding onto it and sharing it, through the internet and through other means, we really have this 1970s problem amped up on steroids, twenty-first-century-style. And this had been going on for a while.
Something terrible has been going on in the Pacific Northwest in terms of police spying. There are other documents that had been revealed—the Tacoma police, Homeland Security, meetings, minutes. And you can see that one of the essential problems with this kind of model and the fusion center model is that in the same meeting, they’re talking about a Grannies Against the War group handing out fliers at the local mall, and they’re talking about new information about what al-Qaeda is going to do. It’s a model that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, and it’s a model that’s based really on hysteria.
When you see those pictures that were just shown on the screen, pictures of people with no weapons standing in the middle of a road with giant Army vehicles in front of them, you know, it’s clear that the protest is of a symbolic nature. There’s no violence involved on the part of the activists. It’s a traditional sit-in type of protest. The idea that the Army, the Navy and the Marines would become hysterical at this threat, I mean, it is the Army, it’s the Navy, it’s the Marines. And when—that’s the reason the Army shouldn’t be involved in this, because the job of an army—and they’ll tell you this—is to kill people and break things. The motto of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team that’s housed at Fort Lewis, that this force protection cell was trying to protect, their motto is “strike and destroy.” They’re really built for one thing, and it’s certainly not policing. It’s certainly not dealing with community activist groups, Grannies Against the War, or local activists in Olympia.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask about Rush Holt, the New Jersey congressman—we’re talking about McGuire Air Base, actually, in New Jersey—who has just in the last weeks been calling for a Church-like, Pike-like investigation of the intelligence community, starts by talking about the CIA. He’s raised this with the Washington Independent, with the Newark Star-Ledger, even raised it on Lou Dobbs a few days ago. And the significance of something at this level of the Church Committee hearings that investigated spying—Sy Hersh exposed it decades ago in a major article in the New York Times. Mike German, at this point, the significance of something like this? And do you think we would see this under President Obama?
MIKE GERMAN: I would hope so. You know, when we first came out with our report on fusion centers and warned about the military presence, you know, people told us that that wasn’t something we needed to be concerned about. And, you know, so this is a very important revelation, that there is actual evidence of abuse, that hopefully will open the eyes of the people who are responsible for overseeing these types of activities. And I believe something like a select investigative committee to investigate such activities is certainly called for. And, in fact, Representative Barbara Lee had introduced back in April a bill that would allow a select committee to investigate national security policy and practices. So, we’re hoping that this will bring support to that effort.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask Brendan Dunn about the evidence of other spies in your organization. In fact, didn’t John—“John Jacob,” now known as John Towery, who worked at Fort Lewis—didn’t he tell you about others that he actually wanted out of the organization sometimes and called the military to get them out?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, that’s his story, at least. He admitted that there were a few other informants that were sent.
He had a weird story, which, you know, we know isn’t true, based on the public records and the documents that we have in our hands, that he was, you know, forced into this position to spy on us, that he didn’t do it for pay, that he only reported to the Tacoma police and wasn’t connected to the military whatsoever. I mean, it’s a good cover story to, you know, let the military free and blame it on a bunch of Keystone cops in Tacoma, but there was actually another email I got through the records request that was sent between a couple Olympia police officers, and they had mentioned something about their Army guy that was working for them and something else about someone in the Coast Guard that was also perhaps, still perhaps, currently acting as an informant.
AMY GOODMAN: We also, in doing research on John Towery, have information, addresses that he had at both Fort Drum, Upstate New York, and also in Brussels, which we associate with NATO. Is there any understanding or knowledge you have of this, either Brendan or Drew? Did he talk about this in his past?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: This is actually the first I’ve heard of it. I’m actually surprised, because I used to live near Fort Drum. I used to go to school near Fort Drum before I moved out to Olympia. So this is news to me. I’ve never heard anything.
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.
ANJALI KAMAT: Eileen Clancy, we just have a minute left. What does this, all of this information that’s come out, what does this do for activists? Does it create a climate of fear? What you, who have been spied on, who have had so much experience with this—what are your final words?
EILEEN CLANCY: I think people should try not to be afraid. They should consider what these fine activists have done here, which is done an extraordinary public service by putting this information out. This could be one of the key revelations of this era, if this is followed up on. It’s very important that people be aggressive about this. And thank goodness they did it.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us, Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video; Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union; Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild, based in Bellingham; and the two activists who have exposed this story through their Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia-based activist, and Drew Hendricks, as well. Thank you both very much for being with us.
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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.
Guests:
Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia-based activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He submitted the Freedom of Information Act request that revealed his friend and fellow activist “John Jacob” was actually military spy John Towery.
Drew Hendricks, Olympia-based activist with Port Militarization Resistance. Also worked with John Towery, aka “John Jacob,” on activist causes before Towery’s exposure as a military spy.
Mike German, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He was an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004.
Larry Hildes, Bellingham-based attorney and National Lawyers Guild member who has represented Washington state-based activists with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in criminal and civil cases.
Eileen Clancy, Founding member of I-Witness Video who has documented government surveillance of activist groups for years. Her group was targeted by police raids last summer during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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ANJALI KAMAT: We begin with a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. Peace activists in Washington state have revealed an informant posing as an anarchist has spied on them while working under the US military. The activists are members of the group Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, which protests military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before his true identity was revealed, the informant was known as “John Jacob,” an active member of antiwar groups in the towns of Olympia and Tacoma. But using documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], the activists learned that “John Jacob” is in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at the nearby Fort Lewis military base.
The activists claim Towery has admitted to them he shared information with an intelligence network that stretches from local and state police to several federal agencies, to the US military. They also say he confirmed the existence of other government spies but wouldn’t reveal their identity.
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.
AMY GOODMAN: 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. The statement says, quote, “John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media.” Fort Lewis also says it’s launched an internal inquiry. We invited John Towery on the broadcast, but he didn’t respond to our interview request.
In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we’re now joined in Seattle by the two activists who exposed John Towery as a military informant. Brendan Maslauskas Dunn counted John Towery, or “John Jacob,” as a close friend. But he discovered Towery’s identity after obtaining government documents under a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request]. Brendan is an Olympia-based activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. We’re also joined in Seattle by Drew Hendricks. He is an Olympia activist with Port Militarization Resistance who worked closely with John Towery, aka “John Jacob." This is their first broadcast interview since coming forward with their story.
Brendan, let’s begin with you. Just lay out how you found out about this military spy.
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, thanks for having us, Amy.
I actually did a public records request through the city of Olympia several months ago on behalf of the union I’m in, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the records request I did, I had asked for any documents or emails, etc., that the city had, especially in discussions or any kind of communications between the Olympia police and the military in the city generally, anything on anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, Students for a Democratic Society or the Industrial Workers of the World. I got back hundreds of documents from the city.
One of the documents was an email that was sent between personnel in the military, and the email address that was attached to this email was of John J. Towery. We didn’t know who that was, but several people did a lot of research to find out who that was, and they identified that person as being John Jacob.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your first reaction? Who was John Jacob to you?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He was—he said he was an anarchist. I met him over two years ago through community organizing and antiwar organizing I was involved with in Tacoma and Olympia with other anarchists and other activists.
And he was really interested in Students for a Democratic Society. He wanted to start a chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society, which is connected to SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance, with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was—you know, knew a lot of people involved with that organization.
But he was a friend of mine. We hung out. We gave workshops together on grassroots direct democracy and anarchist struggle. I mean, he was a friend. A lot of people really, really did like him. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me this week when all of this was determined.
ANJALI KAMAT: And, Brendan, what did John Towery, who you used to know as “John Jacob,” say to you when you confronted him?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, after it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn’t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, “John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?” And he told me; he said, “Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized.” So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
He also—one other thing he spoke of—I don’t know if this is true. I mean, honestly, I don’t know what to believe from John, but he said that the police in Tacoma and Olympia had been planning for a while on raiding the anarchist Pitch Pipe Infoshop and also the house I lived in with several other activists in Olympia. And they had approached John several times, saying, you know, “Do they have bombs and explosives and drugs and guns and things like that?” which is just disgusting to even think that they would suggest that. They’re just trying to silence us politically. They’re going after us for our politics and for our work, you know, around Port Militarization Resistance and around antiwar organizing. And, of course, John told them, no, we didn’t have any of those stuff. He told them the truth.
But he also mentioned that there were other informants that are amongst us.
AMY GOODMAN: Brendan, we’re going to break. Then we’re going to come back to this discussion. I really want to talk to Drew Hendricks about John’s involvement in IT, in the technical aspects, the coordination of the LISTSERVs.
Today, a Democracy Now! exclusive, an exposé on a military spy in peace groups in Olympia, Washington. Brendan Dunn is our guest, Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He discovered that his friend, fellow activist “John Jacob,” was actually a military spy. And Drew Hendricks will be joining us in a minute, talking about his involvement. John Towery, their friend, “John Jacob.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a national broadcast exclusive. A military spy in the ranks of antiwar activists in Olympia, Washington.
We have a number of guests. We’ve just been speaking with Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia activist with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He discovered, through an FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], that his friend, fellow activist “John Jacob,” was actually working with Fort Lewis base in Washington state, was a military spy in his organizations.
Drew Hendricks is with us, as well, in Seattle, also an Olympia activist with the same groups, Port Militarization Resistance. He worked with John Towery, his real name—“John Jacob” is how they knew him—before the exposé that has now coming out.
Drew, tell us how you met John and how he was involved in the organizations.
DREW HENDRICKS: I first met John in September of 2007, and he approached me as somebody who claimed to have base access, which turned out to be true. He did admit that he was a civilian employee for the Army. And what he was offering me were observations and inside knowledge of operations on Fort Lewis.
I let him know that I wasn’t willing to have any classified information from him and that I wasn’t engaged in espionage. I was looking for open source information and looking for insight into movements of military materials over the public roads, so that people other than myself could organize protests or organize blockades, as they might see fit, and it wasn’t appropriate for me to be involved in their plans. It was only appropriate for him let me know things that I could confirm from open ground, from public spaces. He abided by those rules, for the most part.
And he did not reveal his role to me that he was actually part of a force protection cell, that he was actually reporting to DES fusion and part of the intelligence operation of Fort Lewis. He wasn’t admitting to me that his reports were going to Washington Joint Analytical Center, which is a function of the Washington State Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Intimidation—I’m sorry, Investigation.
But he did provide what he purported to be observations of operations on Fort Lewis, and he was involved with the group for a few months before I mistakenly and stupidly, in retrospect, trusted him with co-administration of our LISTSERV, our shared means of talking to each other over electronic media.
AMY GOODMAN: And the LISTSERV involvement, how much control he had over who was involved in your groups, Drew?
DREW HENDRICKS: Well, he could tell from that access who all was subscribed to the LISTSERV. He couldn’t control who was coming into or out of meetings, but he could find out who people were, if they were subscribed to the LISTSERV. And he did challenge some people who were attempting to get to the LISTSERV for their credentials, for people who could vouch for them being people who were not law enforcement or people who were not military intelligence who were coming into that activity. He wasn’t in control of what messages people could send, but as an administrator on RiseUp, he could have unsubscribed people, and there were some people that were disruptive that he did unsubscribe, in a way that the other LISTSERV administrators, for the most part, agreed with.
He wasn’t found to be abusing his authorities as a LISTSERV administrator directly, although he probably reported that list upwards in his chain of command or his chain of employment. And that served a significant chilling role for him as a military employee. He’s a civilian employee, but he is a former military-enlisted person. And so, he understood, or should have understood, that what he was doing was legally inappropriate. I’m not a lawyer, but in my opinion and from the history I’ve read, what he was doing was rather extraordinary, from the histories that I’ve read.
ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring three others into this discussion. Joining us from Washington, DC is Mike German. He’s the National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He previously served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004.
Also joining us here in New York is Eileen Clancy. She’s a founding member of I-Witness Video, a video collective that has documented government surveillance of activist groups for years. Her group was targeted by police raids last summer during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
And on the line with us from Bellingham, Washington is Larry Hildes, an attorney and National Lawyers Guild member who has represented Washington state-based activists with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in criminal and civil cases.
Larry, I want to go to you. Can you talk about your involvement with this and on what bases you have represented these activists?
LARRY HILDES: Absolutely. Good morning, by the way.
Yeah, I’ve been—I got involved—there was a sit-in at the gate of the Port of Olympia back in May of 2006 to protest use of the port for military shipments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s been a wonderful experience. I have represented these folks through several rounds of criminal cases throughout Pierce and Thurston Counties, Tacoma and Olympia. And now we are suing, based in part on spying, in conjunction with the Seattle office of the ACLU.
And it got strange fairly early. We were in trial in March of 2007, arguing that these folks were not guilty of criminal violations for sitting at the gate, when they weren’t allowed into the port itself. The prosecutors kind of hinted that there was—that they had inside information that they shouldn’t have had. And the fourth day of the trial, as it’s clear that we have the jury, prosecutor’s office came out with a confidential jury analysis sheet that my office had done, that was circulated only on the internal attorney-client LISTSERV that was exclusively for the defense team, and announced that this was all over the internet and got a mistrial.
And we’re trying to figure out in the courtroom what’s going on here. Never seen anything like this. We know it’s not on the internet. And the person who set up the LISTSERV—so we’ve got LISTSERV stuff going on even before Mr. Towery’s involvement—person on the LISTSERV discovers that there’s two people who we never heard of, who they had not subscribed, he had not allowed onto the list. Those two turned out to be Tacoma police officers. And we’ve now found that the Tacoma police knew that this document was going to be revealed, knew it would probably be a mistrial, and was speculating—and knew exactly when it would be and was speculating what the effects would be. So, the spying started early.
It was very clear that they treated these folks—the worst thing they’ve ever done is acts of civil disobedience, peacefully, nonviolently trying to stop military blockades by standing in front of tanks and Strykers—that they were treating this like a very, very serious situation. So we knew that early. And it’s become clear that there was a lot of spying going on throughout this process. We kind of knew that this was coming.
Right now I’m defending a group of demonstrators who were arrested in Olympia in November of ’07, allegedly trying to block a troop convoy or a Stryker convoy from coming out of the port to go back to Fort Lewis to be repaired and sent back to Iraq again. And the police reports talk about—the incident commander talks about the fact that they had Army intelligence sources reporting to them detailed discussions that were going on in private meetings that Port Militarization Resistance was having, where they were discussing tactics and strategies. And based on that information, they decided that our clients from that action, who were sitting in an empty road outside of a closed gate, with no military vehicles in sight, were intending to blockade traffic and were arrested for attempted disorderly conduct, a charge we’ve never seen in our lives.
So we started trying to find out what’s going. We got the judge to agree to sign subpoenas, which were immediately refused by the head of the civil division of the US attorney’s office in Seattle, Brian Kipnis, saying they had no standing and they weren’t going to respond, and ordered the Army not to give us this information. So—
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about this US attorney. And also, isn’t he the attorney who prosecuted Ehren Watada—
LARRY HILDES: That’s exactly—
AMY GOODMAN: —the first officer to say no to going to war in Iraq, refusing to lead young men and women there for a war he felt was immoral?
LARRY HILDES: That’s exactly right, Amy. He handled the Ninth Circuit appeals and stood up in the courtroom and said, “OK, he’s had his appeal. Now we need to go forward. He needs to be prosecuted. We want a second court-martial,” and continued to argue that. And the day that the decision came—Ninth Circuit decision came down saying, “No, this was double jeopardy; you can’t do this,” he said, “Well, we’re going to prosecute him on the remaining claims anyway,” which, of course, has not happened.
He was also involved in a number of the Guantanamo cases and has been arguing that evidence of torture shouldn’t come out, because it would reveal confidential information about how Guantanamo was set up. So, his role has been, throughout this, to obstruct.
I sent him a letter saying, “OK, now we have this information. I ask for your help in investigating this, because this is a crime.” Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1887, it is a crime for the US military to become involved in civilian law enforcement. And they’ve chipped away at it, but it’s still a crime. I got a letter back now telling me I have to ask the Army. I got this yesterday, saying, “You have to go through channels with the Army.” I’ve gone through channels with the Army, and the Army has told me they’re not allowed to talk to me, because he told them not to. So we’re going back and forth with this guy.
He has been in the US attorney’s office throughout much of the Bush administration. And apparently his job is to obstruct and punish those involved in protesting the war and those protesting torture. Interesting character. I had never heard of him before this. Apparently has a close relative—there aren’t that many Kipnises, but there are some—who runs a security firm that specializes in analysis of national security issues. So it’s a cozy little family network there. So—
ANJALI KAMAT: I’d like to turn to Mike German and bring him into the conversation, National Security Policy Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, DC. Mike German, what’s your response to all of this?
MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think his analysis is exactly right. This is a pretty clear violation of Posse Comitatus. Now, what the military would argue, and has argued, is that they have a right to engage in force protection, which obviously, in its normal understanding of that term, is a defensive sort of capability, i.e. they can put guards at the gates of military bases and protect from threats from without. But they seem to have been, since 2002, considering that as an offensive capability, where they’re actually sending operatives out to spy on community activists, which is, of course, prohibited and something that, you know, the First and the Fourth Amendment become engaged.
And, you know, this is something that we found out through a FOIA back in 2005 the military was engaged in through a group called the Counterintelligence Field Activity. And they had a database of activists called TALON that, again, collected this US person information that the military has no business collecting. And that was shut down. But unfortunately, you know, they just created a new mechanism. This appears to be the fusion centers and these fusion cells that they’re using that, they seem to think, give them a method of circumventing Posse Comitatus and the restrictions on military intelligence gathering in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean, Mike, by fusion centers.
MIKE GERMAN: About two years ago, me and a colleague at the ACLU started investigating a lot of federal money going to what were called intelligence fusion centers. And I was only two years out of federal law enforcement at that point, and I had never heard this term, so I became concerned. And what these centers are is multi-jurisdictional intelligence centers that involve state, local and federal law enforcement, as well as other government entities—you know, a lot of times there are emergency services type of entities, but actually can’t involve any government entity—but also involve oftentimes the military and private companies.
So we produced a report in November of 2007 warning of the potential dangers that these multi-jurisdictional centers had, because it was unclear whose rules applied. Were we using federal rules? Were we using state rules? Local rules? And what was military and private company—what rules govern their conduct? So we put out this report in November of 2007. At that point, there were forty-two fusion centers. By July of 2008, we had found so many instances of abuse, we put out an updated report. At that point, there were fifty-eight fusion centers. Today, the DHS recognizes at least seventy-two fusion centers. So these things are rapidly growing, without any sort of proper boundaries on what activities happen within them and without really any idea of what it is the military is doing in these fusion centers and what type of access they have to US person information.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn back for a moment to the two activists in Olympia. They’re speaking to us from Seattle today, first time they’re speaking out nationally, Brendan Dunn and Drew Hendricks. Just give us a sense, Brendan, of why you got involved in activism. People might be listening and watching right now and wondering, “I’ve never even heard of Port Militarization Resistance,” or perhaps the new Students for a Democratic Society, based on the old. What’s your background, Brendan?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, I guess I really started to get involved with activism and organizing—it was in high school, but it wasn’t until after high school, when my friend’s brother was shot and killed by the police in Utica, New York. His name was Walter Washington. And the community developed a response to that, and, you know, that’s what really started to get me thinking and actively organizing. That’s really when I got involved.
I moved to Olympia a little over three years ago. Since then, I’ve been involved with a lot, with Students for a Democratic Society. And, you know, the more police repression I’ve learned about or experienced and just repression, generally, that it’s moved me in a more radical direction. That’s when I started to pick up anarchist politics and organizing.
So I’ve been involved with Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance—just makes sense to me, because the military—this is one of the most highly militarized areas of the country, if not the world, western Washington is. And it just makes sense to me that if we want to throw a gear in the war machine, the best way to do it is in our own backyard, our own towns. And in our case, it’s in the Port of Olympia, the Port of Tacoma, the Port of Grays Harbor in Aberdeen. And that’s where direct action makes sense and community struggle makes sense.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Drew Hendricks, your involvement in Port Militarization Resistance, known for trying to stop some of the—for example, the Stryker vehicles from being sent to Iraq?
DREW HENDRICKS: Yes. My primary activity with Port Militarization Resistance is as a coordinator for intelligence collection, so that people have the time that they need to make good decisions about what it is that they’re going to do. I’ve taken one direct action myself against said activity early on in the end of May 2006. I blocked a couple of gates shut overnight and was arrested during that action and found and put in jail for a few hours. But for the most part, my role has been to collect information and disseminate it to the people who need to know, so that they can make timely decisions.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to this conversation. We are doing a national exposé today on a person who worked in the military spying on peace groups in Washington state. His name—well, they thought his name was John Jacob. His name is John Towery. We asked that he come—we wanted him to come on the broadcast, but he didn’t respond to our request. We also asked the military to join us; we read the statement earlier, yes, admitting that John Towery worked with them. We’ll continue this conversation in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We bring you this exclusive on peace activists in Washington state revealing an informant posing as an anarchist has spied on them while working under the US military—the activists, members of the group Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance, which protests military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, this is Democracy Now!, and we urge you to go to our website at democracynow.org, where we’re video and audio podcasting, where you can see the documents that they got under Freedom of Information Act [ed: public records request].
Anjali?
ANJALI KAMAT: The government documents also show that intelligence officers from other government and military agencies inquired Olympia police about the Washington state peace activists. In an email to an Olympia police officer from February 2008, Thomas Glapion, Chief Investigations/Intel of New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force, writes, quote, “Good Morning, first let me thank you for the effort. To the contrary you were quite the help to me. You are now part of my Intel network. I’m still looking at possible protests by the PMR SDS MDS and other left wing anti war groups so any Intel you have would be appreciated…In return if you need anything from the Armed Forces I will try to help you as well,” end-quote.
Now, we contacted the McGuire Air Base, and they also denied our interview request. They released a short statement saying only, quote, “Our force protection specialists routinely research local and national groups in response to potential risks and threats to Air Force installations and to ensure the safety of our personnel,” end-quote.
Another declassified email from February 2008 comes from Andrew Pecher of the US Capitol Police Intelligence Investigations Section in Washington, DC. The email is also addressed to an Olympia police contact. It says, quote, “I am just droppjng [sic] in to see if you had a problems with the below action that we had talked about a few weeks ago. Any information that you have would be helpful. Thank you!!” end-quote. The “action” Pecher refers to is the “Northwest DNC/RNC Resistance Conference,” an event that was held at Evergreen State College to prepare for protests at last summer’s Democratic and Republican conventions.
I want to go to Brendan Maslauskas Dunn. Brendan, how did you find this information? When you first saw this information, can you talk about your reaction?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Well, when it all surfaced through the public records requests, I wasn’t surprised. I guess I had been expecting this, especially with the level of activity that activists have been involved with in Olympia, in the last few years, especially. But, I mean, it still was a shock. I didn’t know it was that extensive. I guess that’s why it was a shock to me.
I didn’t know that the Air Force from New Jersey was interested in activities that activists in Olympia were involved with. And I didn’t know that the Capitol police in Washington, DC was trying to extract information from people in Olympia, as well.
So I always suspected that there was surveillance going on. It was obvious it was going on locally from local agencies and local police agencies. I had no idea how widespread it is. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have no clue what’s below the water.
AMY GOODMAN: Eileen Clancy, I’d like to bring you into this conversation. You have long been documenting police and federal authorities’ activities in antiwar and peace protests at the conventions in 2004 and then 2008. You, yourselves, at I-Witness were targeted. You were detained by police. The places that you were setting up video to video police actions on the streets were raided by the police in St. Paul. Your reaction to what you’re listening to and watching today?
EILEEN CLANCY: Well, I have to say, I think this is one of the most important revelations of spying on the American people that we’ve seen since the beginning of the Bush era. It’s very clear that there’s no such thing as one spy, especially not in the Army. So—and it’s very clear that this problem is national in scope, in that sort of casual manner that these folks are interacting with each other.
It’s really like in January 1970. Christopher Pyle, who was a former US Army intelligence officer, revealed in Washington Monthly that there was an extraordinary program of spying by the Army on political protest groups. And he said that—well, what was written in the New York Times was that the Army detectives would attend some of these events, but the majority of material that they gathered was from police departments, local governments and the FBI. And at that time, they had a special teletype, pre-internet, that connected the Army nationwide and where the police could load up their information on this stuff. They also published a small book that was a blacklist, which is similar now to the terrorist watch list, where the police share information about activists with maybe no criminal basis whatsoever. And at the time, in January 1970, Pyle said that there was a hope to link the teletype systems to computerized databanks in Baltimore, Maryland, which, of course, is the general area of the National Security Agency, which does most of the spying for—it’s supposed to be foreign, but apparently they do domestic spying, as well.
So this now, what we have here—and after these revelations, there was a Church Committee. There was a great deal of investigating that went on. And while a lot of it was covered up, the military was pushed back for a while on this front. But because now we have the capability of gathering an extraordinary amount of information and holding onto it and sharing it, through the internet and through other means, we really have this 1970s problem amped up on steroids, twenty-first-century-style. And this had been going on for a while.
Something terrible has been going on in the Pacific Northwest in terms of police spying. There are other documents that had been revealed—the Tacoma police, Homeland Security, meetings, minutes. And you can see that one of the essential problems with this kind of model and the fusion center model is that in the same meeting, they’re talking about a Grannies Against the War group handing out fliers at the local mall, and they’re talking about new information about what al-Qaeda is going to do. It’s a model that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, and it’s a model that’s based really on hysteria.
When you see those pictures that were just shown on the screen, pictures of people with no weapons standing in the middle of a road with giant Army vehicles in front of them, you know, it’s clear that the protest is of a symbolic nature. There’s no violence involved on the part of the activists. It’s a traditional sit-in type of protest. The idea that the Army, the Navy and the Marines would become hysterical at this threat, I mean, it is the Army, it’s the Navy, it’s the Marines. And when—that’s the reason the Army shouldn’t be involved in this, because the job of an army—and they’ll tell you this—is to kill people and break things. The motto of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team that’s housed at Fort Lewis, that this force protection cell was trying to protect, their motto is “strike and destroy.” They’re really built for one thing, and it’s certainly not policing. It’s certainly not dealing with community activist groups, Grannies Against the War, or local activists in Olympia.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask about Rush Holt, the New Jersey congressman—we’re talking about McGuire Air Base, actually, in New Jersey—who has just in the last weeks been calling for a Church-like, Pike-like investigation of the intelligence community, starts by talking about the CIA. He’s raised this with the Washington Independent, with the Newark Star-Ledger, even raised it on Lou Dobbs a few days ago. And the significance of something at this level of the Church Committee hearings that investigated spying—Sy Hersh exposed it decades ago in a major article in the New York Times. Mike German, at this point, the significance of something like this? And do you think we would see this under President Obama?
MIKE GERMAN: I would hope so. You know, when we first came out with our report on fusion centers and warned about the military presence, you know, people told us that that wasn’t something we needed to be concerned about. And, you know, so this is a very important revelation, that there is actual evidence of abuse, that hopefully will open the eyes of the people who are responsible for overseeing these types of activities. And I believe something like a select investigative committee to investigate such activities is certainly called for. And, in fact, Representative Barbara Lee had introduced back in April a bill that would allow a select committee to investigate national security policy and practices. So, we’re hoping that this will bring support to that effort.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask Brendan Dunn about the evidence of other spies in your organization. In fact, didn’t John—“John Jacob,” now known as John Towery, who worked at Fort Lewis—didn’t he tell you about others that he actually wanted out of the organization sometimes and called the military to get them out?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, that’s his story, at least. He admitted that there were a few other informants that were sent.
He had a weird story, which, you know, we know isn’t true, based on the public records and the documents that we have in our hands, that he was, you know, forced into this position to spy on us, that he didn’t do it for pay, that he only reported to the Tacoma police and wasn’t connected to the military whatsoever. I mean, it’s a good cover story to, you know, let the military free and blame it on a bunch of Keystone cops in Tacoma, but there was actually another email I got through the records request that was sent between a couple Olympia police officers, and they had mentioned something about their Army guy that was working for them and something else about someone in the Coast Guard that was also perhaps, still perhaps, currently acting as an informant.
AMY GOODMAN: We also, in doing research on John Towery, have information, addresses that he had at both Fort Drum, Upstate New York, and also in Brussels, which we associate with NATO. Is there any understanding or knowledge you have of this, either Brendan or Drew? Did he talk about this in his past?
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: This is actually the first I’ve heard of it. I’m actually surprised, because I used to live near Fort Drum. I used to go to school near Fort Drum before I moved out to Olympia. So this is news to me. I’ve never heard anything.
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.
ANJALI KAMAT: Eileen Clancy, we just have a minute left. What does this, all of this information that’s come out, what does this do for activists? Does it create a climate of fear? What you, who have been spied on, who have had so much experience with this—what are your final words?
EILEEN CLANCY: I think people should try not to be afraid. They should consider what these fine activists have done here, which is done an extraordinary public service by putting this information out. This could be one of the key revelations of this era, if this is followed up on. It’s very important that people be aggressive about this. And thank goodness they did it.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us, Eileen Clancy of I-Witness Video; Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union; Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild, based in Bellingham; and the two activists who have exposed this story through their Freedom of Information Act request [ed: public records request], Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia-based activist, and Drew Hendricks, as well. Thank you both very much for being with us.
Obama’s Secret Police
Government Spies Infiltrate Antiwar Movement
By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, July 31, 2009
Well, we can relax, because the bad old days of the Bush administration, when government agencies routinely spied on the antiwar movement and other dissidents, are over — right?
Wrong – very wrong.
The indispensable Amy Goodman has the scoop: The Seattle Port Militarization Resistance (SPMR) group in Washington state thought their listserv coordinator, who went by the name "John Jacob," was one of them: a dedicated antiwar activist and self-described anarchist. They trusted him, they put him in a key position, they befriended him – and then they found out that he was a government informant.
His real name: John Towery (here’s his myspace page, and here is a photo). He claimed to be a civilian employee at Washington state’s Ft. Lewis: in reality, he was and is a functionary of the force protection unit, i.e. military personnel. His job: spying on the antiwar movement.
Towery was "outed" when one of SPMR’s members filed a public records request in the city of Olympia for any documents, including emails, in the city’s possession that referenced communications between the city police and the military regarding "anything on anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, Students for a Democratic Society or the Industrial Workers of the World," as local antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn described it to Amy Goodman on her "Democracy Now" program. The results were startling: "I got back hundreds of documents from the city."
It was in going through this material that he and his fellow activists discovered the truth about "John Jacob": that he was a spy sent in to keep track of antiwar activity in the area, and a member of the Force Protection Service at Ft. Lewis. His fellow activists confronted him, and, as Dunn stated:
"Of course" is maybe giving Towery too much of the benefit of a doubt: after all, if his friends were arrested, and the anarchist "conspiracy" broken up, his intelligence-gathering activities would be rendered more difficult. Perhaps Dunn is allowing his residual feelings for someone he describes as a former "close friend" get in the way of a more realistic assessment. Towery did his job all too well.
Be that as it may, this incident throws the spotlight on a shadowy national network of domestic spies – in effect, Obama’s political police, who infiltrate dissident groups of whatever sort and send the information back to what are called "fusion centers," part of the new "integrated" approach to fighting our eternal "war on terrorism" — a war that isn’t only being fought on the battlefields of Afghanistan.
The enemy is not just the Taliban – it’s Americans, too. And we aren’t just talking about the various weirdos and would-be mini-Osama bin Ladens, like John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. The national hysteria over the alleged threat of "homegrown" terrorism is being stoked to a fever pitch by the latest FBI "catch," a rural North Carolina "terrorist cell" supposedly headed by the proprietor of the local drywall contractor — a former "soldier of fortune" who allegedly fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets by the name of Daniel Patrick Boyd ("also known as Mohammed"), and a good old boy if there ever was one.
The next logical stage in our carefully-stoked national hysteria is to cast the "anti-terrorist" net wider – to include antiwar organizations like SPMR, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which Towery took a particular interest in. The antiwar movement is not a collection of "terrorist cells," and yet that is precisely how the US government is dealing with them: infiltrating and spying on our organizations, planning "raids" on activist gathering places and homes, and no doubt engaging in further disruptive activities yet to be revealed. How is this possible in the land of the free?
It’s possible – and, indeed, inevitable – due to the post-9/11 national security industry that grew up in the wake of 9/11. A vast bureaucracy sprang up around the stream – nay, river – of tax dollars that flowed out of Washington in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. No expense was spared, no contractor was left behind – and the money spigot has only been opened wider now that Obama and his Keynesian advisors have decreed we must spend our way out of the economic recession. All these people, busily compiling "intelligence" on anything deemed "suspicious," are a police state waiting to be born.
The "fusion centers" are the product of a supposedly "wholistic" theory of intelligence-gathering adopted by the burgeoning Homeland Security bureaucracy in the post-9/11 era, an approach that integrates the personnel and facilities of various government agencies and pools them in designated "fusion centers." Fusing the civilian and the military, the local cop on the beat and the national security bureaucracy, the new apparatus of surveillance and repression is the virtual embodiment of government "work." Unable to get anywhere near Al Qaeda, they have to produce something to justify their funding, and naturally began to broaden the definitional limits of the "terrorist" label to include an ever-widening array of "suspicious" activities. The antiwar movement soon came into their purview, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Towery apparently worked for one such "fusion center," located at Ft. Lewis, where he routinely transmitted information about local antiwar organizations to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including military intelligence, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the immigration authorities. With his intimate knowledge of the politics and personal activities of every key member of the local "radical" scene – quite aside from having the names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information of every person on the local antiwar listserv – he was a valuable asset to anyone who wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the works. What every local activist, and anyone who’s ever signed their name to an antiwar petition or attended a meeting, needs to ask themselves is: how many other "John Jacob"s are hanging around – and to what purpose?
It can’t happen here? It has happened here.
You won’t hear or read about this in the "mainstream" media: Amy Goodman’s "Democracy Now" broke the story, and it hasn’t gone much further than that. The reason: the media is in the tank for Obama, and they don’t want to further tarnish his "progressive" credentials. After all, it’s bad enough he’s following the Bushian path on government secrecy, detainee policy, and the unprecedented expansion of presidential power.
Now that the Democrats are in power, they’re for all these things – because, after all, the Good Guys hold the reins. I can hear the Obama cultists now: They would never spy on the antiwar movement – why, for goodness sakes, most of those antiwar types voted for Obama! And now he’s sent his spies to disrupt their organizations? I don’t believe it!
Yet that, in effect, is what happened: not that the President personally ordered "Agent Orange" – as Towery was known on the listserv – to infiltrate and spy on the Washington antiwar movement. It wasn’t necessary: the "fusion centers" that dot the American landscape are merely doing what spy agencies are supposed to do, and they’re doing the same thing under President Obama that they did under George W. Bush. Obama hasn’t put a stop to it because he’s fighting an expanded version of the same war, and is loath to let a bunch of left-wing hippies stand in his way.
We have been through this before: go back and read Seymour Hersh’s exposés of government "cointelpro" operations conducted on antiwar activists and other dissidents during the 1970s. The Socialist Workers Party, at one point, had something close to a majority of police agents in its ranks, and the SWP case is a particularly egregious example of what was a widespread phenomenon during that tumultuous era.
It looks to me like we are going back in time, rather than progressing – an odd phenomenon when you consider that there’s an alleged "progressive" in the White House. To get a handle on what’s happening, consider the thoroughly reactionary Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of "eternal recurrence" – with the added fillip that each time some infamous chapter in our history repeats itself, the brazen hypocrisy of the miscreants grows worse.
At least with people like Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, we had some kind of ideological consistency and honesty: those guys thought they had the right – and the duty — to carry out their crimes against the Constitution, and didn’t make any bones about it. It’s the "progressives," who claim fealty to civil libertarian values, and yet countenance the Obama administration’s continuation and expansion of the surveillance state, that are the real danger. Because they manage to fool an awful lot of people – the very same people who wrote to me in anger and puzzlement when I first began to take on the Obama-ites. Give him a chance, they whined. He’s only just gotten into office.
Okay, well, he’s had his chance, and he hasn’t taken it. President Obama is presiding over an even wider war than George W. Bush ever dreamed of, and because of that the antiwar movement is a natural target for his spy agencies, whose reach continues to grow. Why any of this is surprising to anyone is beyond me, but then again I’ve not been inducted into the Obama cult.
One wonders what it will take for what passes for the "left" these days to wake up. If I were them, I would heed the words of Murray Rothbard, the great libertarian theorist and onetime ally of the New Left, and apply it to their own movement:
"For the libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to … discover who his friends and natural allies are, and above all, perhaps, who his enemies are."
*******************
Also see:
Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
for
Police Intelligence Operations (PIO)
Army manual for spying at home & abroad.
click here for pdf of the manuel
By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, July 31, 2009
Well, we can relax, because the bad old days of the Bush administration, when government agencies routinely spied on the antiwar movement and other dissidents, are over — right?
Wrong – very wrong.
The indispensable Amy Goodman has the scoop: The Seattle Port Militarization Resistance (SPMR) group in Washington state thought their listserv coordinator, who went by the name "John Jacob," was one of them: a dedicated antiwar activist and self-described anarchist. They trusted him, they put him in a key position, they befriended him – and then they found out that he was a government informant.
His real name: John Towery (here’s his myspace page, and here is a photo). He claimed to be a civilian employee at Washington state’s Ft. Lewis: in reality, he was and is a functionary of the force protection unit, i.e. military personnel. His job: spying on the antiwar movement.
Towery was "outed" when one of SPMR’s members filed a public records request in the city of Olympia for any documents, including emails, in the city’s possession that referenced communications between the city police and the military regarding "anything on anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, Students for a Democratic Society or the Industrial Workers of the World," as local antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn described it to Amy Goodman on her "Democracy Now" program. The results were startling: "I got back hundreds of documents from the city."
It was in going through this material that he and his fellow activists discovered the truth about "John Jacob": that he was a spy sent in to keep track of antiwar activity in the area, and a member of the Force Protection Service at Ft. Lewis. His fellow activists confronted him, and, as Dunn stated:
"He admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which … was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis. … He admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there."Oh, but he had a story: it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, he hadn’t completely betrayed his friends and associates, who had known him since 2007, when he first insinuated himself into local activist circles: because, you see, the Olympia and Tacoma cops had been planning to raid the Pitch Pipe Infoshop, as well as a house in Olympia where many activists lived, and they wanted their informant to tell them about all the guns, and drugs, and bombs that they imagined – hoped – were stockpiled there. Because, as everyone knows, no self-respecting anarchist is ever without a bomb to throw. "And, of course," says Dunn, "John told them, no, we didn’t have any of that stuff. He told them the truth."
"Of course" is maybe giving Towery too much of the benefit of a doubt: after all, if his friends were arrested, and the anarchist "conspiracy" broken up, his intelligence-gathering activities would be rendered more difficult. Perhaps Dunn is allowing his residual feelings for someone he describes as a former "close friend" get in the way of a more realistic assessment. Towery did his job all too well.
Be that as it may, this incident throws the spotlight on a shadowy national network of domestic spies – in effect, Obama’s political police, who infiltrate dissident groups of whatever sort and send the information back to what are called "fusion centers," part of the new "integrated" approach to fighting our eternal "war on terrorism" — a war that isn’t only being fought on the battlefields of Afghanistan.
The enemy is not just the Taliban – it’s Americans, too. And we aren’t just talking about the various weirdos and would-be mini-Osama bin Ladens, like John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. The national hysteria over the alleged threat of "homegrown" terrorism is being stoked to a fever pitch by the latest FBI "catch," a rural North Carolina "terrorist cell" supposedly headed by the proprietor of the local drywall contractor — a former "soldier of fortune" who allegedly fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets by the name of Daniel Patrick Boyd ("also known as Mohammed"), and a good old boy if there ever was one.
The next logical stage in our carefully-stoked national hysteria is to cast the "anti-terrorist" net wider – to include antiwar organizations like SPMR, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which Towery took a particular interest in. The antiwar movement is not a collection of "terrorist cells," and yet that is precisely how the US government is dealing with them: infiltrating and spying on our organizations, planning "raids" on activist gathering places and homes, and no doubt engaging in further disruptive activities yet to be revealed. How is this possible in the land of the free?
It’s possible – and, indeed, inevitable – due to the post-9/11 national security industry that grew up in the wake of 9/11. A vast bureaucracy sprang up around the stream – nay, river – of tax dollars that flowed out of Washington in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. No expense was spared, no contractor was left behind – and the money spigot has only been opened wider now that Obama and his Keynesian advisors have decreed we must spend our way out of the economic recession. All these people, busily compiling "intelligence" on anything deemed "suspicious," are a police state waiting to be born.
The "fusion centers" are the product of a supposedly "wholistic" theory of intelligence-gathering adopted by the burgeoning Homeland Security bureaucracy in the post-9/11 era, an approach that integrates the personnel and facilities of various government agencies and pools them in designated "fusion centers." Fusing the civilian and the military, the local cop on the beat and the national security bureaucracy, the new apparatus of surveillance and repression is the virtual embodiment of government "work." Unable to get anywhere near Al Qaeda, they have to produce something to justify their funding, and naturally began to broaden the definitional limits of the "terrorist" label to include an ever-widening array of "suspicious" activities. The antiwar movement soon came into their purview, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Towery apparently worked for one such "fusion center," located at Ft. Lewis, where he routinely transmitted information about local antiwar organizations to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including military intelligence, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the immigration authorities. With his intimate knowledge of the politics and personal activities of every key member of the local "radical" scene – quite aside from having the names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information of every person on the local antiwar listserv – he was a valuable asset to anyone who wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the works. What every local activist, and anyone who’s ever signed their name to an antiwar petition or attended a meeting, needs to ask themselves is: how many other "John Jacob"s are hanging around – and to what purpose?
It can’t happen here? It has happened here.
You won’t hear or read about this in the "mainstream" media: Amy Goodman’s "Democracy Now" broke the story, and it hasn’t gone much further than that. The reason: the media is in the tank for Obama, and they don’t want to further tarnish his "progressive" credentials. After all, it’s bad enough he’s following the Bushian path on government secrecy, detainee policy, and the unprecedented expansion of presidential power.
Now that the Democrats are in power, they’re for all these things – because, after all, the Good Guys hold the reins. I can hear the Obama cultists now: They would never spy on the antiwar movement – why, for goodness sakes, most of those antiwar types voted for Obama! And now he’s sent his spies to disrupt their organizations? I don’t believe it!
Yet that, in effect, is what happened: not that the President personally ordered "Agent Orange" – as Towery was known on the listserv – to infiltrate and spy on the Washington antiwar movement. It wasn’t necessary: the "fusion centers" that dot the American landscape are merely doing what spy agencies are supposed to do, and they’re doing the same thing under President Obama that they did under George W. Bush. Obama hasn’t put a stop to it because he’s fighting an expanded version of the same war, and is loath to let a bunch of left-wing hippies stand in his way.
We have been through this before: go back and read Seymour Hersh’s exposés of government "cointelpro" operations conducted on antiwar activists and other dissidents during the 1970s. The Socialist Workers Party, at one point, had something close to a majority of police agents in its ranks, and the SWP case is a particularly egregious example of what was a widespread phenomenon during that tumultuous era.
It looks to me like we are going back in time, rather than progressing – an odd phenomenon when you consider that there’s an alleged "progressive" in the White House. To get a handle on what’s happening, consider the thoroughly reactionary Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of "eternal recurrence" – with the added fillip that each time some infamous chapter in our history repeats itself, the brazen hypocrisy of the miscreants grows worse.
At least with people like Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, we had some kind of ideological consistency and honesty: those guys thought they had the right – and the duty — to carry out their crimes against the Constitution, and didn’t make any bones about it. It’s the "progressives," who claim fealty to civil libertarian values, and yet countenance the Obama administration’s continuation and expansion of the surveillance state, that are the real danger. Because they manage to fool an awful lot of people – the very same people who wrote to me in anger and puzzlement when I first began to take on the Obama-ites. Give him a chance, they whined. He’s only just gotten into office.
Okay, well, he’s had his chance, and he hasn’t taken it. President Obama is presiding over an even wider war than George W. Bush ever dreamed of, and because of that the antiwar movement is a natural target for his spy agencies, whose reach continues to grow. Why any of this is surprising to anyone is beyond me, but then again I’ve not been inducted into the Obama cult.
One wonders what it will take for what passes for the "left" these days to wake up. If I were them, I would heed the words of Murray Rothbard, the great libertarian theorist and onetime ally of the New Left, and apply it to their own movement:
"For the libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to … discover who his friends and natural allies are, and above all, perhaps, who his enemies are."
*******************
Also see:
Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
for
Police Intelligence Operations (PIO)
Army manual for spying at home & abroad.
click here for pdf of the manuel
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