Are you the member of an anti-war or environmental activist organization? Have you attended a peaceful protest since the Patriot Act was passed?
If so, you have cause to wonder if the Pentagon or the FBI has been watching you.
Two separate revelations about government programs to spy against peaceful dissenters in the United States have surfaced this week – just as the Congress is poised to reauthorize the Patriot Act, which makes such spying against Americans possible.
NBC News has obtained a classified Pentagon document that proves the United States military has been engaged in systematic spying on law-abiding Americans within the United States for no other reason than that those Americans were protesting against Bush Administration policies. That’s right – thanks to the Patriot Act, the American military has been working for the last several years to establish a spy network within the USA to keep track of people who dare to dissent.
NBC has only released a few pages of the report – just to prove its point. We have a copy of the file on our server now. Go ahead and take a look – were you one of the people present at the protests listed on these pages? If so, then you have been listed by the military as a terrorist “threat”. No kidding. When the military talks about the terrorist enemy, they mean YOU. Consider that there are almost 400 more pages of records of military espionage against American anti-war protesters that NBC News has not yet made public – 400 pages of records of different protests infiltrated, manipulated, and monitored by covert American military operations. If you’re against the war in Iraq, you’re considered a legitimate military target.
In another revelation of government spying against peaceful political dissent, the Colorado ACLU has received government records documenting spying organized by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force against absolutely nonviolent environmentalist protests. Yes, I’m talking about tree huggers. That’s what the Patriot Act is being used for – government spying against peaceful environmental protests.
What does this kind of spying have to do with Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, Al Quaeda and the fighting the everlasting war on terror? Nothing, but that’s not stopping the FBI.
To our Republican readers, let me point out that these activities ought to remind you of the totalitarian tactics of the KGB in the Soviet Union. Are you for the renewal of the Patriot Act? If so, then you’re supporting the Stalinization of the United States of America.
Who’d have thought it? Dirty Republican Commies.
The Patriot act pretty much undid all the domestic intelligence reforms that followed Cointelpro. So we can expect to see covert military counterinsurgency campaigns conducted against peaceful dissidents in the United States. Wondering if they’ve clued in the Karl Rove is a threat yet. Hey, “everything changed” after 9/11.
Another classified document…no doubt Dan Rather obtained it first but decided NBC should get the credit after the way CBS treated him.
“we can expect to see covert military counterinsurgency campaigns conducted against peaceful dissidents in the United States”
Where do people come up with this BS? I suggest wrapping your head in tinfoil…it alters the brain waves thereby rendering your subversive thoughts useless.
“NBC News has obtained a classified Pentagon document that proves the United States military has been engaged in systematic spying on law-abiding Americans within the United States for no other reason than that those Americans were protesting against Bush Administration policies.”
I read your report..not a single mention of any individual. Most of the reports were deemed not credible. Most of the information came from applications submitted to local authorities about pending protests and didn’t we develop the Department of Homeland Security so that we can monitor groups that might pose a threat. Everyone of these events were held in public..not exactly what I would call an intelligence coup. How soon we forget 9/11.
Crusader, your reaction to this is weird.
On the one hand, you’re suggesting that this pentagon document, which is genuine, is somehow suspect.
Then, you’re suggesting that we ought to try to suppress our subversive thoughts.
Then, you suggest that there’s no threat to having the military gathering information about American citizens gathering to express political dissent.
Then, you suggest that, somehow, anti-war protesters are “a threat” to Homeland Security.
If you read the report, which is not OUR report, but part of a much, much larger database assembled by military domestic espionage units, you’d see that much of their reports are not on the events that took place in public, but on the PLANNING for those events.
Aren’t you curious about how the American military is gaining information about planning meetings of political dissenters???? Doesn’t that remind you at all of the Soviet Union’s program of having citizens reporting on each other – as in the Air Force’s Eagle Eyes program?
Please, explain to me how peaceful anti-war protesters are threats to Homeland Security, “Crusader”, because you’re not making sense.
Crusader seems like someone who has never read enough to hear about COINTELPRO – and hasn’t bothered to read respected newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor, which is now reporting that the Pentagon has confirmed that this document is a genuine product of its Talon program.
This is not, Crusader, some radical conspiracy theory. It’s a confirmed fact.
Now, why doesn’t this bother you? What kind of America do you want to live in?
I know the America I want to live in – an America where we show respect for the Bill of Rights, including the right to free assembly without government interference, the right to petition for redress of grievances, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
Peregrin beat me to the punch.
I admonish tin foil hat people regularly here. This is not tin foil hat material. In the sixties and seventies, and now in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there are documented cases of counterinsurgency campaigns against law-abiding American citizens.
From today’s White House Press Gaggle with W.H. Spokesman Scott McClellan:
If we believe Scott McClellan, the White House will be telling us all about this program. I’m waiting, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
My father was a counter intelligence officer during the ’50′s and ’60s. I tried to tell him he was good at his job and that’s why I did so lousy in school. Dad didn’t find that particularly risible. But, knowing what I know about such people, what makes anyone think the military ever stopped? Because some law said they had to? Just because they SAID they did?Remember Jessica Lynch and the story behind that. I mentioned before that I’d read an article in 1973 about how it was “time to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.” And what I’ve been seeing since 1980 has pretty much followed.
Good grief. There’s enough stupidity here, we don’t NEED a Pentagon database.
This database came from tips provided to the Counterintelligence Field Activity, some on their 1-800-CALL-SPY hotline. Primarily, the activities in question were provided to CIFA by anonymous morons ratting out their neighbors for completely harmless stuff.
Such information is marked “Not Credible” in the database, and is supposed to be removed within 90 days at most. That didn’t happen, and DoD announced it’s going to review what went wrong and clean up the program.
We’ll be watching to make sure that happens.
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