{"id":6075,"date":"2005-12-14T09:11:59","date_gmt":"2005-12-14T14:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6075"},"modified":"2005-12-14T09:11:59","modified_gmt":"2005-12-14T14:11:59","slug":"is-the-pentagon-spying-on-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/is-the-pentagon-spying-on-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The First Amendment explains that the “right of the people peaceably to assemble” shall not be abridged. It doesn’t say anything, however, about the Pentagon spying on<\/a> those same people (via Kevin<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn’t know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.<\/p>\n

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.<\/p>\n

“This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project. <\/p>\n

“This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It’s an example of paranoia by our government,” he says. “We’re not doing anything illegal.”<\/p>\n

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9\/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups. <\/p>\n

“I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far,” says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Department of Defense didn’t want to talk to NBC about these revelations — who would have guessed — but if there’s any justice at all, this report will be too controversial to avoid for long.<\/p>\n

Specifically, NBC gained access to a Pentagon database that includes “nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center.” Even after hundreds of protests had been deemed to be harmless and\/or unconnected to the Department of Defense, they “all remained in the database.”<\/p>\n

And while the Pentagon is strictly limited in its ability to collect and retain information on American citizens, the database NBC saw “at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons.”<\/p>\n

Given the details of the report, “spying” is the only appropriate word.
\n<\/p>\n

One DOD briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.” […]<\/p>\n

“It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it’s the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Defense Department did the same kinds of things during Vietnam until Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer, helped expose the spying in a 1970 Washington Monthly article. It led to a series of congressional hearings and new legal limits on domestic military spying on American protestors.<\/p>\n

Now, 35 years later, the same problem may be repeating itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The First Amendment explains that the “right of the people peaceably to assemble” shall not be abridged. It doesn’t say anything, however, about the Pentagon spying on those same people (via Kevin). A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}