The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act at the ACLU’s request, were from the Pentagon’s Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. The list was established in 2003 by the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a fast-growing Department of Defense (DOD) spy agency launched four years ago to help centralize the U.S. government’s “counterterrorism” spying operations. The program is part of expanding the use of the U.S. military in domestic operations under the banner of “homeland defense.”

The TALON documents state that their purpose is to “alert” the Pentagon “to potential terrorist activity.” The files report on protests against military recruiting, demonstrations against the U.S. war in Iraq, campus meetings, gatherings of Quaker and other pacifist groups, and hundreds of other activities.

In an April 2005 report, a cop from the Federal Protective Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, detailed plans by groups in Atlanta to hold protests against the Iraq war. “This update is submitted to clarify why the Students for Peace and Justice represent a potential threat to DOD personnel,” it stated. The report noted that “at least two members of the Atlanta area Students for Peace and Justice have expressed interest in doing more than just protesting and want to be more aggressive in conducting ‘civil disobedience.’”

In another report later that month, TALON records an incident where a local army recruiter walked into an "anti-war memorial" in New Orleans organized by Veterans for Peace, and a confrontation with some of the protesters allegedly ensued. “Veterans for Peace claim to be non-violent,” the report states. “This incident demonstrates a propensity for violence, and the Veterans for Peace should be viewed as a possible threat to Army and DOD personnel.”

In December 2005 NBC News reported on CIFA files listing more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” nationwide over a 10-month period. Among these were two protests at the State University of New York in Albany. SUNY student Ben O'Shaughnessy, a Young Socialists member, told the Militant that students read in the press at the time how the Pentagon had spied on activities organized by Campus Action and the Campus Greens earlier that year, including an April march by 100 students against military recruiting on campus.

"This is a clear example of how the government’s ‘antiterror’ campaign targets the political rights of working people and youth at home as well as furthering U.S. imperialist interests abroad,” O'Shaughnessy said.  
 
‘We fixed it’
In a November 21 New York Times article, acting CIFA director Daniel Baur argued that the Pentagon’s files on peace groups were just a mistake. “I don’t want it, we shouldn’t have had it, not interested in it,” he said, insisting that once the “problem” was discovered, “we fixed it.”

Regarding Baur’s assertion that CIFA had stopped collecting files on political groups, Michael McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace, told the Times, “I don’t believe it.”

The Washington Post reported in March that the Pentagon agency has spent more than $1 billion since it was established in 2002, growing into an operation “with nine directorates and widening authority.” It has contracted corporations such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to develop “antiterrorist” programs to comb through commercial databases and individual e-mail “to provide comprehensive information about people of interest.”

A number of other federal police agencies are snooping on opponents of Washington’s policies. In October the FBI released documents showing that it has been monitoring groups protesting the Iraq war. In December 2005, Washington admitted that the National Security Agency tapped hundreds if not thousands of U.S. phone calls to people in other countries without applying for a warrant. U.S. officials have defended the domestic spying as a "wartime necessity."

Congress voted in March to renew the 2001 Patriot Act, which grants increased powers to the FBI and other police agencies to conduct spying, searches, and seizures in private homes and businesses, among other things.

Democrats and Republicans have been steadily pushing to legitimize the expanded use of the political police in the name of “fighting terrorism” at home. They seek to eliminate restraints that were placed on police spying and disruption operations under the impact of the struggle for Black rights and the movement against the Vietnam War. Senate hearings in 1975 detailed sweeping constitutional rights violations by military and other federal intelligence units against opponents of the Vietnam War, supporters of the Black and Chicano struggles, the women’s liberation movement, the unions, communists, and others.

A 1973 lawsuit by the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialist Alliance against FBI and CIA spying and harassment shed further light on such operations. In 1986 a federal court ruled in favor of the SWP and YSA. The record of this victory and of the disruption campaigns can be found in the Pathfinder Press books FBI On Trial and COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom.
 
 
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