Also see below:     
Allie Deger |Interview with a "Credible Threat"    [

    Pentagon Ordered to Expedite Handover of UC Spying Records
    By Roger Sideman
    The Santa Cruz Sentinel

    Sunday 28 May 2006

    Trying to learn more about reports of military spying at UC Santa Cruz last year, campus group Students Against War scored a victory this week when a federal judge ordered the Department of Defense to expedite a public-records request made by the group.

    In January, Students Against War asked the Pentagon to disclose whether it spied on San Francisco Bay Area student organizations, and release any information gathered on the organizations.

    U.S. 9th District Court Judge William Alsup ruled Thursday that such information is "of significant importance to public policy and public protest," impelling the Department of Defense to act more quickly on the student request.

    Students said they were pleased with the decision.

    "We're happy because it shows that being spied on has to be taken seriously," said Students Against War member Kot Hordynski, who sat in on Thursday's hourlong hearing in San Francisco. Hordynski said lawyers told him the Pentagon records, public under the Freedom of Information Act, could be handed over within three months.

    A lawsuit filed in March by the Northern California chapter of the ACLU, on behalf of Students Against War and a UC Berkeley anti-war group, asked the Department of Defense to promptly disclose information from an obscure Pentagon agency that included reports on protests and other peaceful civilian demonstrations in a database meant to detect terrorist activities.

    Among the incidents researched and described as a threat to U.S. security was an April 2005 protest against military recruiters at a UCSC job fair. The noisy sit-in temporarily shut down the job fair and resulted in the departure of the recruiters whose presence triggered the protest.

    The database, which a Pentagon fact sheet says is meant to capture information "indicative of possible terrorist pre-attack activity," came to light in December when NBC News obtained details on its contents.

    To support the student request for expediting the information, ACLU attorneys submitted several news stories to the Department of Defense, including an article from the Sentinel, to show the media has "a compelling need for information" to inform the public about alleged spy programs.

    The Department of Defense rejected a student request for expedited records on Feb. 13, just two days after it deleted mention of the Students Against War protest from its database at the request of Chancellor Denice Denton. The department's explanation stated that additional information was not worthy of "breaking news" and therefore there is no legal obligation to rush the process.

    "The public has a right to know the extent to which the Defense Department is spying on political protest," said attorney Amitai Schwartz, who argued the case for ACLU. "The court moved us one step closer to finding out the facts about what really happened."

    A Department of Defense representative would not comment on the decision Friday.

 

---

    Interview with a "Credible Threat"
    Interview with Josh Sonnenfeld
    Allie Deger | t r u t h o u t

    Saturday 21 January 2006

Editor's Note: On April 5, 2005, UC Santa Cruz's Students Against War (SAW) led a 200-person protest at a campus job fair, voicing strong dissent toward on-campus military recruitment. Eventually, the efforts of the students proved effective as the military recruiters were forced off the campus by the students' vocal opposition. The protest gained national attention for SAW as well as sparking an interest from the Pentagon. (Interview by Allie Deger.)

    *TO: How and when did you discover that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on students from the University California Santa Cruz (UCSC)? Was there any indication other than the MSNBC report, were anyone's neighbors, employers, professors, etc., contacted or questioned by the NSA?

    JS: As far as we know, it wasn't the NSA that was spying on students at UC Santa Cruz, rather the Pentagon, specifically the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence Group. The first we heard of the Pentagon spying on us was from the document that MSNBC released in December. While many of us suspected, due to historical repetition, that Pentagon or other federal officials were involved in this sort of activity, the news was still upsetting.

    *TO: Describe the protest on April 5, 2005. Where did it take place? Were there any speakers present?

    JS: Our April 5th protest was an act of nonviolent direct action against military recruiters that had been invited to a campus job fair. Approximately 300 students peacefully marched into the job fair and held a sit-in/teach-in until all military recruiters left. After all representatives of the military were gone, all the student protesters left the job fair except for a couple that, under our agreement with UCSC's Administration, occupied the military recruiters' former tables to pass out literature and ensure that the military would not return.

    More accounts and photos are available here.

    *TO: What was the University's response when it found out that the NSA was spying on its students?

    JS: UCSC's Administration was initially very quiet. After weeks of consistent media attention and faculty pressure, the Chancellor (the top campus official) denounced the DoD spying in a press release. They later contacted local and state representatives, yet failed to contact the actual students that had been spied, which is why we requested a meeting with them a week or two ago.

    *TO: Was any protection offered by the University in terms of safeguarding its students' privacy?

    JS: One of the arguments that we have been making ever since we found out that the Pentagon was spying on us was that spying is nothing new, for either the Pentagon or for UCSC's administration and police. While we appreciate the Administration's denunciation of Pentagon spying, there are many concrete things they and Campus Police need to do to ensure that all surveillance and repression ends. A turf war between the University Administration and the Pentagon over who can spy on us students is unacceptable. All spying and repression must end now. It's time to end the free speech 'zones,' the undercover police infiltration, the administrators trolling our listservs and collecting our emails, and the overall criminalization of dissent.

    *TO: Were the Santa Cruz local police also spying on Students Against War (SAW) or any other peace organization affiliated with UCSC?

    JS: That's one of the things we're currently in the process of figuring out. Obviously the Pentagon cannot be spying on students without some degree of help from local operatives or officials. An unnamed Pentagon source told MSNBC that the Pentagon always works through local officials - so it is very likely there's someone in UCSC's administration, police, or in the city of Santa Cruz that was colluding with the Pentagon.

    Not long after we discovered that we had been spied on by the Pentagon, a group of New Years eve parade organizers in the City of Santa Cruz learned that two Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) officers were infiltrating their meetings (falsly identifying themselves, provide fake emails, etc.). So its shows that the SCPD doesn't find this type of activity to be problemmatic, and could have had some sort of collusion with the Pentagon. However, it's much more likely that it was a member of the Campus Police, as the University is their jurisdiction. It also seems very likely that the Pentagon has individuals gathering information on peaceful protest activity through the internet.

    We're in the process of filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, with the generous help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). If the DoD cooperates, the FOIA can be extremely helpful in gathering precisly this type of information.

    *TO: Do you have any suspicion of a correlation between the activities of the local police and the spying of the NSA on UCSC students?

    JS: As I mentioned above, it is likely that there was some sort of collusion between local police (probably Campus Police) and the Pentagon, although UCSC's administration denies it. If anyone has this information, we urge them to come forward, otherwise we will hope to find out more details from our Freedom of Information Act request.

    *TO: In a report by the New York Times, you said in response to the question: were you surprised by the NSA spying on SAW, "... it doesn't surprise me because our own university has been spying on us since our group was founded." In what form was UCSC spying on SAW? How did you learn this information?

    JS: UCSC's Administration and Campus Police have been spying on our organization, as well as others involved in protest activity on campus. The administration fiercly denies it, but all you have to do is look at this collection of pictures.

    We believe this individual is a UCSC Police officer by the name of Brian Hughes, although he does not identify himself. He was seen at multiple protests in the Spring of 2005, including our April 5th counter-recruitment action, where he physically manhandled a couple students (see picture in the top-left). If you look at the photo in the top-center (from April 14, 2005 - a strike solidarity rally) you will see that this police officer is wearing a green armband. This shows that he is acting as an infiltrator, as the green armband was worn by students showing their support for the union that was on strike. In this photo, he is being confronted by workers and students for videotaping them, something he did at multiple protests.

    Other acts of surveillance UCSC's administration and police have been involved with has been collecting the names and emails of particular student activists, monitoring student organizations' listserves, sending an undercover agent into a protest preparation workshop, and having a 'Demonstration Response Team' monitoring every campus protest. This is all done without student consent, and in addition to already limited free speech on campus due to our 'free speech zones' and other restrictive protest policies.

    *TO: Which came first the chicken or the egg? Did the meetings and events sponsored by SAW attract the NSA, or was SAW inspired by the insidious spying of the NSA?

    UCSC's Students Against War has been around since January 20th, 2005 - Bush's re-inaguration. We began organizing because we were tired of sitting around and being depressed about the world we will inherit. Our primary goals are to combat militarism on our campus, in schools, and in society as a whole. Once we learned that we had been spied on by the Pentagon, we immediately organized to denounce that as well. It has given us a prime opportunity to make the points that we have been making all along - namely that the U.S. military does not exist to 'defend our freedom,' but rather to curtail it and endanger us and millions around the globe. For those of us that are concerned about freedom and liberty, we must take action by ourselves and in our communities, rather than falsly hope that a strong military will somehow make us free.

    We've held multiple actions and events during the year, and the Pentagon's spies will only embolden us to work harder.

    *TO: How many members founded SAW and what is the membership now? Have you seen an increase or decline in membership?

    JS: SAW was founded by about 150 people that came out to a rally on Jan. 20, 2005. At the end of the rally, we all sat down and planned out how we were going to turn our words into actions and change. The next day, we had our first meeting, which was attended by around 75 people. Every Friday night about 50 of us meet to strategize, although the overall membership of SAW is closer to 100 and our actions and events are very well attended by the UCSC community.

    Since the Pentagon spying scandal, we've gotten more members, and I expect we'll continue to grow as the year goes on. When you are spied on, your initial reaction is to want to hide and avoid it all, but then you realize that you are stronger in numbers, and stronger when you speak out. So that's what we're doing - we're organizing hard to ensure that this type of activity does not happen again (although its happened throughout U.S. history) and that those structures that enable this form of activity are stripped of their power. We're also continuing to organize around our core issues as well - counter-recruitment at UCSC and in local high schools, disconnecting the University of California from weapons production (nuclear and otherwise), and educating our community about the negative effects of war and militarism.

    *TO: What forms of action did SAW pursue to voice dissent about the NSA spying?

    JS: We've primarily been speaking with a wide array of media outlets and doing our best to get the word out about the Pentagon spying scandal. The press we've generated has forced UCSC's administration to denounce the spying, and forced two investigations - one by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) and another by the pro-war Senator Feinstein (D-CA).

    It has also forced UCSC's Chancellor and other top administrators to agree to meet with us for the first time.

    *TO: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), section 1809a, makes it a criminal offense to "engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." Furthermore, the act stipulates that, "In the absence of a judicial order approving such electronic surveillance, the surveillance shall terminate when the information sought is obtained, when the application for the order is denied, or after the expiration of 72 hours from the time of authorization by the Attorney General, whichever is earliest. In the event that such application for approval is denied, or in any other case where the electronic surveillance is terminated and no order is issued approving the surveillance, no information obtained or evidence derived from such surveillance shall be received in evidence or otherwise disclosed in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court, grand jury, department, office, agency, regulatory body, legislative committee, or other authority of the United States, a State, or political subdivision thereof."

    According to FISA, essentially, the evidence gathered about UCSC students is inadmissible in court, so what do you think was the motive behind the NSA spying?

    JS: I suspect the motives behind the Pentagon spying are twofold:

    1) They want to gather information primarily about the counter-recruitment movement, as we're part of why military recruiting over the past few years has been so abysmal. They want to know who we are, our motives, how we organize, and everything they can about us. This is their acknowledgement that we are a 'threat' (or a 'credible threat' as in the case of Students Against War) to the military's ability to wage war.

    2) The only reason to have information is to do something with it. In this regard, the Pentagon has/will use(d) the information they've obtained about the counter-recruitment movement, organizations, and individuals to repress peaceful political dissent. They are effectively calling us 'terrorists' because we are making it more difficult for the Pentagon to recruit, and therefore more difficult for them to continue the war in Iraq. Their 'War on Terrorism,' as is common in times of war, has included a war against domestic dissent. This is in stark contrast to the Constitution that they are sworn to protest.

    This repression has already happend to a certain degree. After the Pentagon spied a counter-recruitment protest planned for the City College of New York (CCNY) last spring, students were violently brutalized by campus police. I tend to believe that this was not a coincidence.

    *TO: 1,500 counts of misconduct were monitored during a period of 10 months at UCSC. Do you have a theory about what type of 'misconduct' the NSA was referring to?

    JS: There were actually about 1,500 'incidents' on the 400+ page document that MSNBC obtained. MSNBC has only released 8 of those pages. Those 8 pages include about 4 dozen 'incidents,' only one of which directly cites UCSC. These 'incidents' ranged from a military recruiter receiving a counter-recruitment postcard to Quakers having a regular weekly meeting, or protests such as the one that occured at UC Santa Cruz on April 5th. We've asked MSNBC to release the other 392+ pages so that we can see who else the Pentagon has been spying on, and also to determine if the Pentagon spied on other protests at UCSC.

    *TO: According to the New York Times, "the Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States." What sort of threat does SAW pose to the Bush Administration?

    JS: The Bush administration has specifically been talking about the NSA spying, and, to my knowledge, has not commented about the Pentagon spying scandal. I understand the confusion though - as there's so many scandals its sometimes hard to keep track of which is which.

    The Pentagon claims to have started some internal overhaul of their spying system, but we cannot trust the spies to reform themselves, especially considering that's exactly what they were supposed to do after COINTELPRO. Instead, we must ask ourselves what power structures and institutions allow certain agencies or individuals the power to be plotting these horrific activities. Rather than reform those that continue to repress political dissent, we must strategically consider how we can abolish them and the power structures that maintain their position. We need to place our trust in our own hands, rather than those of the Pentagon or the government. Failing to do so will leave our children asking these same questions - asking why the 'reform' that was supposed to happen did not work.

    As far as Bush's comments about needing illegal spying to secure the United States, we need to see through his words and analyze them appropriately. The biggest threat to the United States is the Bush administration, his serpentine supporters, and their relentless wars at home and abroad. If 'securing America' is your primary concern, its time to join us in the streets and on the picket lines. Safety is something we build together, something that comes from our communities and from our solidarity with others. War won't buy us safety or freedom. We must look towards ourselves and towards a continuous struggle against the root problems that affect us all.

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.