Here's a story I did for the current issue of Random Lengths News. This was covered by Democracy Now! just after the story broke locally, but has mostly been ignored, despite it's very serious implications.
Military Spy Outed In Olympia Brings Back Bad Old Days
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
In Olympia, Washington, former city council member TJ Johns was outraged at the late July revelation that a military spy-one John Towery, operating as "John Jacob"-had infiltrated a local anti-war group and related organizations. After initial stonewalling, Towery has been confirmed as a civilian intelligence employee working for the Fort Lewis Force Protection Fusion Cell.
"The idea that our government is monitoring and harassing citizens who are engaging in first amendment expression against what are clearly illegal wars under international law is just stunning," Johns told Random Lengths.
Outraged, yes. But surprised?
"I'm not surprised," Johns said. "We've known for some time that law enforcement had been monitoring cell phone conversations. They had infiltrated email lists that had been used for organize."
The military spying appears to be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, according to Eugene R. Fidell, a Yale Law School faculty member, former judge advocate for the Coast Guard and the president of the National Institute of Military who was quoted to that effect by Olympia's daily paper, The Olympian, on July 30. It also recalls the systematic surveillance, infiltration and disruption of anti-war and civil rights groups that occurred during the 1960s, most famously under the FBI's COINTELPRO program, but also by the military as well.
"The fact this was going on for two years is troubling," said ACLU researcher Mike German, "especially since we've been warning in our reports about the involvement of the military in domestic intelligence gathering." German has focused on the spread of "fusion centers", which centralize information sharing between federal, military, state, local and private security agencies across the country.
Black Colleges Profiled as Suspected Havens for "Extremists"
[Summary] Don't let the apolitical facades fool you. Virginia's four Black colleges are hotbeds of "militancy and rebellion" and magnets for "a wide variety of terror or extremist groups." So says a government-funded outfit called the Virginia Fusion Center, which also cautions against the national security dangers inherent in diversity. "While the vast majority of these individuals are law-abiding, this ethnic diversity also affords terrorist operatives the opportunity to assimilate easily into society, without arousing suspicion." Safe, secure communities are uniformly white and English-speaking.
There aren't many other places you will hear about this bogus homeland security report--in rather sharp contrast to the accurate report released just over two weeks ago--"Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" (pdf)--which discussed very real potential threats posed by rightwing extremists, including white supremacists, getting whipped up back into their 1990s/Clinton Era anti-government frenzy. that was when Iraq War vet Timothy McVeigh spearheaded the terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the most devastating single act of terrorism inside the US in decades, right up until 9/11.
That earlier report was savagely attacked by movement conservatives for supposedly "profiling conservatives" as terrorists (Michelle Malkin, Washington Times: "the Obama Homeland Security report is an overarching indictment of conservatives.}) even though the word "conservative" did not appear in the report. They also attacked it for supposedly citing returning veterans as potential terrorists (like Timothy McVeigh, no?), (Malkin: "the report relies on the work of the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center to stir anxiety over 'disgruntled military veterans'") when the report actually said--directly under the heading "Disgruntled Military Veterans" "DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."
In short, the DHS "Rightwing Extremism" report was attacked with a typical onslaught of rightwing lies and distortions--and the Clinton Obama Administration ended up apologizing for what they had not actually done.
Here, on the other hand, the same Homeland Security apparatus (though not the federal department directly) has produced a truly baseless report that does rely on group stereotyping, in sharp defiance of the actual entities being discussed, and there's barely a blip on anyone's radar, at least so far. It couldn't be because the targets here are black, could it? No, of course not. Just not possible in today's "post-racial" America.
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