ACLU of Pennsylvania Seeks Pentagon Files on Peace Groups
CONTACT: media@aclu
orgPart of a National Effort to Uncover Details of Pentagon Domestic Spying Program
“Pentagon spies do not belong in Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia or in State College,“ said Mary Catherine Roper, staff attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “We don’t need the military to protect us from lawful protests by concerned citizens.”
The ACLU of Pennsylvania filed its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, the Thomas Merton Center, the Anti-War Committee, CODEPINK Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Raging Grannies, Pittsburgh Bill of Rights Defense Campaign and the Save Our Civil Liberties Campaign. The ACLU is seeking the disclosure of all documents maintained by the Department of Defense on the individuals and groups, as well as information on whether the records have been shared with other government agencies.
The national ACLU filed a similar FOIA request on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice and Greenpeace. Other ACLU affiliates are seeking Pentagon files on local groups in Georgia, Rhode Island, Maine, and California.
Some of the groups involved in today’s action, such as the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, learned through news reports in December that they are listed in the Pentagon’s Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. The TALON program was initiated by former Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 to track groups and individuals with possible links to terrorism, but the Pentagon has been collecting information on peaceful activists and monitoring anti-war and anti-military recruiting protests throughout the United States. Following public outcry over the domestic spying program, current Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England issued a memorandum on January 13 directing intelligence personnel to receive “refresher training on the policies for collection, retention, dissemination and use of information related to U.S. persons.”
The ACLU has exposed and challenged other expanded domestic spying programs as well. Documents requested by the ACLU under previous FOIA requests have revealed that the FBI is using its Joint Terrorism Task Forces to gather extensive information about peaceful organizations such as Greenpeace and Food Not Bombs. Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and attorneys against the National Security Agency for illegally intercepting vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of Americans without court approval.
“The Pentagon’s monitoring of anti-war protesters is yet another example of a government agency using its powers to spy on law-abiding Americans who criticize U.S. policies,” said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the national ACLU. “How can we believe that the National Security Agency is intercepting only al Qaeda phone calls when we have evidence that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on student activists in Pittsburgh?”
For details and documents regarding the FOIA requests filed today by the ACLU around the country, including a list of clients, go to www.aclu.org/spyfiles