Pentagon admits error on 'threat' (Broward, FL Anti-War Coalition)

[seafan]

Pentagon admits error on 'threat'

BY ROBERTO SANTIAGO
October 13, 2006



MARIANNE ARMSHAW/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD
ANTI-WAR PROTEST: More than 200 protestors, including members of the Broward Anti-War Coalition, chant 'No blood for oil' and 'Give Peace a Chance' at a protest in 2002.

A South Florida anti-war group's peaceful protest of military recruitment during last year's Fort Lauderdale Air & Sea Show was labeled ''subversive'' and was being monitored by the Pentagon, which kept a report on the protest in a database designed to track domestic terrorist threats.
That report in the Defense Department's Threat and Local Observation Notice database, or TALON, was a mistake, a Defense spokesman said Thursday. And the circumstances that led to the surveillance of the Broward Anti-War Coalition -- along with other groups nationwide -- have already been corrected, said Maj. Patrick Ryder, spokesman for the office of the assistant secretary of defense.

Nonetheless, details of the report, one of several such documents on groups around the country that were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Thursday, provided fresh details about the TALON program, which first received attention in late 2005.

snip

It's not clear how the group's plans for last year's Air & Sea Show, which began April 30, 2005, were reported to the Defense Department.
Documents that the ACLU obtained via the federal Freedom of Information Act indicated that the source of the report was the Miami-Dade Police Department, which filed a report dated April 12, 2005.
But Miami-Dade police on Thursday disputed the document, saying its officers never investigated the Broward anti-war protesters -- and never provided information on the Air & Sea Show protest to the Pentagon database.

snip

In December 2005, when NBC News first reported on the TALON database, ''We put oversight steps into place that will prevent these kind of mistakes from happening again,'' Ryder said.
He said reports that are not relevant to terrorism have been removed from the database and that government ``personnel received immediate refresher training concerning the laws, policies and procedures that govern collection.''

snip

One ACLU leader criticized what he described as a pattern of government surveillance of war protesters.

''I am gratified and pleased by the government's 25th annual announcement that it made a mistake with regards of the rights of American citizens to peacefully protest against the war,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida ACLU. He added that this ''abuse of power'' was similar to what President Richard Nixon did to Vietnam anti-war protesters.
Ackerman, of the coalition, remained skeptical of the entire incident.
''It's easy to admit you made a mistake when you've been caught,'' he said.

snip

[Amonester]

1. One (criminal) "mistake" found...

How many other (criminal) "mistakes" have they made??

Will a Dem majority in Congress ever "find" (and prosecute the criminals who "made") all those (criminal) "mistakes"??

Will We The People apply "enough" "pressure"??
Sure "hope" so...

[seafan]

2. Try, convict and imprison these criminals, "for the good of the country."

This is the only way we, as a nation, will begin to heal.

Justice.


What we are seeing today is precisely why letting off the Iran-Contra criminals without proper investigation and incarceration was a deadly mistake. Thanks to George H. W. Bush's pardons, we are still battling the same decaying ideologies, in a much more virulent form.


Hope everyone is planning to read Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival--America's Quest For Global Dominance.

It will open one's eyes.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Since when does the Pentagon spy on Americans?

Isn't there a thing called posse comitatus?

The FBI, yes, the Justice department, yes, but The Pentagon?

It was bad enough when Hoover was using the FBI to spy on and harass anti-war groups. Since when was this function taken over by the military?