1.
OLYMPIA ANTIWAR GROUP SAYS FORT LEWIS EMPLOYEE A SPY
By Jeremy Pawloski
** Allegation: Fort Lewis employee accused of posing as anarchist to join organization of protesters **
Olympian (Olympia, WA)
July 28, 2009
http://www.theolympian.com/southsound/story/922995.html
or
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/825710.html
OLYMPIA –- Fort Lewis plans an inquiry into claims by members of an Olympia antiwar group that a civilian employee of the fort infiltrated and spied on the group for nearly two years.
Members of Olympia Port Militarization Resistance say that John J. Towery posed as an anarchist and took part in the antiwar group’s activities from 2007 until last month.
A Fort Lewis spokesman said Monday that an officer has been appointed to conduct an inquiry into the allegation.
The Fort Lewis employee was identified as John J. Towery, a member of “Fort Lewis Force Protection,” in an e-mail that was obtained by the antiwar group in March. OlyPMR member Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said in an interview Monday that he received a copy of the e-mail from the city of Olympia in response to a public records request asking for any information the city had about “anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), or Industrial Workers of the World.”
OlyPMR is opposed to the war in Iraq, and since 2006, the group has staged protests at Washington ports seeking to block Fort Lewis from loading or unloading military cargo used in Iraq.
The Olympian obtained a copy of the e-mail identifying Towery as a member of “Fort Lewis Force Protection” from Dunn on Monday. The e-mail included a Fort Lewis phone number and a military e-mail address.
OlyPMR member Drew Hendricks said that after looking at the e-mail, he checked a voter registration database to find out where Towery lives.
After that, PMR members conducted surveillance of Towery’s Spanaway residence and of the vehicles driven by Towery. That confirmed that Towery had taken part in the antiwar group’s activities using the name “John Jacob,” Hendricks said.
Dunn said he considered the man whom he knew as John Jacob as a fellow anarchist, and a compassionate and generous friend. Dunn said that when he met John Jacob in 2007, “he said he was an anarchist, he said he hung out with anarchists all the time.” Dunn said the man he knew as Jacob was active with other anti-war organizations in addition to OlyPMR.
Towery was one of several OlyPMR listserv administrators that had control over the dissemination of OlyPMR’s electronic communications.
Dunn said that during a private meeting with Towery last week, Towery admitted that he spied on OlyPMR while posing as one of its members, but he said that no one paid him and that he didn’t report to the military.
Towery could not be reached for comment Monday.
Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek confirmed Monday that Towery is a civilian employed at Fort Lewis. “Mr. John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media,” Piek wrote in an e-mail to The Olympian.
Piek added in the e-mail that Fort Lewis is aware of the claim against Towery, and that Fort Lewis is investigating.
“To ensure all regulatory guidelines were followed, the command has decided that an inquiry is prudent, and an officer is being appointed to conduct the inquiry,” according to Piek’s e-mail. “In the meantime, we cannot provide any information while the inquiry is under way.”
Hendricks said the information Towery had access to while acting as an OlyPMR member could have been used to sabotage the organization.
“He knew where people lived, he knew how people operated, he knew what people’s phone numbers were,” Hendricks said.
Since 2006, OlyPMR has tried to block military cargo from Fort Lewis from entering or leaving public ports in Washington. During OlyPMR protests in November 2007, Olympia police sprayed protesters with pepper-spray and struck them with batons.
During those protests, OlyPMR members stood in front of moving military vehicles and formed human blockades at the port to prevent the military equipment from returning to Fort Lewis from Iraq.
Last week, Hendricks posted on OlyBlog a link to an article on seattle.indymedia.org identifying Towery as a Fort Lewis employee, along with Towery’s photo. Towery has been removed from his former role as an administrator for OlyPMR’s listserv, according to the article.
Jeremy Pawloski: 360-754-5465
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
2.
[Blog]
FOB Tacoma
LEWIS OFFICIALS INVESTIGATING SPY CLAIM
By Scott Fontaine
News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
July 28, 2009
Original source: News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
The Olympian has an interesting story today about claims from an Olympia antiwar group that a civilian employee of Fort Lewis' force protection fusion cell spied on their meetings for nearly two years.
The group says the employee, John Towery, passed himself off as a fellow anarchist and became an administrator on the group's e-mail listserv.
Fort Lewis, meanwhile, said an officer has been appointed to conduct an inquiry into the allegation. And here's what Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek had to say about it: "Mr. John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media," he wrote in an e-mail to the Olympian.
3.
OBAMA'S MILITARY IS SPYING ON U.S. PEACE GROUPS
By Amy Goodman
Truthdig
July 28, 2009
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090728_obamas_military_is_spying_on_us_peace_groups/
Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard.
The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.
Brendan Maslauskas Dunn asked the city of Olympia for documents or e-mails about communications between the Olympia police and the military relating to anarchists, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) or the Industrial Workers of the World (Dunn’s union). Dunn received hundreds of documents. One e-mail contained reference to a “John J. Towery II,” who activists discovered was the same person as their fellow activist “John Jacob.”
Dunn told me: “John Jacob was actually a close friend of mine, so this week has been pretty difficult for me. He said he was an anarchist. He was really interested in SDS. He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance (PMR), with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was a kind person. He was a generous person. So it was really just a shock for me.”
“Jacob” told the activists he was a civilian employed at Fort Lewis Army Base and would share information about base activities that could help the PMR organize rallies and protests against public ports being used for troop and Stryker military vehicle deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2006, PMR activists have occasionally engaged in civil disobedience, blocking access to the port.
Larry Hildes, an attorney representing Washington activists, says the U.S. attorney prosecuting the cases against them, Brian Kipnis, specifically instructed the Army not to hand over any information about its intelligence-gathering activities, despite a court order to do so.
Which is why Dunn’s request to Olympia and the documents he obtained are so important.
The military is supposed to be barred from deploying on U.S. soil, or from spying on citizens. Christopher Pyle, now a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, was a military intelligence officer. He recalled: “In the 1960s, Army intelligence had 1,500 plainclothes agents [and some would watch] every demonstration of 20 people or more. They had a giant warehouse in Baltimore full of information on the law-abiding activities of American citizens, mainly protest politics.” Pyle later investigated the spying for two congressional committees: “As a result of those investigations, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished, and all of its files were burned. Then the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to stop the warrantless surveillance of electronic communications.”
Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Rush Holt, D-N.J., and others are pushing for a new, comprehensive investigation of all U.S. intelligence activities, of the scale of the Church Committee hearings, which exposed widespread spying on and disruption of legal domestic groups, attempts at assassination of foreign heads of state, and more.
Demands mount for information on and accountability for Vice President Dick Cheney’s alleged secret assassination squad, President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, and the CIA’s alleged misleading of Congress. But the spying in Olympia occurred well into the Obama administration (and may continue today). President Barack Obama supports retroactive immunity for telecom companies involved in the wiretapping, and has maintained Bush-era reliance on the state secrets privilege. Lee and Holt should take the information uncovered by Brendan Dunn and the Olympia activists and get the investigations started now.
--Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, recently released in paperback.
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