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| Someone spying on Olympia-based anti-war group could violate federal law |
| 2009-08-01 |
| A Yale Law School faculty member and military law expert said he is disturbed by allegations that Fort Lewis employed a civilian who spied on an Olympia-based anti-war organization. Eugene R. Fidell, a former judge advocate for the Coast Guard and the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a practice appeared to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of the Army for conventional law enforcement activities against civilians. Last week, members of Olympia Port Militarization Resistance presented evidence that John J. Towery, a civilian employee of Fort Lewis Force Protection, infiltrated the group using an assumed name and conducted surveillance of its members for about two years. OlyPMR member Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said that after the information came to light, Towery admitted that he was spying on members using the name John Jacob. As John Jacob, Towery was one of five administrators of OlyPMR's listserv e-mail list, giving him names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all members. OlyPMR opposes the Iraq war. Members have conducted protests at Washington ports, aiming to block Fort Lewis from transporting Stryker vehicles and other military equipment used in the war to and from public ports. OlyPMR member Drew Hendricks has said that Towery was privy to members' observation strategies and operations before the group conducted protests at local ports. Hendricks said OlyPMR is committed to nonviolence and has never threatened or tried to harm soldiers. Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek said that the base has appointed an officer to conduct an inquiry into the OlyPMR's allegation that Towery spied on it and other organizations, including anarchist groups in Tacoma. This week, OlyPMR shared an e-mail identifying Towery as a member of Fort Lewis Force Protection that was obtained as part of a public-records request from the city of Olympia. OlyPMR members then obtained Towery's address in Spanaway by checking a database of registered voters. PMR members conducted surveillance to verify that Towery and Jacob were the same person. Piek has confirmed that Towery is a civilian employed with Fort Lewis Force Protection. Fidell said he would like to know more about what Towery's superiors authorized him to do. "What you've told me is enough to think that there's a domestic spying program at Fort Lewis," he said. "And if there is, that's a big deal." Fidell said he's glad the Army is conducting an investigation. "I hope it's a thorough one," he said. "If the facts are as they seem to be, I hope that someone gets their knuckles rapped." He added, "I think that someone's going to get sued over this." Another legal expert, Stanford Law School lecturer Steven Weiner, said there are exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act that allow the secretary of defense to authorize the Army to pass on information to local law enforcement agencies when it is gathered through normal military training and operations. Weiner said that does not sound like what happened in Olympia. Weiner, an expert in national security law, added that for the military to use "an employee as a covert operative ... is probably over the line." "The basic rule is the military's not supposed to be engaged in law enforcement activities," he said. Weiner said he doubts that someone high up in the Army chain of command would authorize spying on OlyPMR. When told about OlyPMR's activities, he said it sounded as though the group "is not actively imperiling national security" in a manner that would justify violating Posse Comitatus. An official at the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General referred questions from The Olympian to the Pentagon. Retired Lt. Col. George Wright, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, responded in an e-mail. "We're aware that there is an investigation in progress," he wrote. "It is, however, inappropriate and premature to comment beyond what Fort Lewis has already provided on the matter." On Tuesday, Piek e-mailed The Olympian a definition of Fort Lewis Force Protection. "The Fort Lewis Force Protection Division, under the Directorate of Emergency Services, consists of both military and civilian employees whose focus is on supporting law enforcement and security operations to ensure the safety and security of Fort Lewis, soldiers, family members, the workforce and those personnel accessing the installation," the e-mail reads. Piek said he could not reveal the number of employees in the Force Protection Division. Tuesday's e-mail continues, "In support of that focus, the Force Protection Division executes Force Protection (FP), Anti-terrorism (AT), and Criminal Intelligence collection, processing, analysis, reporting and dissemination." In a separate e-mail Monday, Piek stated that Fort Lewis cannot discuss Towery's specific duties with force protection because he "performs sensitive law enforcement work with the installation law enforcement community." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #5 The question here is: Does an installation or unit commander in CONUS or anywhere else have the obligation to his very command to assess all threats to his command, and the obvious answer is yes, and it is an obligation which supercedes the Posse Comitatus Act by about a thousand years. It can be well argued by the military that the presumed spying was strictly a military activity meant to ascertain that anti-military protesters were not posing any threat to military activities such as passing information about military facilities meant to pose a threat to either the military or those employed by the military. FWIW, that the protesters were peaceful doesn't mean they were not actively involved in activities which could pose a threat to military units. In fact the contention that protesters were peaceful was an obvious canard meant to change the subject. |
| Posted by: badanov 2009-08-01 17:59 |
| #4 If some enthusiastic individual proposed this to me, I would have "requested and required" that he prepare a 10-page essay on the concept of "plausible deniability", before he do anything else. Grading his paper, if he made less than a 'B' in comprehension of the concept, it would have been aborted. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-08-01 17:06 |
| #3 That's okay, hippies. Of course you know you haven't found the real guy, right? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-08-01 16:32 |
| #2 Interesting issue here is was the anti-war group in any way involved in threatening DoD activities or assets? Force Protection permits CONUS based DoD assets to ascertain threats and evaluate. LE actions would then devolve to local police, FBI JTTF or other federal LE agencies for enforcement actions. If this guy was working this on his own as a private citizen, did he commit any fraud by using an assumed name? If not, hard cheese for the anarchists, whoi by the way, by their very title, imply a threat to organized government do they not? |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2009-08-01 16:27 |
| #1 what "law enforcement activities" did he conduct? He infiltrated a group of peurile anti-American tools on his own, and as a civilian. They're just upset they were scammed. P*ssies. I wish they would roll the trucks and trains right over their protesting bodies |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-08-01 11:18 |