Rumsfeld's Pentagon Spies on Anti-War Americans

A secret, 400-page database obtained by NBC News indicates that Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department has been collecting and and organizing information about US citizens engaged in peaceful protest against the Bush administration and its war in Iraq.

The objects of surveillance appear overwhelmingly to be private US citizens and organizations exercizing their first amendment rights in peaceful protest. Evidence demonstrates that the DoD has indeed been following and collecting information on individual US citizens.

One DOD briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”

NBC military analyst Bill Arkin finds this disturbing.

“It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”

NBC posts an edited excerpt of the 400-page document that runs from November 2004 through May 2005. I would certainly be curious to know if my name or image is in a Defense Department file somewhere by virtue of my participation in non-violent, peaceful protest against US Government policies.