Two Code Pink Events in Davis, Sacramento This Week

Dear Pink Friends:

We have two events coming up this week.

1) Vigil to Bring Home the National Guard - Sunday, July 3rd 11:00 am - 12 noon
at the E Street Plaza in Davis on E Street between 2nd and 3rd streets

Come join us at this family friendly peace sing-along and vigil. Learn more about the campaign to bring home California's National Guard from Iraq. Sign our petition and maybe even win a pink ice cream cone. To read more about this campaign, check out the Bay Area Code Pink web page at http://bayareacodepink.org/actions/index.htm.

2) Protest California National Guard Surveillance of Peace Activists - Wednesday, July 6th, 10 -11 am State Nat'l Guard HQ, at 9800 Goethe Road, one block east of Bradshaw Road in Sacramento.

The California National Guard is being used to monitor people engaged in excercising their First Amendment rights to protest, assemble, and petition the government for redress. Code Pink has been monitored by this guard unit. For more information about this, see the two articles below. Veterans For Peace has called for a protest outside the guard headquarters in solidarity with Code Pink. Let's take this opportunity to protest this outrageous use of the Guard and re-emphasize our call to bring back the National Guard to carry out their more traditional work.

Hope to see you at these events!

Peace, Natalie

http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2005/06/27/news/187new1.txt

Davis Enterprise

Monday June 27, 2005

Guard unit monitored peace rally
By Cory Golden/Enterprise staff writer
Published Jun 27, 2005 - 15:35:21 CDT.


A new California National Guard intelligence unit meant to help local law enforcement deal with terrorist threats tracked a recent protest co-sponsored by the Davis chapter of Code Pink: Women for Peace. Guard officials have said the unit will not violate long-standing rules barring the military from gathering information on American citizens.

According to e-mail messages obtained by the San Jose Mercury News, however, top National Guard officials were involved in tracking the Mother's Day event, held at the Vietnam War memorial on the state Capitol grounds.

Natalie Wormeli of the Davis group helped plan the rally. This morning, she said felt both angered and saddened to learn that the protest was monitored by the Guard.

"It doesn't have the chilling effect some might hope for, but it's a big waste of their time," she said. "I feel sorry for the people assigned to follow us around on a rainy day at the Capitol."

The event, which drew about 35 people, was also co-sponsored by the groups Raging Grannies and Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization made up of family members of soldiers killed in Iraq. Three days before the rally an aide in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office alerted the Guard to the event, according to e-mails obtained by the Mercury News.

The information was passed to Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres and other top Guard officials, including Col. Jeff Davis. He oversees the unit, known as the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program.

Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Stan Zezotarski said no one went to observe the Mother's Day demonstration. Wormeli said that she was in fact unaware of any sort of police or military presence at the protest, though today a fellow Code Pink member told her she recalled seeing "two thin white guys with short hair."

"But since it's a Vietnam memorial, obviously veterans being there wouldn't be a surprise," Wormeli said. Zezotarski said that the monitoring involved nothing more than following news about the protest through the media. But he told the Mercury News that the military would be "negligent" if it did not track anti-war rallies in the event that they disintegrate into a riot that could prompt the governor to call out troops. "It's nothing subversive," Zezotarski said. "Because who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up? After all, we live in the age of terrorism, so who knows?"

Wormeli said that peace activists were aware local law enforcement or, in some cases, the FBI might be watching. "But talk about overkill," she said of the Guard. In fact, central to the protest was a call for the immediate return of Guard troops. "The irony isn't lost on me," she said. "We want them recalled - but not for this. They should be helping fight wildfires and doing the sort of work they were trained for. "We've just had the 12th California National Guardsman killed. We're more concerned about their safety and ending this unjust war.

"None of this should be about Code Pink - we're not going to change what we're doing because we're not doing anything illegal or dangerous." Quietly established last year, the Guard's new unit is part of a growing effort to better link military intelligence with global anti-terrorism initiatives. Col. Robert J. O'Neill, director of the California program, said he sees the unit as a one-stop shop for local, state and national law enforcement to share information.
Guard intelligence officers will have access to national security information that they can analyze and determine if details should be shared with state and local law enforcement, O'Neill said.

"We are trying to integrate into their systems and bring them information that they don't have," O'Neill told the Mercury News. But the creation of the unit raises concerns among some civil libertarians. "The National Guard doesn't need to do this," said Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer who helped expose a string of instances in the 1960s and 1970s, when the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans. "Its job is not to investigate individuals, but to clear streets, protect facilities and help first responders."
Federal law allows the military to gather information on Americans if the intelligence is essential to the mission, publicly available or related to national security issues.
Typically, the National Guard has been called upon to assist in circumstances such as natural disasters and riots. But with the strain on the U.S. military fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the units are being drawn into anti-terrorism efforts within the U.S.

Zezotarski said citizens need not be concerned that the military is watching them. "We do not do any type of surveillance or human intelligence or mixing with crowds," he said. "The National Guard does not operate in that way. We have always had a policy where we respect the rights of citizens." The intelligence unit was established last year by Eres, the National Guard leader recently forced to retire amid , set up a questionable military flight for a Republican friend's political group and improperly diverted money meant for anti-drug operations to set up special anti-terrorism teams. The U.S. Army has sent an investigator to California to look into the allegations. Just before Eres retired, the Guard hired its first director for the intelligence unit has "broad authority" and is expected to "exercise a high degree of independent judgment and discretion," according to the job description obtained by the Mercury News.

"However, highly controversial or precedent-setting decisions, directives and policies are discussed with the appropriate senior leadership prior to implementation," the description states. Wormeli said that, given the change of leadership and news of the intelligence unit coming to light, the Guard "should be cleaning house and reconsidering the focus of its mission." Just how the public will respond to news that the Guard monitored a protest, Wormeli said she wasn't sure.

"It may be intimidating to newcomers or people who are burned-out," she said. "They may just stay home, because they don't feel like they need to be harassed." On the other hand, Wormeli said, she'd already been contacted by people angry about the revelation - including members of the Sacramento organization Veterans for Peace - that wish to join Code Pink in decrying military monitoring. "In some ways I think it could strengthen the resolve of those who realize how absurd this is and understand we're not going to be locked up for exercising our First Amendment rights," she said.

"I know there are some resolute activists out there, and there will probably be some frustrated taxpayers who'll say, 'You're kidding - this is what my tax dollars are going for? Following around a bunch of women dressed in pink?' "

- Reach Cory Golden at cgolden [at] davisenterprise.net or 747-8046. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Hearings planned on California National Guard's intelligence unit
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

(06-29) 00:06 PDT MATHER, Calif. (AP) --


A California congresswoman and a state senator are planning plan separate hearings into whether a California National Guard unit was established as a spy agency.
Guard spokesmen denied that was the unit's intent but declined to make the unit's commander available for an interview to fully explain its function. State Sen. Joseph Dunn, D-Garden Grove, whose budget subcommittee oversees funding for the California National Guard, said Tuesday he has ordered the Guard to turn over all documents about the unit, formally called the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program. That would include any information collected about citizens.


That last request will be easy, because no such information has been collected, Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Douglas Hart said. He said the new unit includes nine soldiers and airmen, two of whom monitor the military's classified e-mail system and seven who work with the State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center. That center is the successor to a terrorism-information unit created after the 2001 attacks and operated by the state Department of Justice.

The seven help gauge terrorist threats to bridges, buildings and other structures, said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer. "They don't monitor the activities of groups that are engaged in anti-war protests or the like," Dresslar said. The National Guard intelligence unit came to public attention after a story published Sunday in the San Jose Mercury News. The story referred to the unit's monitoring of a Mother's Day anti-war demonstration at the state Capitol that was organized by several peace groups - the Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and CodePink.

An e-mail chain that began in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office culminated in an advisory a few days before the protest from Col. Jeff Davis, who oversees the National Guard unit: "our Intell. folks ... continue to monitor" the event. Hart said the monitoring amounted to recording television coverage and reading newspaper articles about the protest. He said the unit did not infiltrate the groups or observe the rally.

"That's all there was to it. That was the extent of our 'surveillance'," Hart said.
Margita Thompson, spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said, "The administration is concerned, and we are looking into it." U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, plans to question California National Guard officials at a House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee hearing.

Peninsula Raging Grannies co-chair Ruth Robertson said she suspects the government has a greater interest, perhaps because of her group's efforts to dissuade people from enlisting in the military. "Our median age is 72 - we are not threatening," Robertson said. "We are all about peace." Gold Star Families member Cindy Sheehan said she's not bothered: "If they're monitoring what we're doing, we must be scaring them, and I think that's great." The group is composed of people whose sons or daughters have died in military conflicts.

Dunn said he was not reassured by the unit's denials. "History has not been kind to such assertions by government and military officials," Dunn said. He referred to the Vietnam War era, when the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans during the 1960s and 1970s. Questions about the state's anti-terrorism center also arose two years ago, when Lockyer's Criminal Intelligence Bureau warned Oakland police about "potential violence" during a protest there. Police, firing wooden dowels and beanbag projectiles, ultimately injured at least two dozen protesters. Lockyer subsequently disavowed the tracking of groups or individuals that avoid violence or other illegal acts, even if they engage in otherwise harmless civil disobedience. In a statement this week about the National Guard unit, Lockyer said, "You have to wonder how monitoring the activities of soldiers' widows and orphans advances the anti-terrorism effort."

Dunn said that even if the National Guard unit formed last year isn't spying, the Guard should have cleared the unit with legislators because "perception could put a cloud over these activities," Dunn said. "Spying on United States citizens is a radioactive topic." The Guard on Tuesday abruptly canceled an interview The Associated Press had scheduled with Col. Robert J. O'Neill, director of the new program, citing Dunn's planned hearings. "I would respectfully suggest the Guard is taking absolutely the wrong approach to shut down information to the public or media about this unit," Dunn said. "It only raises the suspicions of the public and the media when the Guard retreats into a bunker mentality."




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