New records on UCSC protests show deeper spying conspiracy

Roger Sideman

New details emerged Tuesday about the government intelligence-gathering at UC Santa Cruz that prompted anti-war protesters there to be designated as a “credible threat” in a secret Defense Department database.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that information gathered at an April 5, 2005, protest at UCSC was provided to the Pentagon by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency formed after 9/11 to monitor terror-related activities.

The agency also provided the Defense Department information about similar anti-war activities at UC Berkeley, according to the documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act.

“This sheds some light on how information was passed on,” said Mark Schlosberg, an ACLU policy director in San Francisco.

The government threat database was met with criticism when MSNBC reported in December that the Pentagon had spied on military-related protests around the country.

Despite the newly released documents, questions remain about how university protesters came to the attention of the federal government.

The documents do not disclose who sent Homeland Security information detailing the April 2005 protests, only that it came by e-mail. It is also unknown whether anyone from the government was at the protest.

Also, two newly released Defense Department bulletins, dating from April 2, 2005 and April 20, 2005, state that information was provided “to alert commanders and staff to potential terrorist activity or apprise them of other force protection issues.”

The bulletins indicate that the Defense Department briefed and coordinated with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Francisco about campus demonstrations, Schlosberg said.

Homeland Security’s role of passing information on to the Pentagon was not previously known, and it raises questions among critics about how the government views members of campus groups who march against the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” recruitment policy regarding homosexuals.

Schlosberg said there may be a blurring of the line between terrorism and protest activity protected under the First Amendment.

“Homeland Security was created to protect the American people from terrorists — not monitor political dissent on college campuses,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security did return calls for comment. According to its Web site, one policy guiding the agency’s six-pointed agenda is to “enhance information sharing with our partners.”

U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who criticized the government when the campus spying was made public, called the new information “extremely disturbing.”

“Homeland Security should be our port in the storm, the department we can count on to secure us during times of need,” he said. “Instead, we find out it’s just another covert operation of the intelligence community. How can we ever trust it again?”

The ACLU’s Northern California chapter filed suit in March on behalf of UCSC Students Against War and a similar group at Berkeley. The lawsuit asked the Department of Defense to expedite the release of documents under FOIA. To date, more than 150 pages dating back to 1982 have been released. They consist mostly of documents and memos outlining the rules and procedures for gathering intelligence on activities the Pentagon might consider threatening to the U.S. military or its personnel.

In January, former UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton got wind of the “threat” listing. Denton, who committed suicide June 24, asked political leaders including Farr for help.

In February, the Department of Defense told the university it deleted mention of the protest from its database.

Contact Roger Sideman at rsideman@santacruzsentinel.com.