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You are here: Home / Open Threads / California National Guard

California National Guard

by John Cole|  July 7, 20051:37 pm| 10 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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The LA Times has a follow up on this story about he California National Guard that states that the authorities are launching an investigation into allegations of tracking civilians:

U.S. military authorities Wednesday began investigating whether a California National Guard unit was established to spy on U.S. citizens, as about 30 demonstrators outside Guard headquarters confronted officials backed by armed soldiers.

The federal inquiry into the country’s largest National Guard force involves the Army’s inspector general, the federal National Guard Bureau’s inspector general and the National Guard Bureau’s legal division.

The unit has raised concern among peace activists that the Guard is resorting to the type of civilian monitoring that characterized Vietnam War-era protests, when the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans during the 1960s and ’70s.

Under scrutiny is a California National Guard unit with a tongue-twisting name

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10Comments

  1. 1.

    Tim F

    July 7, 2005 at 1:50 pm

    It’s hard to imagine that the commander of that unit would shred documents and erase hard drives in there was nothing incriminating on them.

  2. 2.

    KC

    July 7, 2005 at 2:00 pm

    As someone who lives in Sacramento and works right across the street from the capital–I walk right across the capital to get to work–I find that story interesting. I see protesters all the time and pretty much ignore them. Other than some of the unions that protest the governor regularly and the right-to-life folks, most protests are usually pretty small affairs. The pro-pot protest a few weeks ago was interesting, but most are pretty sad affairs. Whatever the Guard is hoping to glean from monitering them is beyond me.

  3. 3.

    Clever

    July 7, 2005 at 3:26 pm

    Does erasing hard drives seem ‘blown out of proportion’?

    Seems to me its alot more interesting than people would like to think.

    Source

    Last week, Dunn asked the Guard to preserve any documents related to monitoring of the anti-war rally and the new intelligence unit.

    At the same time, computer technicians at the Guard erased the hard drive of a retiring colonel who oversaw the intelligence unit and wrote the e-mail mentioning the “Intell. folks.”

    A top Guard official said the computer hard drive was erased before they received Dunn’s letter asking them to preserve all information relating to the intelligence unit.

    Amazingly coincidental?

  4. 4.

    Clever

    July 7, 2005 at 3:28 pm

    Sorry about the double post. Got a 404 error. Still having problems with MT I take it, John? [Delete this post and the last if you have a chance.]

  5. 5.

    John Cole

    July 7, 2005 at 3:30 pm

    Umm- I am keeping my eye out to see if it is a coincidence or something wrong was done. You want me to come to a conclusion already?

  6. 6.

    Clever

    July 7, 2005 at 3:33 pm

    Not asking for a conclusion, but thought this was worth a mention as to all the interest in the story.

    As you say, worth keeping track of.

  7. 7.

    Rick

    July 7, 2005 at 4:13 pm

    Erasing hard drives. Dang, that’s in the best tradition of…wait for it!…the Clinton Administration. Those sweetpotatoheads.

    Cordially…

  8. 8.

    JG

    July 7, 2005 at 4:30 pm

    At my job, hard drives belonging to people who leave the company are erased, or actually zeroed out. We do it to give a clean hd to the new person and because we give away old pcs to schools. You’d think a hard drive used by a high ranking official in the defense industry would be kept though. Interesting but who knows if it means anything. I’m just happy to see that some of our National Guard is actually in country. Now if we could just upgrade the aging Coast Guard fleet.

  9. 9.

    Bob

    July 7, 2005 at 11:30 pm

    Army reserve intelligence units involved in spying on the public have been functioning for a hundred years, as I recall. Let me see if I can find that book.

  10. 10.

    Bob

    July 7, 2005 at 11:50 pm

    The book I was thinking about was ARMY SURVEILLANCE IN AMERICA, 1775-1980 (Yale University Press, 1991). I’m not sure when the whole army reserve system was created, but the spying probably started a week or so later.

    There were army reserve intelligence units involved in spying on civil rights leaders and freedom riders in the South during the sixties. An Illinois reserve intelligence unit was involved in the shooting of a Black Panther in Chicago (Fred Hampton?).

    The first information on Oswald BEFORE his arrest came from a reserve army intelligence unit that had his address listed from a year prior, showing that someone in the Texas reserves was interested in Lee Harvey for a long time. Reserve intelligence officers were all over Dealey Plaza that day.

    Sort of like Six Days In May.

    Military intelligence units have been the means for the military to keep its hand in places where they shouldn’t be, like in the civilian sector. It’ll never happen, but I’d love to see a list of prominent citizens who were still secretly in some kind reserve intelligence unit. Some believe that because LH Oswald carried military ID he was still serving, under cover, in civilian life. You know, ONI.

    Consider this: A year or so before he became a top reporter for the Washington Post, Bob Woodward had security clearance and was a lieutenant at the Pentagon. Had worked in crypto before that. And before that was in the Navy reserve in Yale, the primary recruiting ground for the CIA in the forties, fifties and sixties.

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