It appears there was no basis to the widely reported charges that a California National Guard unit was spying/collecting information on citizens:
An Army report has cleared the California National Guard of allegations that it spied on citizens, accusations that triggered an ongoing state Senate investigation.
The California Guard’s acting adjutant general, Brig. Gen. John R. Alexander, said Monday that the Army’s inspector general determined in the confidential report that a Guard intelligence unit did nothing wrong.“There was never the intent, desire or decision to ever collect intelligence information on any U.S. citizen,” Alexander said in a written release. “Any statement to the contrary is flat wrong.”
State Sen. Joseph Dunn launched an investigation after a series of e-mails and actions suggested the unit had resorted to the same type of civilian monitoring seen during Vietnam War-era protests. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military collected information on more than 100,000 Americans.
The Guard and the state attorney general say the unit merely tries to assess threats to bridges, buildings and other structures and does no spying.
A sister unit monitored a Mother’s Day anti-war demonstration at the state Capitol, but the Guard said that amounted to reviewing media accounts.
Dunn was skeptical of the report’s conclusions, in part because he believes the terminology used in Alexander’s announcement could be used to hide indirect surveillance activity and record-keeping by the Guard.
This report corroborates the Army Times version, but notes that speculation stil exists since the report has not been released publicly:
“Until the Army’s report is made public,” Dunn said, “we cannot draw any conclusions about what they investigated or what the Army concluded about the activities of the California National Guard.”
The Army historically does not release such reports, though it did last year, detailing abuses by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghurayb prison in Iraq.
Lofgren, who said she plans to raise her concerns about the Guard next month in Washington, met Monday in San Jose with members of the Peninsula Raging Grannies, one of the groups that organized the Mother’s Day rally.
Ruth Robertson, co-chair of the group, said the Grannies believe strongly that the Guard monitored their efforts. “The Peninsula Raging Grannies demand the immediate release of the report to the general public, or at the very least to those groups who were monitored.”
I’ll try to remember to keep up on this.
Gamer
I would like to see more details about this program. What are the similarities and differences with the Able Danger program?
Mike S
I’m skeptical. IIRC, there was a computer that was not turned over to the state and may have had files removed. Not to mention the fact that the anythning inverstigating itself is always suspicious.
Bob
You can probably go the the ACLU website and find a nice long study of various law enforcement, military and private entities who joined forces to illegally spy on citizens in San Francisco during the 1984 Demo Nat Convention. I believe it was 1984. A continuing, illegal spy network grew out of that.
There are books written about the military spying on citizens.
But I have absolute faith that if they said that they weren’t spying on people then that must be the truth.
jg
What’s ‘IIRC’ mean?
Gamer
JG,
If I Recall Correctly
jg
Thanks
Francis Marion
As a National Guardsman I have participated in some extensive intelligence training within the U.S. Let me clarify that it is legal for members of the Army to gather intelligence within the U.S. What is illegal is the tracking of information on individuals or the use of the U.S. military in law enforcement rolls. The National Guard, as a state organization, is occationally exempted from this no law enforcement requirement.
If the records of this particular investigation have not been released then it is because the methods and capabilites of our intelligence gathering is classified and we do not want to expose them to our enemy in a time of war.
Anderson
Whew, I always feel so relieved when the Army exonerates itself of wrongdoing ….
Rick
Tin soldiers and jihad coming. We’re finally on our own.
Cordially…
Bob
It was a Reserve Military Intelligence unit that first identified Oswald the day JFK was killed. They had a file on his for at least a year beforehand, because the address in his file was over a year old. There were plenty of people in that military intelligence reserve unit in Dealey Plaza that day.
The great thing about being in a military intelligence reserve unit is that when you are identified in any public narrative you are IDed as a police officer, an FBI or Secret Service agent, or perhaps someone in the oil industry. In other words, a whole level of interconnectedness is obscured.
If I remember right, and we are going back thirty years, I believe that Ed Meese was involved with a military intelligence reserve unit here in California.