Maine Peace Groups Sue Pentagon Over Spy Files

Maine Civil Liberties Union Joins National Lawsuit to Uncover Details of Pentagon Surveillance of Law-Abiding Americans

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 2006

Portland, Maine – Maine Civil Liberties Union today joined a federal lawsuit filed in Philadelphia to force the Department of Defense to turn over records it wrongly kept on law-abiding Americans and peace groups throughout the country. The MCLU seeks to uncover any surveillance documents kept by the Pentagon on two local peace groups, as well as the ACLU itself.

“The Pentagon should not be collecting and maintaining information about law-abiding Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights,” said Zachary Heiden, MCLU staff attorney. “When the government spends its time monitoring Quakers and other peace activists, it doesn’t make us safer but it does make us less free.”

The lawsuit was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by the national ACLU and its affiliates in six states: Florida, Georgia, Maine, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. The lawsuit charges the Defense Department with violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to turn over documents pertaining to its domestic spying program.

The MCLU filed a FOIA request on February 1, 2006 on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee: Maine Program on Youth and Militarism (AFSC Maine), the Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice (MCPJ), and the MCLU itself. The MCLU filed the FOIA request after evidence surfaced that the Pentagon was secretly conducting illegal surveillance of protest activities, anti-war organizations and individuals who attended peace rallies. According to news reports, the Pentagon gathered information on law-abiding Americans and shared the data with other government agencies through the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. The TALON program was initiated by former Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 to track groups and individuals with possible links to terrorism.

The Maine groups say they are concerned they may have been unfairly targeted by the Pentagon because they have publicly criticized the war in Iraq and other Bush administration policies. MCPJ is a statewide organization of individual citizens and Maine group representatives working collectively and nonviolently for social equality, economic justice, direct democracy, and regenerative environmental policies.  AFSC, founded by Quakers, carries out service, development, social justice and peace programs and its Program on Youth and Militarism seeks to offer young people an alternative perspective to that of the military recruiters in their schools. 

“The government should be congratulating us for our service to our country when we try to help young people make an informed decision about whether or not to join the military,” said Rosalie Paul, clerk of the AFSC Maine Program on Youth and Militarism.  “Instead, they are spying on us in a desperate act of a frightened administration.  They must be held accountable for their actions."

In today’s lawsuit, the ACLU argues that the organizations and individuals monitored by the Pentagon have a right to know what information the military has collected about them. The ACLU seeks to uncover whether the TALON records have been or plan to be shared with another agency, or otherwise disseminated.

“The U.S. military should not be in the business of maintaining secret databases about lawful First Amendment activities,” said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner. “It is an abuse of power and an abuse of trust for the military to play any role in monitoring critics of administration policies.”

The ACLU lawsuit was joined by dozens of other organizations, including the national offices of the American Friends Service Committee, Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice and Greenpeace. A full list of groups in today’s lawsuit is online at www.aclu.org/spyfiles.

"This country was founded by protesters,” said Larry Dansinger of AFSC Maine.  “Nonviolent dissent is one of the foundations of our country.”

Attorneys in today’s lawsuit are Wizner, Ann Beeson and Scott Michelman with the national ACLU, and Mary Catherine Roper and Witold Walczak with the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

Read the comments online at http://www.mclu.org/AFSC%20v%20US%20DOD%20Complaint.pdf. 

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