FBI Counterterrorism Unit Spies on Peace Group School of the Americas Watch

Friday, May 5th, 2006

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/1432207The ACLU released evidence Thursday showing that the FBI has been monitoring the peace group, School of Americas Watch. The group conducts research on the U.S Army School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. SOA Watch is the latest organization that has been found to have been subject to U.S government surveillance in the name of counterterrorism efforts.

---

The ACLU released evidence Thursday showing that the FBI has been monitoring the peace group, School of Americas Watch. SOA Watch was founded by Father Roy Bourgeois in 1990. The group conducts research on the U.S Army School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The School, which is located at Fort Benning, Georgia, trains hundreds of soldiers from Latin America each year and is funded entirely by the U.S government. SOA Watch holds an annual vigil calling for the closure of the facility. Last year the vigil drew 19,000 people.SOA Watch is the latest organization that the ACLU has found to have been subject to U.S government surveillance in the name of counterterrorism efforts. In December, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret Pentagon database to track intelligence gathered inside the United States including information on anti-war protests and rallies. The database included information on counter-military recruiting meetings held at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Forth, Florida and anti-nuclear protests staged in Nebraska on the 50th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

And in March the ACLU uncovered files showing that the FBI had been monitoring and possibly infiltrating the Thomas Merton Center which is a Pittsburgh-based peace center, actively opposed to the war in Iraq.

• Eric LeCompte, event and outreach coordinator of School of the Americas Watch.
• Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

www.democracynow.org