NSA Used City Police as Trackers
Activists monitored on way to Fort Meade war protest, agency memos
show
by Douglas Birch
The National Security Agency used law enforcement agencies, including
the Baltimore Police Department, to track members of a city anti-war group
as they prepared for protests outside the sprawling Fort Meade facility,
internal NSA documents show.
The target of the clandestine surveillance was the Baltimore Pledge of
Resistance, a group loosely affiliated with the local chapter of the
American Friends Service Committee, whose members include many veteran city
peace activists with a history of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Under various names, the activists have staged protests at the NSA
campus off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway every year since 1996.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, members of the group say, their
protests have come under increasing scrutiny by federal and local law
enforcement officials working on behalf of the NSA.
An internal NSA e-mail, posted on two Internet sites this week, shows
how operatives with the "Baltimore Intel Unit" provided a minute-by-minute
account of Pledge of Resistances' preparations for a July 3, 2004, protest
at Fort Meade. An attorney for the demonstrators said he obtained the
document through the discovery process from NSA.
"****UPDATE: 11:55 HRS. S/A V------- ADVISED THE PROTESTORS LEFT 4600
YORK ROAD EN ROUTE TO THE NSA CAMPUS ... S/A V----- REPORTED FIVE OR SIX
PEOPLE IN A BLUE VAN WITH BLACK BALLOONS, ANTI-WAR SIGNS AND A POSSIBLE
HELIUM TANK," reported an internal NSA e-mail.
Later, those shadowing the peace group reported on their arrival at
the NSA's Fort Meade headquarters.
"****UPDATE: 1300 HRS. THE SOC WAS ADVISED THE PROTESTORS WERE
PROCEEDING TO THE AIRPLANE MEMORIAL WITH THREE HELIUM BALLOONS ATTACHED TO A
BANNER THAT STATED "THOSE WHO EXCHANGE FREEDOM FOR SECURITY DESERVE IT,
NEITHER WILL ULTIMATELY LOSE BOTH," the NSA's somewhat garbled account of
the event reported.
Ellen E. Barfield, a veteran peace activist from Hampden, was one of
three Pledge members detained and cited that afternoon, charged with
creating a "disturbance." The charges were later dropped.
Barfield called the effort law enforcement agencies put into
monitoring this act of civil disobedience "totally absurd."
"We have a history of nonviolence," she said. "We are absolutely no
threat to anyone, and they know it. And they're wasting tons of money and
tons of time doing this."
An agency spokesman said protests are routinely monitored by the NSA
Police, who are responsible only for the installation's security, not the
code breakers and eavesdroppers who monitor international electronic
communications.
The only reference to technical information-gathering in the three
public NSA documents -- two e-mails and an internal "Action Plan" -- is a
reference in to an NSA employee's effort to check on the protesters' plans
by browsing the Web.
"Security at NSA serves to protect the agency and its employees," NSA
spokesman Don Weber said in a statement. "Like any security force, they
maintain documentation to include activity logs and action plans used in
response to potential activities impacting the agency.
"Furthermore, they partner with state, local and federal law
enforcement agencies to assess these activities and the potential impact on
the agency and its personnel," Weber continued. "All these activities are
conducted in a lawful manner. The allegations that NSA is spying on local
peace groups is simply not true."
James Bamford, a lawyer and journalist who has written two acclaimed
books about the NSA, said the agency has a right to protect itself from
external threats. "But it would be an entirely separate thing if the NSA
tried to monitor communications" from the Baltimore anti-war group, using
the agency's sophisticated technology.
There is no evidence this happened. But the documents have surfaced at
a critical time for the NSA.
The New York Times reported in December that after Sept. 11, the NSA
began monitoring the electronic communications of Americans suspected of
contacts with terrorists, without first obtaining court orders. President
Bush authorized the program in 2002 and has defended it as necessary to
protect the nation.
Some legal analysts and administration critics say the agency's
actions violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In some ways, Independence Day weekend protests by members of the
Baltimore Pledge of Resistance have become an annual ritual.
Every year, protesters demand to talk with NSA officials. Some try to
slip in one of the entrances and get arrested. Even before Sept. 11, Bamford
said, the NSA overreacted, "considering the scale of the protest."
An NSA e-mail contained in court files shows that before the Pledge of
Resistance's Oct. 4, 2003, protest, which coincided with the agency's annual
"family day" picnic, NSA relied on a detective working for the Baltimore
Police Department's Criminal Intelligence Unit to monitor the demonstrators'
movements.
That unit handles some of the city's most politically sensitive
investigations, including threats to public officials.
The city detective, the 2003 e-mail said, "advised that they will have
someone working this weekend who will scope out their departure from the
American Friends Service Committee 4806 York Rd. Govans. The Baltimore City
PD counterpart will give [name of an NSA official blacked out] a heads up as
to the numbers departing from the Govans location."
The NSA e-mail regarding the July 2004 protest does not make clear who
conducted that day's surveillance on the agency's behalf. While it refers to
the "Baltimore Intel Unit," the chief of the city's Criminal Intelligence
Unit, Major David Engel, said he had no record that any of his officers
participated.
"We have absolutely nothing in our files related to it," he said,
referring to the protest in 2004.
Max J. Obuszewski, a veteran Baltimore anti-war activist who works for
the American Friends Service Committee, said protesters have been trying to
publicize the two documents since they were released in Federal District
Court in August 2004.
The NSA July 2004 e-mail and the NSA's "Action Plan" for the October
2003 protest were finally publicized this week by Kevin B. Zeese, a
candidate for the U.S. Senate from Maryland, on the Web sites "rawstory.com"
and "democracyrising.us."
The NSA disclosed them as part of the discovery process in the
prosecution of two Baltimore Pledge of Resistance members, Cynthia H.
Farquhar and Marilyn Carlisle. Both were detained during the October 2003
protest and convicted of failing to obey a police officer's orders. They
were fined $250, according to federal court records.
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun
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