Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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Exclusive: Inside the Army Spy Ring & Attempted Entrapment of Peace Activists, Iraq Vets, Anarchists
More details have come to light showing how the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington. Democracy Now! first broke this story in 2009 when it was revealed that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent from Towery using his military account to the FBI, as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane. He wrote, "I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro." Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant attempted to entrap at least one peace activist, Glenn Crespo, by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot. We speak to Crespo and his attorney Larry Hildes, who represents all the activists in the case.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: More details have come to light showing the U.S. military infiltrated and spied on a community of antiwar activists in the state of Washington and beyond. Democracy Now! first broke the story in 2009 that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance was actually an informant for the U.S. military. At the time, Port Militarization Resistance was staging nonviolent actions to stop military shipments bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. He also spied on the Industrial Workers of the World and Iraq Veterans Against the War. The antiwar activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn helped expose John Towery’s true identity as a military spy. In 2009, Dunn spoke on Democracy Now!
BRENDAN MASLAUSKAS DUNN: After it was confirmed that he was in fact John Towery, I knew he wouldn’t call me, so I called him up the day after. This was this past Thursday. And I called him up; I said, "John, you know, what’s the deal? Is this true?" And he told me; he said, "Yes, it is true, but there’s a lot more to this story than what was publicized." So he wanted to meet with me and another anarchist in person to further discuss what happened and what his role was.
So, when I met him, he admitted to several things. He admitted that, yes, he did in fact spy on us. He did in fact infiltrate us. He admitted that he did pass on information to an intelligence network, which, as you mentioned earlier, was composed of dozens of law enforcement agencies, ranging from municipal to county to state to regional, and several federal agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Homeland Security, the Army in Fort Lewis.
So he admitted to other things, too. He admitted that the police had placed a camera, surveillance camera, across the street from a community center in Tacoma that anarchists ran called the Pitch Pipe Infoshop. He admitted that there were police that did put a camera up there to spy on anarchists, on activists going there.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Brendan Maslauskas Dunn speaking in 2009 on Democracy Now! He’s now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against John Towery, the military and other law enforcement agencies.
Since 2009, there have been numerous developments in the case. A newly made public email written by Towery reveals the Army informant was building a multi-agency spying apparatus. The email was sent by Towery using his military account. It was sent to the FBI as well as the police departments in Los Angeles, in Portland, Eugene, Everett and Spokane, Washington. He wrote, quote, "I thought it would be a good idea to develop a leftist/anarchist mini-group for intel sharing and distro." Towery also cites "zines and pamphlets," and a "comprehensive web list" as source material, but cautions the officials on file sharing becase, quote, "it might tip off groups that we are studying their techniques, tactics and procedures," he wrote. The subject of the email was "Anarchist Information."
Meanwhile, evidence has also emerged that the Army informant may have attempted to entrap at least one of the peace activists by attempting to persuade him to purchase guns and learn to shoot.
We’re joined now by two guests. Glenn Crespo is a community organizer in the Bay Area who used to live in Washington state, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the military and other agencies. He’s joining us from Berkeley. And with us in Seattle, Washington, longtime attorney Larry Hildes, who represents the activists in the case.
The Joint Base Lewis-McChord Public Affairs Office declined to join us on the program, saying, quote, "Because this case is still in litigation we are unable to provide comment."
Let’s go first to Washington state, to Larry Hildes. Can you talk about the latest developments in this case, and what has just come out?
LARRY HILDES: Sure. Good morning, Amy. It’s interesting. What came out did not come out from this case. It came out from a Public Records Act request from a different client of ours who was arrested in an anti-police-brutality march and falsely charged with assaulting an officer, that the civil case is coming to trial in a couple weeks. He put in a Public Records Act request because he was active with PMR and was concerned that he had been targeted, and he was then subject to a number of citations and arrests.
And, yeah, the Army’s investigative reports claimed that, well, there may have been some rules broken, but Towery was doing this off the job in his off-hours, unpaid, for the sheriff—for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office and the fusion center. Here he is at his desk, 10:00 in the morning, using his military ID, his military email address, and identifying himself by his military titles, writing the law enforcement agencies all over the country about forming this mini-group to target and research anarchists and leftists, and it’s coming out of what’s called the DT Conference that the State Patrol was hosting here in Washington, Domestic Terrorism Conference. They created a book for this conference based on information largely from Towery that included Brendan Dunn and one of our other plaintiffs, Jeff Berryhill, and two other activists with PMR, listed them as domestic terrorists and a violent threat because of their—basically, because they were targeted by Towery and because of their activism and their arrests for civil disobedience. So, he’s taking something he created, labeling these people as terrorists, going to a conference with this information, and saying, "We should disseminate this and work on this more broadly."
It also puts the lie to Towery’s claim and his supervisor Tom Rudd’s claim that Towery was simply working to protect troop movements from—between Fort Lewis and the public ports of Stryker vehicles going to the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re not shipping out of L.A. They’re not shipping out of Portland or Eugene. And they’re not—none of these are agencies that are directly involved in protecting military shipments from Fort Lewis. So it’s clear there’s a much larger agenda here.
And we’ve seen that in some other ways. There are extensive notes that we’ve received of Towery’s spying on a conference of the Evergreen State College in Olympia about tactics for the protests at the DNC in Denver in '08, Republican—Democratic National Convention, and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in ’08, and who was going to do what, the red, yellow and green zones, and specifically what was going to happen on the Monday of the convention. And it was the RNC Welcome Committee, which then got raided and became the RNC 8—claimed that they were planning acts of terrorism, which were in reality acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. So this goes way beyond Fort Lewis and PMR, and there's a full—there seems to be a much larger agenda, as we’ve seen in other places, of nonviolent activism equals terrorism equals anarchism equals justification for whatever spying or law enforcement action we want to take.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to—
LARRY HILDES: And obviously this is not—sorry, go ahead, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read from your lawsuit. You write, quote, "In addition to the Army, Coast Guard, and Olympia Police Department, the following agencies are known to have spied on, infiltrated, or otherwise monitored the activities of PMR and/or related or associated activists: Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, Tacoma Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, Ft. Lewis Police Department, 504th Military Police Division, Aberdeen Police Department, The Evergreen State College Police Department, the Lacey Police Department, the [Tumwater] Police Department, the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff’s Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service, other Divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, Naval Investigative Services, Air Force Intelligence (which has created a special PMR SDS taskforce at McGwire Air Force Base in New Jersey), The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Taskforce, as well as the previously discussed civilian employees of the City of Olympia. This list is likely incomplete," you write. That is a very extensive list, Larry Hildes.
LARRY HILDES: It is. And it turns out it is incomplete. And those were all agencies that we had documents obtained from Public Records Act requests showing that they were directly involved. So now we’re finding out there’s more agencies. The Evergreen State College was giving regular reports to the State Patrol, to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and to Towery and Rudd about activities of SDS on campus at Evergreen. And there’s an extensive discussion about the conference about the DNC and RNC protests and that the chief of police is the source for the information. But, yeah, now we’ve got L.A. This gets bizarre. And we received 9,440 pages of sealed documents from the Army as a Christmas present on December 21st that—that I can’t even talk about, because they insisted that everything was privileged. It was supposed to be privileged as to private information and security information, but it’s everything, all kinds of emails. So, yeah, I mean, it starts out sounding very encompassing, and we’re finding out we were conservative about what agencies were involved.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Glenn Crespo into this conversation, a Bay Area community organizer. You were the peace activist who John Towery, you say, attempted to persuade you to purchase guns, to learn to shoot. How did you meet him, and what happened when he tried to get you to do this?
GLENN CRESPO: Well, this kind of relationship spanned over a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-year period of time. I first met him at a weapons symposium demonstration in Tacoma, Washington, in downtown Tacoma. I didn’t introduce myself to him at that point, but I saw him there. He came out—he actually came out of the symposium, and this was a conference where Lockheed Martin and all these other weapons manufacturers and distributors were showing their wares. He came out of that, and it appeared to me as if other activists in Olympia had already become friends with them. He was very friendly with them, they were very friendly with him. That was the first time I saw him. That was in mid-2007. Not long after that, he organized a Tacoma PMR meeting, and I wasn’t really involved—
AMY GOODMAN: Port Militarization Resistance.
GLENN CRESPO: Yeah, exactly. And I wasn’t very involved in that, but I did get the mass email. So I figured, because I lived in Tacoma, I might as well go check it out. He was the first person there. I was the second person there. He introduced himself. I introduced myself. And he asked me about a poster that he had made regarding an upcoming demonstration, and he said he was going to bring it to the group and see if we could get consensus on whether or not it was OK if he put it up. And I told him that—I looked at the poster and said, you know, "This is pretty general." There’s no particular reason I really think that he has to get consensus on whether or not he can put a poster up that’s kind of basically just time and place and description of the event. And that was the first time I met him.
He later on used that conversation as a way to boost our rapport between each other, when he said that he thought that that conversation was really profound to him, that he believed that it was interesting that I kind of wanted to—or suggested that he bypass some sort of consensus process regarding this poster, so that he can just do—you know, that he could do what he wants. You know, he could put the poster up if he wants to. That was very interesting. I realized that in retrospect, that that was a way that he tried to broaden or expand upon our friendship in the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, where did the guns come in?
GLENN CRESPO: Probably within the six to seven months after meeting him, so late—late 2007. He had started coming to events at the house I was living at in Tacoma. We were doing—we did a lending library. And we were doing a lot of organizing regarding the Tacoma Immigration and Customs detention center, so the ICE detention center. He would go to those meetings. He would come over for potlucks. So both public and private events, he kind of worked his way in as a friend.
He produced handgun to me in our kitchen, just between he and I. He carried it in his side pocket. He said he always carried a handgun on him. And he emptied it. He put the magazine out. He cleared the chamber, and he handed it to me. And he said he always carries one on him. And that, that was the first time he really talked about guns with me. And I was caught off guard, because at the time I was in my early twenties. I had never held a—I don’t even think I had seen a handgun, really, like that before. And that was kind of the beginning of him starting to talk more about guns. And he said—he had said that if we ever wanted to go shooting, being me and my friends, or myself in particular, that he would take us shooting, or, you know, he knows where all the gun shows are at, so we could go to gun shows if—you know, if we’re interested. And then, later on, these things did happen, when he prompted myself and others to go to the Puyallup Gun Show and purchase—purchase a rifle. And then, that went into going to shooting ranges that he was already a member of. He would drive us to all of these things, take us to these shooting ranges.
And this seemed fairly innocuous to me, in the beginning. I mean, Washington is a pretty gun-owner-friendly state. It didn’t—it didn’t really surprise me, because he wasn’t saying anything crazy or really implying anything crazy at that point. But about a year into that, there was a significant shift in his personality. Whereas in the beginning he was very optimistic and very—seemed very hopeful and kind of seemed lonely—I mean, he was, you know, in his early forties, early to mid-forties. He primarily surrounding himself with people who were in their early twenties. And he just came off as if he was kind of a sweet, harmless guy and was kind of lonely and wanted to hang out with people that he felt like he had something in common with, as far as his ideas went. But like I said, into a year into that relationship, he started to become a little bit more sinister and dark in his demeanor, in his—the things he would talk about.
And this continued to go into him giving myself and another friend a set of documents that were military strategy documents, and he said that he—he suggested that "we," whatever that meant, use those documents in "our actions." And these were documents on how to properly execute military operations. And then, following that, he showed people at my house, including myself, how to clear a building with a firearm. And these things were prompted by him. He would basically say, "Hey, do you—you know, check this out. Look, I could explain this stuff." And he would just go into it, on how to, for example, in this case, clear a building with a firearm. So he had a mock—you know, he would hold a rifle up, or a make-believe rifle, and clear—stalk around the lower levels of our house and up the stairwell, all the way up the second stairwell into the attic, and the whole time talking about how he would—you know, how he was clearing corners and checking angles and all this stuff that nobody particularly had any interest in.
And around the same time, he had, you know, conversations with me about how he believed that anarchists were very similar to fascists, in a—almost in a positive light, where he was saying that they both don’t care about the law and don’t use the law to get what they need or what they want, and that he believed that the only way anarchism or anarchy would ever work, in his words, would be if five billion people died. So this is kind of in his—in the midst of his weird, sinister behavior that started to happen, that I thought that he was depressed. I thought that he was basically going through some sort of like maybe existential crisis, or maybe he was fed up with things. I wasn’t really sure. He always talked about him having issues at the house—at his home. He had implied that his wife was concerned that he was cheating on her, and that’s why we could never go to his house, because his wife didn’t like us, his other friends, or whatever.
He submitted an article in the same—like the last—you know, that last half of the time that I knew him as a friend. He submitted an article to a magazine that I was editor of in early 2009, that was written from the perspective of 9/11 hijackers. And I remember this very specifically, because he gave me a copy, a physical copy, when we were on our way to go get coffee. And I remember reading it, and probably about a quarter of the way through realizing I didn’t even feel comfortable touching it, like touching the physical document with my hands. It was the weirdest thing in the world, because it was kind of—it was basically implying—or seeming sympathetic with the 9/11 hijackers. And he wanted me to publish this in his—in the next issue of the magazine I was editor of. So I just—I actually—because he was being so forceful, I just didn’t do the magazine again. That first issue was the last issue. And once he submitted that paper, I didn’t publish it ever again.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask your lawyer, Larry Hildes, is this entrapment, I mean, when you’re talking about this whole progression that Glenn Crespo went through with the man he thought was named John Jacob, who in fact is John Towery, working at Fort Lewis? He’s military personnel.
LARRY HILDES: I think, absolutely, it was an attempted entrapment. He went step by step. He misjudged our folks. He thought our—he correctly saw that our folks were angry and upset about what was going on, but misjudged them. It feels like we could have ended up with a Cleveland Five or an 803 situation very easily, if he had had his way. Fortunately, our folks’ reaction was: "This is really weird and creepy. Get away from me." And it speaks to how little he understood the nature of the antiwar movement and how little he understood people’s actual commitment to nonviolent action, to not seeing the troops themselves as the enemies—
AMY GOODMAN: Larry—
LARRY HILDES: —but seeing the war—yeah, I’m—yeah, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Larry Hildes, we don’t have much time, but I just want to ask about Posse Comitatus and the laws that separate the military—I mean, they’re not supposed to be marching through the streets of the United States.
LARRY HILDES: Yeah, right.
AMY GOODMAN: What about this issue of investigating? And how far and extensive is this infiltration campaign, where you put in people, they change their names, and they try to entrap or they change the nature of what these actions are?
LARRY HILDES: I think they crossed the line. They claim they’re allowed to do some level of investigative work to protect military activities, military shipments. But entrapping people—attempting to entrap people into conspiracies where they can get charged with major felonies they had no intention of committing, dealing with law enforcement agencies around the country to keep tabs on activists, following them to protests in Denver and St. Paul that have absolutely nothing to do with military shipments, they crossed the line into law enforcement, into civilian law enforcement.
And they did so quite knowingly and deliberately, and created this cover story that Towery was working for the fusion center, reporting to the sheriff’s office, not doing this during his work time, because they were well aware—in fact, he got paid overtime for attending the RNC, DNC conference at Evergreen, by the Army. So the Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks’ activism and their lives. I mean, we had—at one point, Brendan Dunn had four cases at the same time in four counties, because they kept stopping him. Seven times he got arrested or cited; Jeff Berryhill several times; Glenn Crespo. People would get busted over and over and over. Towery was attending their personal parties, their birthday parties, their going-away parties, and taking these vicious notes and passing them on about how to undermine these folks, how to undermine their activities, how to destroy their lives. This is way into Posse Comitatus. This is way beyond any legitimate military role.
And it’s exactly why Posse Comitatus exists. The job of the military, as they see it, is to seek out the enemy and destroy them, neutralize them. When the enemy is nonviolent dissenters and the First Amendment becomes the enemy, as Chris Pyle, our expert, who was the investigator for the Church Committee, put it—the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment are an inconvenience to the Army; they ignore them; they’re not sworn to uphold them in the same way—it becomes a very dangerous situation. And yes, they are way over into illegal conduct. They’re into entrapment operations. They’re into trying to silence dissent against them, and apparently much larger. This case just keeps getting bigger as we go. And we’re set for trial, I should say, on June 2nd—
AMY GOODMAN: And we will continue to cover this.
LARRY HILDES: —at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Larry Hildes, lead attorney representing the antiwar activists spied on by the military, civil rights attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, speaking to us from Seattle, Washington. And Glenn, thank you so much for being with us. Glenn Crespo is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, a community organizer in the Bay Area of California.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, spies in the movement. We’re going to go back some time to the civil rights movement. Stay with us.
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Spies of Mississippi: New Film on the State-Sponsored Campaign to Defeat the Civil Rights Movement
A new documentary reveals how the Mississippi state government spied on civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s. A little-known state agency called the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission hired spies to infiltrate the civil rights movement and squash attempts to desegregate the state and register African Americans to vote. Some of the spies were themselves African-American. The Commission generated more than 160,000 pages of reports, many of which were shared with local police departments whose officers belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The film, "Spies of Mississippi," also looks at how some of those reports contributed to the 1964 deaths of Freedom Summer activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner 50 years ago. For more, we speak with Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. He won the release of more than 2,400 pages of Commission records in 1989, and used those to reopen many cold cases from the civil rights era. His work helped lead to the 1994 conviction of the killer of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers and paved the way for 23 more convictions. We are also joined by Dawn Porter, the award-winning producer and director of "Spies of Mississippi," which is now streaming online at PBS Independent Lens.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to another story of government spying on activists, this time during the civil rights movement. The story is told in a new film now airing on PBS. It’s called Spies of Mississippi.
LAWRENCE GUYOT: Lyndon Johnson said, "There’s America, there’s the South, and then there’s Mississippi."
RALPH EUBANKS: Well, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was Mississippi’s spy agency during the civil rights movement.
WILLIAM WINTER: The Sovereignty Commission wanted to know who the activists were in the black community. They were out to stop overt efforts at integration.
JERRY MITCHELL: It’s state government itself. We’re not just talking about some rednecks on the street are pulling this off. This is defiance at its highest levels.
MARGARET BLOCK: We knew we were being followed. I knew my life was in danger.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: This is still the United States of America, and you don’t treat American citizens this way.
WILLIAM WINTER: As far as the Sovereignty Commission went, in terms of crossing legal lines, I think it is accurate to say that they crossed them all the time.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for Spies of Mississippi, a new film that exposes how in the ’50s and ’60s a little-known state agency called the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission hired spies to infiltrate the civil rights movement and squash attempts to desegregate the state and register African Americans to vote. Some of the spies were themselves African-American. The commission generated more than 160,000 pages of reports, many of which were shared with local police departments whose officers belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The film looks at how some of those reports contributed to the 1964 deaths of the Freedom Summer activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner. Fifty years ago, that was.
Well, for more, we go to Jackson, Mississippi, where we’re joined by Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, won the release of more than 2,400 pages of commission records in 1989 and used those to reopen many cold cases from the civil rights era. His work helped lead to the 1994 conviction of the killer of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers and paved the way for 23 more convictions.
Here in New York, we’re joined by Dawn Porter, the award-winning producer and director of Spies of Mississippi. The film premiered this month on PBS Independent Lens, and you can watch it online until March 12.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jerry Mitchell, what were you most surprised by in the documents that you got?
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, lots of things—the fact that they had spied on so many activists, the fact they had spied on Medgar Evers and later tried to help basically acquit the killer in that case, as well as reports on my own newspaper from back in the ’50s and ’60s. So, that was interesting, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Dawn Porter, why did you decide to turn this into a film?
DAWN PORTER: You know, when I first heard this story, that there was not only a spy agency, government spy agency, but that there were also African-American activists who were involved in the spying, I thought that’s a piece of civil rights history that isn’t widely known, but it fills in a lot of the missing—connects the dots in a lot of ways. And I thought people would be interested in it. And I just was fascinated by the lengths that state government will go to subvert democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip from your film, from Spies of Mississippi, about one of the people who was spied on by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. We hear from historian Neil McMillen, author Rick Bowers, and Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, who was an activist at the time. It begins, well, with our guest in Jackson, Jerry Mitchell.
JERRY MITCHELL: I’ll never forget finding the file on Clyde Kennard, the young man whose great crime against the state of Mississippi was to apply to go to college.
NEIL McMILLEN: Clyde Kennard was a Korean War veteran, an upstanding citizen who had studied in the Northern universities and who was very ambitious and a profoundly decent and good guy. In the ’50s, Clyde Kennard tried to go to the University of Southern Mississippi.
RICK BOWERS: In the 1950s, the few African Americans in the South who were able to enroll in college could only attend black schools. Kennard’s application to attend Mississippi Southern was seen as an attack on segregation and set into motion a swift response from the state. His application was given to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an organization few Mississippians even knew existed.
They did a report that tracked his background growing up in Mississippi, his time spent with his family in Chicago, his time in the military, his time at the University of Chicago, and his time back in Mississippi helping his ailing mother on her chicken farm. With multiple agents tracking everybody in his background, they couldn’t come up with anything that could undercut his application to go to college.
NEIL McMILLEN: The police, with the cooperation of the State Sovereignty Commission, planted stolen chickenfeed from the county coop. About some—about 20 bucks’ worth of chickenfeed were planted on his farm. He didn’t steal them. Everybody knows that. But he was arrested for that, and he was put in prison for seven years.
RICK BOWERS: He was sentenced to Parchman Penitentiary, the worst prison at that time probably in the country. They let him out a couple of months before he died of cancer, but only because he was terminal.
REP. BENNIE THOMPSON: That Sovereignty Commission, it did all it could to hold back progress in our state and basically discourage any kind of efforts to bring black and white people together.
AMY GOODMAN: That last voice, Congressmember Bennie Thompson. This is a clip from Spies of Mississippi, directed by Dawn Porter. So, talk more about the Sovereignty Commission, Dawn.
DAWN PORTER: So the Sovereignty Commission is established in response to Brown v. Board of Education, the famous Supreme Court case that allows integration of schools. That case was seen by Mississippi as almost a declaration of war. It was viewed as an attack on Mississippi’s sovereignty and set into motion a vast response from the state. One of the things they did was establish this spy agency. And I think what’s so remarkable about this is it was a spy agency hidden in plain sight. There was an allocation of taxpayer dollars, $250,000, which in 1950s money is serious money. There’s an office that reports to the governor of Mississippi. And one of the things they did was hire spies.
So, in the early years, what you see in the '50s is exactly what happens to Clyde Kennard. His crime was applying to go to a white school. And I thought it's such wonderful tie-in to the segment you just did about how when a state government feels that its authority, its directions are being challenged, that anything goes. And so, they literally ruin this young man’s life. I think he had come from the University of Chicago. He wanted to be near his family. He wanted to continue his education. And to deliberately plant evidence in order to arrest him and sentence him to prison, I think, is just—I wish it was more shocking, but it’s certainly terrible.
AMY GOODMAN: This is another clip from Spies of Mississippi, featuring Horace Harned, a member of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, beginning with a promotional video about the Jackson Police Department leading up to Freedom Summer.
PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: The Jackson Police Department operates with the best demonstration deterrent of any city in the country. In addition to Thompson’s tank, armor-plated and equipped with nine machine-gun positions, the arsenal includes cage trucks for transporting masses of arrested violators; searchlight trucks, each of which can light three city blocks in case of night riots; police dog teams, trained to trail, search a building or disperse a mob or crowd; mounted police, for controlling parades and pedestrian traffic; and compounds and detention facilities to hold and house 10,000 prisoners. Along with these ironclad police facilities, there are new ironclad state laws outlawing picketing, economic boycotting and demonstrating, other laws to control the printing and distribution of certain types of information, and laws to dampen complaints to federal authorities.
HORACE HARNED JR.: We called out the Highway Patrol and the Guard, people like that, to keep them in line. We kept them in line. We locked up a lot of them, put them in jail for disorderly conduct, that sort of thing. The jails in Jackson were full, and several other places we had them.
PRISONER 1: I don’t mind coming to jail. I don’t mind suffering at all. And I will suffer, sure, just for my freedom.
PRISONER 2: I want equal rights. I want equal rights.
HORACE HARNED JR.: We were not intimidated. And I think that’s important. If you get intimidated, you can’t control anything.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Horace Harned, a member of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. If—Jerry Mitchell, if you could talk about who he was and the significance of this commission in your state of Mississippi?
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, it was a very powerful commission. It was actually headed by the governor of the state and the state’s most powerful leaders. You had people who were in the—you know, the most powerful members of the Legislature, the lieutenant governor. You know, all these people that held the highest offices, basically, had control of this agency, which had law enforcement powers, had judicial powers to subpoena, to get anything they wanted. It was frightening from a power perspective. You know, they had the blessings of the governor on down.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and when we come back, I want to talk about particularly the African-American leaders and others—not always leaders—who were recruited by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission to spy on their colleagues, on their communities, on their congregations. We’re talking to Jerry Mitchell, investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, and Dawn Porter, who’s the director of Spies of Mississippi. Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue with the new film that’s airing on PBS around the country on Independent Lens called Spies of Mississippi. I want to go to a clip of R.L. Bolden, who is the former vice president of the Mississippi NAACP, who many believe was Agent X, who reported to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.
R.L. BOLDEN: They claim that I was a spy. That was a lie. I wasn’t no spy. I was worse than shocked. I didn’t realize that kind of information was out there, because it wasn’t true. It’s possible that the detective agency was passing on information.
HOLLIS WATKINS: I knew R.L. very well. He was the vice president of the state NAACP, and he was intimately involved with us. And we didn’t have any signs or indication that he was to the contrary. It was only through the diligence of late Senator Henry Kirksey, who began to pinpoint things to determine that he was working with the State Sovereignty Commission. And that had to do with him digging off into the files and looking at reports and seeing reports being given about certain specific meetings and him recollecting who was at the meeting. And everybody that attended that meeting were mentioned except one person, that he knew was there, and that’s when he came to the conclusion that since this is a pattern, that one person who was not mentioned at these meetings, that I know was there, have to be the one that’s submitting the report.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s civil rights activist Hollis Watkins talking about R.L. Bolden, who was the former vice president of the Mississippi NAACP—and, it turns out, once the documents were released, it was revealed that he was one of the spies recruited by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Dawn Porter, talk more about R.L. Bolden, his significance and—with the missing three civil rights activists, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman.
DAWN PORTER: You know, so the Sovereignty Commission initially starts by having white agents, former FBI men. Then they move on to have high-profile African Americans. Those African Americans were revealed. Their identities were revealed. And so, the commission realized it needed ordinary people. So, R.L. Bolden ended up being an ordinary American, extraordinary spy. He infiltrated the highest levels of the civil rights movement. He was at a very important training that the civil rights activists conducted before Freedom Summer. So—
AMY GOODMAN: In Ohio.
DAWN PORTER: In Ohio. So, in Ohio, all the students that were about to go south were brought together, and Bolden was at that meeting. He gave the license plate and the pictures of the civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Other people also gave this information, but he—we know that he gave this information to his handlers. His handlers turned that over to the Mississippi police, who were infiltrated by the Klan. The significance of that is, I think that the way the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders are often described, it’s as if they were pulled over randomly for being in an interracial car, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. They were being targeted by the Sovereignty Commission. Their every move was watched. This was quite a deliberate act to pull them over. And, you know, it results in their murders. It results in their deaths—and one of the most important events of the civil rights movement, which began—which did actually open up Mississippi, but what a tragic way to do it.
AMY GOODMAN: Jerry Mitchell, what were you most surprised by in these documents that you got, especially around this issue of the recruiting of people within the movement and then those not necessarily in the movement? I want to play one more clip—but who were African-American and were leaders and were seen as part of the movement. Let’s go back to Spies of Mississippi. This clip includes Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights activist in Mississippi since 1961. It starts, though, with Rick Bowers, author of the book, Spies of Mississippi.
RICK BOWERS: Any time there’s a great freedom movement, there are people who end up on both sides. And if we could transport ourselves back to Mississippi at that time, it was a confusing time. There were many shades of opinion on all the issues related to civil rights.
LAWRENCE GUYOT: We had a lot of people who felt that there was no way that the civil rights movement could possibly win, so why not get on the winning side early? And others who said, "Well, the government asked me to do it, therefore it has to be legal. The government doesn’t do illegal things, does it?"
AMY GOODMAN: Lawrence Guyot, the civil rights activist in Mississippi since 1961. Jerry Mitchell, talk more about what they are saying.
JERRY MITCHELL: Well, you know, you had these spies that are hired by detective agencies. That’s basically how the Sovereignty Commission is able to operate and kind of keep one—a bit of distance, if that makes any sense, between them and the spies, so that the detective agency is reporting back to them, and they actually don’t record the name of the spy in the files. And so, that’s the way they kind of operated and were able to pull this off.
And I might add, you know, there are actually, in the case of like B.L. Bell, he actually volunteered his services, which I know seems very odd. But one of the reasons and one of the motivations for some of these spies was money. They were being paid. Percy Greene, who was an editor for the Jackson Advocate, was actually sent up north and paid to speak. And he and other speakers like him would say things like, "Oh, you know, we love Mississippi. We love segregation. We love the way it is right now." And so, the idea behind this is not just spies, but also spreading propaganda, which, of course, like I said, was paid for.
AMY GOODMAN: The pastors involved, very painful part of this story, tell us.
DAWN PORTER: So, Reverend H.H. Hume, really influential pastor, huge congregation and a radio audience in Mississippi—and you have to remember, at that time it was really difficult for African Americans to get that kind of influence. It turns out that he was providing information to the Sovereignty Commission and was being paid for it. You know, it’s as if Jesse Jackson was betraying the civil rights community today. That’s how significant he was in the state of Mississippi. And I think it speaks to, you know, what Jerry said. There’s a particular kind of betrayal when your spiritual leader and a person everyone wants to emulate and look up to turns out to be an informant.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you hope to accomplish with this film, Dawn?
DAWN PORTER: You know, I really—everyone is outraged by finding out there were spies during a movement like the civil rights movement, that we all now agree led to great freedoms. But I really loved the segment you just did, and I think that there’s a tie in history. These tactics are not new. The Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment are not convenient. You cannot sometimes have democracy. You need to—you know, these are actually really enemies of our Constitution. And I think that those—when those tactics are still happening today, we need to understand that history.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to wrap up, but we’re going to do part two 2: Interview with "Spies of Mississippi" Director and Reporter Jerry Mitchell, and then we’ll post it online at democracynow.org, including the conversation between Jerry Mitchell and Myrlie Evers, the widow of Medgar Evers. Jerry Mitchell, thanks for being with us, investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, and thank you so much to Dawn Porter. Spies of Mississippi is her PBS Independent Lens film.
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Headlines:
U.S., Russia at Odds over Legitimacy in Ukraine
Ukraine is delaying the formation of a new government until Thursday following the ouster of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych after months of protests that killed dozens of people. The Obama administration has indicated it no longer recognizes Yanukovych as Ukraine’s leader and has pledged financial support to Ukraine. President Yanukovych had come under fire for strengthening ties with Russia instead of Europe. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has rejected the interim government.
Dmitry Medvedev: "Strictly speaking, there is no one to talk to there. The government doesn’t exist. There are big doubts about the legitimacy of a whole series of organs of power that are now functioning there. Some of our foreign partners, our Western partners, think differently, that those are legitimate bodies. I don’t know what constitution and what laws they have been reading. It seems to me it is an aberration to call legitimate what is essentially the result of an armed mutiny."
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Pakistan Strikes Kill 30 in North Waziristan
Pakistani officials say the Pakistani military has conducted air strikes on North Waziristan, killing at least 30 people. The northwestern region is also a frequent target of U.S. drone attacks. The bombings come after talks between Pakistan and the Taliban broke down last week.
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Pentagon Budget Expands Special Ops, Cuts Benefits
The Pentagon has outlined a five-year budget plan that would shrink the number of active-duty soldiers to its smallest size since before World War II while expanding the number of special operations personnel. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel outlined the proposal on Monday.
Chuck Hagel: "These recommendations will adapt and reshape our defense enterprise so that we can continue protecting this nation’s security in an era of unprecedented uncertainty and change. As we end our combat mission in Afghanistan, this will be the first budget to fully reflect the transition DoD is making for after 13 years of war."
Under the plan, the number of active-duty soldiers would decrease to about 450,000, but special operations forces would increase by about 6 percent to nearly 70,000. The plan also includes cuts to military benefits.
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Heavy Smog Grips Beijing
Residents of Beijing are suffering through a sixth day of heavy smog. On Monday, authorities issued the second-highest level of pollution alert for a second time after it was used for the first time ever on Friday. During an orange alert, children and the elderly are warned not to go outside. Dozens of factories have shut down in a bid to curb pollution.
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U.S. Urges Uganda to Repeal Anti-Gay Law
The Obama administration is calling on Uganda to repeal an anti-gay law that imposes a life sentence for repeated homosexual acts and makes it a crime not to report gay people to authorities. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney criticized the law after it was signed by President Yoweri Museveni on Monday.
Jay Carney: "We will continue to urge the government of Uganda to repeal this abhorrent law and to advocate for the protection of the universal human rights of LGBT persons in Uganda and around the world. What I can tell you about steps the United States might take in response is that we are undertaking a review of its — of our relationship with Uganda in light of this decision."
Uganda is a key ally of the United States in Africa.
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Arizona Republicans Who Voted for Anti-Gay Bill Now Want a Veto
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer is facing pressure from within her own party to reject a bill allowing businesses to deny service to LGBT people. Three Republican state senators sent Brewer a letter urging her to veto the bill just days after they voted for it, along with the rest of the state Senate’s Republican caucus. The senators wrote that public outcry over the law was causing Arizona "immeasurable harm."
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GOP State Senator in Virginia Refers to Pregnant Women as "Hosts"
A Republican state lawmaker in Virginia is under fire after using the term "host" to refer to pregnant women. State Senator Steve Martin posted the comment on Facebook in response to a message from a pro-choice group urging him to change his policies on abortion. He wrote, "once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it to remain alive." He later edited the post, changing the word "host" to "bearer of the child." He told Huffington Post his remarks had been taken the wrong way and were meant to be sarcastic. Women’s health advocates plan to rally in the Virginia Senate gallery today wearing shirts that say "Not a Host."
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NYC Backs Off Plan to Remove Homeless from Subways
New York City has backed off on a plan to remove homeless people from subway stations following a public campaign against the planned sweep. Advocates for the homeless were on patrol early Monday morning to ensure people could remain in subways, where they are staying warm. Participants at a rally on Sunday said homeless people should not be forced to choose between shelters and jail.
Daniel Sanchez, Copwatch: "I graduated from Stuyvesant High School, which is known as one the greatest high schools in this city, and six months later, I was sleeping on the MTA trains. So I want to be clear to those of you who might be watching this and feel that this isn’t an issue that’s connected to you. I never thought I was going to end up homeless. Most New Yorkers are one paycheck away from homelessness. So understand that at any given time, a couple of bad breaks, and you could be in these same situations."
The protest in New York City comes amid a nationwide crackdown on the homeless. Across the United States, more than 50 cities have adopted laws against camping or food sharing that make it harder for homeless people to survive.
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Whistleblower Group Reports Suspicious Break-in at D.C. Office
A Washington, D.C.-based whistleblower group has reported a suspicious break-in at their office. The Project on Government Oversight says unknown people appear to have broken in, shuffled papers on employees’ desks and attempted to open a file cabinet, all while leaving computers and other valuable items behind. Police determined the break-in was related to the group’s work, which centers on exposing waste, fraud and abuse by the government, particularly by the Pentagon.
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Rep. John Dingell, Longest-Serving Member of Congress, to Retire
The longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history has announced he will retire at the end of this term after 59 years. Michigan Democratic Rep. John Dingell is known as a champion of single-payer healthcare and a pioneer of early environmental laws, although he resisted some regulations in defense of Detroit’s auto industry. Dingell has also criticized the deadlock in the current Congress, famously saying during the partial government shutdown last October, "The American people could get better government out of monkey island in the local zoo." He announced his retirement Monday.
Rep. John Dingell: "Like many of you, I have found great disappointment in this Congress. I want you to know this is not the reason that Debbie and I are leaving the Congress. We are leaving it for quite a different reason, and that is, we want to enjoy a little bit of peace and quiet and contentment amongst the people that we have known and loved for so long."
Dingell’s wife, Debbie Dingell, is reportedly considering a run for her husband’s seat.
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Greenwald: Spy Agencies Manipulate Information, Attack Reputations of Targets Online
A new report based on leaks by Edward Snowden reveals new details of how Western spy agencies manipulate information online. Writing at TheIntercept.org, Glenn Greenwald describes the tactics of a secret unit inside Britain’s top spy agency called JTRIG, or Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group. JTRIG’s self-identified goals are to discredit targets by posting fake material — including, for example, fake blog posts purporting to be by a victim of the target — and to manipulate online discourse. A newly revealed document titled "Disruption: Operational Playbook" lists tactics like "false flag operation," or posting material online, then falsely attributing it to someone else. The targets appear to include those suspected of "hacktivism," meaning online acts of political protest. "The broader point," Greenwald writes, "is that ... these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats."
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New NSA Source Emerges in Germany
Another source within the National Security Agency appears to have emerged. The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported Sunday that the NSA increased its spying on senior German officials after President Obama ordered a halt to spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel. The report cites a high-ranking NSA employee in Germany.
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