SACRAMENTO - A special California National Guard unit that was disbanded last year amid suspicion it was engaged in domestic spying may have been part of a nationwide effort to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens, a state senator charged Tuesday.
Internal National Guard documents seem to suggest, according to Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, that Guard units in nine other states may have had similar spying initiatives when California’s unit became public last summer.
“Because they were all created at about the same time and, to the best of our knowledge thus far seemingly engaged in similar activity, including domestic surveillance activities,” Dunn said, “we could only conclude that it had been part of a concentrated or coordinated effort to create such units around the country.”
A Guard official denied the allegations, and said three independent investigations cleared the California National Guard’s Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion unit. Spokesman Jon Siepmann also denied the program ever conducted surveillance on U.S. citizens.
Officials at the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C., did not return telephone messages and e-mails.
The unit formed in California, first reported by the Mercury News in June, had been given “broad authority” to monitor, analyze and distribute data on potential terrorist threats. Top Guard officials, the Mercury News learned then, were involved in tracking a Mother’s Day anti-war rally organized by families of slain U.S. soldiers.
Rally participants — including Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and CodePink — were outraged when they learned a newly formed Guard unit monitored the group. So was Dunn, who was chair of a budget committee that oversaw the Guard and launched investigations into the alleged domestic spying.
A spokesman for the Colorado National Guard, which Dunn identified as one of the states with a spying unit, called the senator’s allegation off-base. “Nobody in the Guard wants to do something that is illegal,” said Capt. Robert Bell.
The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act bars the U.S. military from domestic law enforcement unless responding to specific circumstances. But no such law exists for Guard troops in California.
Dunn and Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, introduced legislation last week that would bar Guard members from engaging in domestic spying unless authorized by law.
“We have to close the loopholes so that our military personnel do not engage in unauthorized police activity domestically, including spying,” Dunn said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, during which time he also disclosed the information contained in the Guard documents he obtained through a subpoena last year.
The documents include a two-page memorandum from the National Guard Bureau, which coordinates Guard activities across the country. Dunn said the memo — with the subject line “Existing `Fusion Center’ concepts in the States and Territories” — acknowledged the presence of such centers in California, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia.
The memo, written by the National Guard Bureau’s Robert Jennings, includes a line about how policies should include a thorough legal review “to maintain the strict separation between federal and state missions.”
Dunn interpreted the statement as the National Guard’s admission that it was fully aware there was a federal law against spying but that it didn’t apply to state units.
“We are still trying to answer the question of where exactly the idea and the push behind the creation of such units came from,” Dunn said, adding, “We have met with great resistance to gaining access to such information.”
Siepmann, of the California National Guard, said fusion refers to government agencies sharing information since Sept. 11, 2001, to respond to crimes. “The existence of a fusion center is very different than the existence of a domestic surveillance center,” Siepmann said. “Fusion doesn’t equate to surveillance or spying.”
The communications director of the Guard’s lobbying group, the National Guard Association of the United States, also disputed Dunn’s conclusions about coast-to-coast spying.
“It doesn’t seem likely at all,” said John Goheen, whose military experience spans three decades. “You have to understand what the Guard’s role is; the Guard is not an organization that does domestic intelligence. It runs counter to my experience.”
Allegations of domestic spying — whether by Guard troops or through the use of controversial wiretaps under the Bush administration — have rankled civil libertarians since the 1960s, when the military gathered information on at least 100,000 Americans.
The California unit was quietly dismantled in November, bringing a sigh of relief to the anti-war groups — until they learned of the latest developments from Dunn.
“This is a story that doesn’t seem to end,” said Ruth Robertson of Palo Alto, a member of the Raging Grannies who wasn’t surprised to know that similar units may have existed in other states.
Dunn also is pushing for the creation of a Joint Intelligence Committee. The committee, he said
