SpyTalk

Activist Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said he met Towery, who called himself John Jacob, in 2007, "through community organizing and antiwar organizing I was involved with in Tacoma and Olympia with other anarchists and other activists."

"He said he was an anarchist" and "really interested in Students for a Democratic Society. He wanted to start a chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society, which is connected to SDS," Dunn told Democracy Now, the liberal radio show that first reported on the spying this week. 

Jabob/Towery had apparently infilrated many antiwar groups in the Seattle-Tacoma area, Dunn said.

"He got involved with Port Militarization Resistance, with Iraq Vets Against the War. He was--you know, (he) knew a lot of people involved with that organization." 

Another member of the group, Drew Hendricks, told radio host Amy Goodman that  Jacob/Towery "approached me as somebody who claimed to have base access, which turned out to be true.

"He did admit that he was a civilian employee for the Army. And what he was offering me were observations and inside knowledge of operations on Fort Lewis."

Hendricks said he rebuffed the offer, which could have led to his arrest and prosecution.

"I let him know that I wasn't willing to have any classified information from him and that I wasn't engaged in espionage," Hendricks said on the show.

"I was looking for open source information and looking for insight into movements of military materials over the public roads, so that people other than myself could organize protests or organize blockades, as they might see fit, and it wasn't appropriate for me to be involved in their plans. It was only appropriate for him let me know things that I could confirm from open ground, from public spaces."

Hendricks added, "He abided by those rules, for the most part."

E-mails obtained by Hendricks revealed that Jacob was actually John Towery, a member of the Fort Lewis "Force Protection" unit, and that his reports on antiwar groups were going to the Washington Joint Analytical Center, a partnership of local and state police, the FBI and the federal Department of Homeland Security.

The center is one of more than 70 DHS-backed intelligence "fusion centers" around the country.  

According a DHS official who discussed the issue only on terms of anonymity, many, but not all, fusion centers have a military representative.

"Membership is a state's decision," the official said.

Base spokesman Joesph Piek told Tacoma News-Tribune reporter Jeremy Pawloski that "The Fort Lewis Force Protection Division, under the Directorate of Emergency Services, consists of both military and civilian employees whose focus is on supporting law enforcement and security operations to ensure the safety and security of Fort Lewis, soldiers, family members, the workforce and those personnel accessing the installation."

Piek added that, "In support of that focus, the Force Protection Division executes Force Protection (FP), Anti-terrorism (AT), and Criminal Intelligence collection, processing, analysis, reporting and dissemination."

Spokesmen at the Pentagon and Army could not immediately say whether placing undercover operatives in antiwar groups was permissible under military counterintelligence procedures.

From 2002 until it was shuttered late last year, the Pentagon collected domestic intelligence through its Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which created controversy when news reports revealed it was spying on antiwar groups.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates ordered it closed in 2008, after a review "found the office's functions could be performed more effectively by another agency," Reuters reported.

According to Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, a Pentagon spokesman, CIFA's functions were assumed by the Defense Counterintelligence and HUMINT (human intelligence) Center, a unit of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Former FBI domestic intelligence undercover agent Mike German called the Ft. Lewis revelations "shocking."

"It's disturbing that military units are involved in any domestic law enforcement activity," said German, now an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who coauthored critical studies of the fusion centers in 2007 and 2008.

"It's unclear whether officials in D.C. understand what the military is doing in domestic law enforcement," German told SpyTalk.