Spies in our midst: Military spook outed in Olympia
Democracy Now! has the exclusive skinny on military spooks infiltrating groups in my occasional stomping grounds of Olympia, WA: My pal Drew Hendricks, along with Brendan Maslauskas Dunn (of Students for a Democratic Society and the Port of Oly anti-militarization group) pieced together documents from FOIA requests to out “John Jacob” who was passing himeself off as an anti-war activist. He was really John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at the nearby Fort Lewis military base.
Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now, the base’s Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. “This could be one of the key revelations of this era,” said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations. [includes rush transcript]
The first thing we see as we travel around the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.
