Newly disclosed documents show U.S. Defense Department tracked anti-Iraq war activities

An anti-terrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks on military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that "a church service for peace" would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding "nonviolence training" sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The Defense Department said it tightened its procedures this year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist threats - and not peaceable First Amendment activity - was included in the database.

The head of the office that runs the database, known as Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been collected in the first place. "I don't want it, we shouldn't have had it, not interested in it," said Daniel Baur, acting director of the counterintelligence field-activity unit, which runs the Talon program at the Defense Department. "I don't want to deal with it."

Source: International Herald Tribune
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