Issue Date: August 11, 2006
Peace group under FBI surveillance
By LINDA COOPER and JAMES HODGESchool of the Americas Watch, a faith-based peace organization that seeks to close a U.S. military school that has advocated the use of torture and assassination, finds itself under surveillance by the FBI’s counterterrorism unit.
Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who founded the organization, recently told members of the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva that the spying has been going on for years.
And he has the documents to prove it.
With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Bourgeois obtained FBI records showing it has been targeting his organization, which monitors the U.S. military school for Latin American officers, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The group organizes an annual November protest against the school in Fort Benning, Ga.
What is chilling, Bourgeois said, is that the surveillance continues despite the fact the FBI’s own documents conclude that SOA Watch is a peaceful group.
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2006c/081106/081106o.php