Feb 24, 2006  |  By: MUBARAK DAHI  | COMMENTS     

HERE WAS A LOT OF nervous energy around the military recruiting tables at the University of California at Santa Cruz last April.

About 300 students from the campus group, Students Against War, had shown up as part of a protest to focus attention on the military’s discriminatory policies against gay and lesbian soldiers.

That day, the students, many of whom were gay or lesbian, had gathered in hopes of highlighting the military’s unfair rule keeping gay and lesbian military personnel in the closet, and hopefully convincing other students against talking to or signing up with military representatives.

Those gathered that day began by circling the tables occupied by the military recruiters. They conducted what they called an "anti-military teach-in," handing out information on topics ranging from the detrimental effects of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," to their opposition to the war in Iraq.

According to the protesters, they succeeded in blocking virtually any enlisting efforts by the Pentagon, and the military recruiters left in frustration.

About six months later, in October, tensions on campus were running much higher. Members of Students Against War had gathered to stage yet another rally against military recruiters on campus.

This time, to draw specific attention to the unfairness of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," about two dozen students had entered the building where military recruiters were set up, and held a same-sex kiss-in. An additional 200 students gathered in a rally outside the building.

But due to all the attention and success of the previous protest, the university deployed heavy security onsite, and barred cameras and signs from inside the building. The administration explained the actions as only an attempt to carefully monitor the event.

They weren’t the only ones with watchful eyes. As first reported by NBC, it turns out that the Pentagon was involved in secretly spying on the student protesters at Santa Cruz. Press reports have revealed that military documents describe the protests as a "credible threat" of terrorism that could compromise national security.

And the Santa Cruz protesters aren’t the only ones under the Pentagon’s Big Brother gaze.

IN FEBRUARY 2005, ABOUT 60 people gathered to protest military recruitment at New York University law school. For years, students had opposed military recruiters on campus, specifically because of the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy. The protests were organized by the gay and lesbian student law group, OutLaw.

Though no OutLaw protest has ever resulted in harm or injury to anyone, or even an arrest, the secret Pentagon report on the incident classified the group as "possibly violent."

Add to the list of government terror suspects worshippers at a Quaker meeting house in Lake Worth, Fla.; demonstrators from the Broward Anti-War Coalition who assembled outside a military recruiting office at a strip mall in Lauderhill, Fla.; protesters handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in front of a Halliburton office in Houston to highlight the company’s "war profiteering" from food contracts to the military in Iraq; and on and on.

All of these people have ended up on what only recently became disclosed as the Pentagon’s secret spying program, known by operation code name TALON, short for Threat & Local Observation Notice.

What’s more frightening is that probably thousands of other innocent and peaceful Americans are also on the list.

It’s part of a larger, alarming pattern of secret spying on American citizens by our own government.

THE PENTAGON’S SPYING efforts came to light on the heels of a report by the New York Times that revealed another domestic espionage program: Since 2002, President Bush has authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails of American citizens in the United States without obtaining a warrant from a special surveillance court. This order was given despite a law that specifically prohibits the government from taking such action.

In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prohibits the government from spying on Americans without obtaining a warrant from a special secret court.

It’s not difficult to get the needed warrant: In the history of FISA, only five requests for domestic spying have ever been denied. So there is no acceptable rationale for the government to be engaged in illegal spying on American citizens.

As American citizens, and particularly as gay and lesbian people, we would do well to remember just why FISA was enacted.

In the McCarthy era, the government kept long lists of "suspected Communists," and used that information (much of it erroneous) as a way ...