Originally published February 19 2006
Documents allege NSA was spying on peace group in Baltimore
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to rawstory.com, a Baltimore peace group called the Pledge of Resistance was heavily spied upon the NSA, with the cooperation of the Baltimore Police Department.
The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.
According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department.
An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities.
The revelation that a Baltimore peace group was spied upon comes in the wake of a news reports that the agency has also been eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and raises new questions about the legality of NSA activities.
The Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is part of the national Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which works with the Baltimore Emergency Response Network and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) -- part of a national group committed to nonviolent civil resistance to stop the war in Iraq.
The Pledge lobbies Maryland congressmembers via letters, phone calls, faxes, emails and face-to-face meetings; members of the group are periodically arrested for peaceable protests.
"Shocking appalling and unnecessary," is how the Chair of the DC Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild Demonstration Support Committee Mark Goldstone describes the NSA actions.
Maria Allwine, a protester arrested Oct. 4, 2004, recently described the events in an interview on Democracy Rising.
"Congress must investigate this, and get a handle on the issue of domestic spying by the NSA and other agencies against people exercising political speech," he said.
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