Pentagon moves database linked to spying on gay groups

The Pentagon said on Aug. 21 that it will move an anti-terror database that was found to be spying on gay and anti-war groups. A Pentagon spokesperson said that the database will be closed on Sept. 17 but that much of the information it contained will be sent to the FBI where it will be placed on a database known as Guardian. The Threat and Local Observation Notices surveillance program, known as TALON, was launched in 2003 track and monitor domestic terror threats. But it came under intense scrutiny after news reports revealed officials were collecting data on demonstrators and protesters, including those within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The reports said that the Pentagon had spied on New York University law school's LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw and gay groups at the State University of New York at Albany, William Patterson College in New Jersey, and University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Cruz. In February, 2006, the DoD acknowledged in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had 'inappropriately' collected information on protesters but did not name any of the organizations. That same month the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network filed a lawsuit to obtain information related to the government's domestic spy program when the Pentagon turned down a Freedom of Information Act request. SLDN believed it had been targeted because of its support for gays in the military and its efforts to have "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the ban on gays serving openly, repealed. Last year, a Pentagon review found that as many as 260 reports in the database were improperly collected or kept there. James R. Clapper, Jr., undersecretary of defense for intelligence, recommended closing the database in April, saying that the Pentagon "must lay to rest the distrust and concern about the department's commitment to civil rights." But whether any information collected on SLDN and other gay and anti-war groups will be purged before the information is transferred is not known. Pentagon spokesperson Army Col. Gary Keck denied that pressure from the groups had anything to do with the decision to move the material. Keck said the Pentagon database is being shut down because "the analytical value had declined."