SOAW organizes annual protests in Fort Benning, Ga., the site where the U.S. Army has trained many of the military leaders and dictators in Latin America who were responsible for massacres of opposition forces and the creation of torture centers, among other crimes against humanity. The training at the SOA is ongoing and the graduates of the institute continue to engage in extrajudicial executions and the repression of social movements in countries like Chile, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico.

SOAW's mission and proven track record are peaceful. Yet the FBI deployed its "domestic terrorism" resources, reported to the "Counterterrorism Unit" and reached out to the Miami Domestic Intelligence Terrorism Squad. It used confidential informants inside the movement to collect information. The FBI's headquarters and counter-terrorism units were requested to provide the FBI's Field Office in Atlanta with "all intelligence relevant to the SOA, so that this information can be provided to local/military law enforcement agencies."

Tracked despite 'peaceful intentions'

A review of 10 years of redacted documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on behalf of the SOAW show that, year after year, the FBI acknowledged that the organizers and the activities of the group were peaceful. And year after year, the FBI continued to keep its case open with claims that it was possible that there could be "more aggressive protest participants" or "factions of a radical cell" or other such pretextual alarmist warnings to justify its spying on protected First Amendment political activity.

The documents have been made public and are searchable at http://www.JusticeOnline.org/soaw.

In 2005, FBI reports admitted "the peaceful intentions" of the SOA Watch leaders but justified its work on the basis that "a militant group would infiltrate the protestors and use of the cover of the crowd to create problems." Yet they admitted that "At this time, there are no specific or known threats to this event."

The vague, unspecified threat of future violence functioned as the annual excuse for the surveillance of peaceful dissent. Under this logic of counter-terrorism law enforcement activity, all constitutionally protected peaceful protest carries the seed of potential terrorism — we are all potential terrorists.

This pattern of significant surveillance, allusions to violence and then reports of peaceful activity after the fact continued for years.

Mass arrests and Confidential Informants

The protests for many years involved thousands of people, and included arrests for peaceful, organized, nonviolent civil disobedience. Law enforcement described the mass arrests of 1,700 protesters in November 2000 as arrests for "acting in an overt manner." This included "wearing masks, coffins, puppets or pouring the