a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as "potential terrorist activity" events like a "Stop the War Now" rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005……
An internal report produced in May 2005, for instance, discussed antiwar protests at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was issued "to clarify why the Students for Peace and Justice represent a potential threat to D.O.D. personnel."
"The clear purpose of these civil disobedience actions was to disrupt the recruiting mission of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command by blocking the entrance to the recruiting station and causing the stations to shut down early," it said.
But the document also noted that "to date, no reported incidents have occurred at these protests."
These stories reminded me of my own brush with Army “Intelligence” in 1965 when I was an undergraduate student at Ohio State University. Soon after I dropped out of school I was told by my Draft Board to report for induction, so I quit my job, resigned from the Lutheran Church choir, packed a few personal items and a book, and headed for the Army Induction Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
After a day of grinding boredom and pettiness--various physical examinations and aptitude testing--we inductees reached the final stage of induction. We were seated at tables in a large room, handed copies of the “Attorney General’s List,” and told to indicate whether we had any knowledge of the organizations listed.
These were the waning years of 1950s McCarthyism, and from my readings about various philosophies of government and civil liberties I was familiar with the infamous Attorney General’s List, about five pages of foreign and comical-sounding “Communist front” organizations from the ‘40s and ‘50s. The List also included hundreds of non-Communist democratic alternative parties, some of which I had explored in my quest for a place to hang my political allegiance.
The form asked us to check Yes if we had ever belonged to, known of, or even known someone who belonged to, any of hundreds of splinter groups and organizations. The List made no attempt to differentiate levels of interest or commitment. It was the ultimate blunt instrument, simply an aggregation of dissident groups the Attorney General didn’t like. Scrupulously honest, I checked Yes on so many of the organizations that the commanding officer at the Induction Center deferred my induction and sent me home. I went back to work the next day and resumed my life as before.
The next Fall I returned to Ohio State. One fine autumn day I answered the doorbell and found two fellows in charcoal grey suits, white shirts, skinny black ties, white socks, and black wing-tip shoes. Their haircuts were identical—shaved up the sides, a few hairs each side of a part, and cowlicks in back.
They identified themselves as being from Army Intelligence, and asked to visit with me for a while. I readily agreed, and we proceeded upstairs to my room, where I offered them tea. They had been trained to open interviews with a few ice-breakers for conversation, so we chatted about OSU and Davidson College, where they had both graduated as ROTC students. Then they turned to my affirmative answers on the “Attorney General’s List.”
I realized quickly that Army Intelligence, in its vast wisdom, had selected these two whiz kids to determine, in one interview, whether I was (a) too dangerous to be inducted into the Army, or (b) harmless. I also realized immediately that I could shape their answer as I wished. Did I want them to report me as (a) dangerous and therefore best left alone by my Draft Board forever? Or did I want (b) to be returned to the induction center for another try?
From the puzzled expressions of my Army Intelligence interviewers, as I contrasted the fine distinctions between the philosophies of various political groups on the Attorney General’s List, it was clear that their political comfort zone extended only as far as standard Eisenhower Republican ideology. Attempts to discuss political philosophy critically with these Davidson College grads soon brought to mind Hamlet’s dialogue with Polonius, e.g.,
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed.
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