By Bob Roehr
The Pentagon's domestic spy program on gays will be a secret no more if the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network ( SLDN ) Freedom of Information Act ( FOIA ) request is met. SLDN filed the request on Jan. 5 on behalf of itself and 13 other gay and straight organizations.
The action sprang from press accounts in December revealing that the Pentagon had been spying on what they called 'suspicious' meetings by civilian groups, including those opposed to the antigay military known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' ( DADT ) .
It was conducted by a little known office of Counterintelligence Field Activity that was established in the post-9/11 environment to follow threats of terrorism.
Among the activities the military saw as threatening were a gay kiss-in at the University of California, Santa Cruz to protest military recruitment on campus.
The GLBT community 'is justifiably alarmed to learn that the federal government has been spying on private citizens exercising their first amendment rights to speak, protest, and gather,' said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of SLDN.
'We demand to know which LGBT groups have been monitored, what data has been gathered about those groups, and why Pentagon leaders consider law-abiding citizens to be a threat to our national security.'
The request was filed by Christopher Wolf, an attorney with the prestigious law firm Proskauer Rose. Wolf has previously worked with SLDN and high profile clients such as the 1998 challenge to DADT by Navy petty officer Timothy McVeigh, and the later challenge by Steve May, then a member of the Arizona legislature and the Army Reserve.
The FOIA request said, 'Any delay in processing SLDN's request for documents may compromise the significant interests at stake by delaying SLDN, and therefore the public at large, from understanding the full scope of any government violations of SLDN's and other LGBT organizations' constitutional rights.'
It noted that hits on SLDN's Web site had increased from a monthly average of 25,000 to an average of 45,000 in a two-day period flowing media revelations of the domestic spying.
'The LGBT community was the subject of finger-pointing and threats by ( Senator ) Joseph McCarthy ( in the 1950s ) ,' Osburn said. 'We will not stand by and allow the current administration to use fear as a basis for eroding our constitutional liberties. Free speech means free speech, regardless of one's race, gender, religious, or sexual orientation.'
Also on Jan. 5, the Army honorably discharged 19-year-old private Kyle Lawson. On Oct. 29, at an off-base party near Fort Huachuca in Arizona, he was assaulted by another private who broke his nose. The soldier shouted antigay slurs when he attacked Lawson.
Lawson later reported being threatened with a knife and since that time had slept on a cot in his sergeant's office. Fearing for his safety, he told his commanding officer he was gay, and was dismissed from the service.
The Army requested jurisdiction in the assault and then declined to prosecute the other soldier. It refuses to publicly discuss the case. That prompted Rep Barney Frank to write to Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker about the incident.