GUARD l Alleged spy unit that tracked Iraq anti-war activists disbanded
threats — including tracking a Mother’s Day anti-war rally involving a Peninsula pacifist organization.
Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, who held hearings on the alleged spying, said Thursday that dismantling the unit was an ‘‘important step’’ taken by Maj. Gen. William H. Wade II, who was appointed adjutant general of the state National Guard by Gov. Schwarzenegger on Sept. 1.
‘‘It means that at least for now, the Guard leadership won’t be tempted to engage in domestic surveillance activities in California, which are barred by federal law,’’ said Dunn, chairman of the Senate budget subcommittee, which oversees Guard funding.
Unit leader Col. Robert J. O’Neill, a veteran intelligence officer, will be terminated Dec. 31, and the other member has been reassigned, military sources said.
‘‘We are thrilled,’’ said Ruth Robertson of Palo Alto, a member of Raging Grannies, whose group’s Peninsula chapter participated in the rally. ‘‘It needed to be nipped in the bud; it needed to be dismantled.’’
Rules established in the 19th century bar the military from spying on U.S. citizens, though Guard officials acknowledged in e-mails that the unit was tracking the May 8 rally in Sacramento organized by Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and CodePink.
Guard officials have said that the monitoring was done by watching television news reports, and that no one from the unit personally observed the rally, which drew about three dozen anti-war demonstrators.
The unit was dismantled Nov. 16, without a formal announcement from either the Guard or Dunn’s office.
‘‘Effective immediately,’’ Maj. Gen. Wade stated in a three-paragraph Guard memo, ‘‘I have discontinued the Civil Support Division — to include its functions of Domestic Watch Center, Information Synchronization Center and Combined Intel Fusion Group.’’
Dismantling the division ‘‘was the right thing to do,’’ said Guard spokesman Col. David Baldwin, director of Plans and Operations for the California National Guard. ‘‘The Civil Support Division was not formed in accordance with military doctrine, and it was an organization that did not have the approval of the Legislature in the governors’ budget.’’
The unit was established last year by Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres, who was forced by the Schwarzenegger administration to retire in June. He was replaced by Wade.
Among the unit’s responsibilities was to provide ‘‘intelligence and communications guidelines used in the preparation of operations against threats directed toward the United States, the state of California and their citizens and resources,’’ according to a document obtained by the Mercury News.
Although the Guard denied the spying allegations, some of its actions raised the suspicions of Dunn and the groups at the rally.
In late June, for example, the computer hard drive belonging to a retiring colonel who oversaw the unit was erased, after Dunn asked that the Guard preserve all documents related to the project. Then the Schwarzenegger administration and the Guard refused to make public a series of e-mails regarding the unit.
Eventually, investigators from the U.S. Army’s Inspector General’s Office reportedly concluded that the Guard never collected intelligence on U.S. citizens — however, the Army and the only Guard official with access to the report refused to release it.
Dunn is now sponsoring legislation to establish an office of inspector general within the Guard, which would report directly to the governor’s office.
‘‘The governor is the commanderof the Guard,’’ said attorney Natalie Wormeli, a member of CodePink who serves on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. ‘‘I think it makes sense to keep some oversight in California. ‘ Contact Edwin Garcia at egarcia@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4651.