Internal military documents released on Thursday provide new details on the Pentagon’s efforts to monitor antiwar protests on college campuses. The documents, which were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request, include an update on “why the Students for Peace and Justice represent a potential threat” to Department of Defense personnel.

The update specifically mentions an April 2005 protest at the University of California at Santa Cruz in which 300 students and community activists “shut down” a career fair attended by military recruiters and vandalized two recruiters’ vehicles. It also describes a protest, led by Students for Peace and Justice, in which activists blocked the entrance to a local recruitment office with two coffins—one draped with an American flag and the other with an Iraqi flag—and chanted, “No more war and occupation, you don’t have to die for an education.”

While the update notes that “no reported incidents have occurred at these protests,” it warns that there has been “an intense debate” among antiwar groups over whether to conduct vandalism and civil disobedience. As an example, it mentions that “at least two members” of the Atlanta-area chapter of Students for Peace and Justice “have expressed interest in doing more than just protesting.”

The civil-liberties group filed its request for the documents earlier this year, after a report by NBC News revealed that the Defense Department was collecting reports on antiwar protests and storing them in a database known as the Threat and Local Observation Notice, or Talon (The Chronicle, January 19).

The Pentagon said it has since reviewed the database and removed any documents that did not relate to international terrorism. Documents released over the summer indicated that the Defense Department also had monitored e-mail among antiwar and other protesters that was submitted by campus sources (The Chronicle, July 6).