Excerpts from a 400 page DOD document obtained by NBC News reveals that the Pentagon spied on this year’s anti-war protest in Hollywood. The sentence reads: One “incident” included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners.

The news comes as no surprise to long time anti-war activists, but it is still disturbing. It is thought by many pentagon observers to be just a small part of a much larger program of spying by government agencies on US citizens. This anti-war march in Hollywood was widely reported on this site as a peaceful exercise of the constitutional right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble. It is not clear why the military would consider this peaceful protest a threat to any of its facilities. From the newswire: Repost of NBC News story on Pentagon spying -|- Pentagon spying on Americans?

AUDIO: Anti-war Activist Ian Thompson on Pentagon Spying -|- AUDIO: Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild on Pentagon Spying