Abstract

Keeping Tabs on Civilians

Over the years, the Presidential nominating convention in the U.S. has become the accepted public forum in which men are chosen to contest the right to govern. The selection is so evidently civilian business that it should obviously be "off limits" to the military. In 1968, it wasn't. Plainclothes military intelligence agents played a questionable and still secret surveillance role at both Democratic and Republican National Conventions. At minimum, their presence dangerously blurred the historic principle that separates the military from civilian politics. Official refusals to discuss details of the mission of Army Security Agency (ASA) in Chicago, Illinois, along with the classification and retention of the data at the U.S. Department of Defense, have heightened the mystery of just what the unit was doing there.