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A Protest, a Spy Program and a Campus in an Uproar

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – The protest was carefully orchestrated, planned for weeks by Students Against War during Friday evening meetings in a small classroom on the University of California campus here.

So when the military recruiters arrived for the job fair, held in an old dining hall last April 5 – a now fateful day for a scandalized university – the students had their two-way radios in position, their cyclists checking the traffic as hundreds of demonstrators marched up the hilly roads of this campus on the Central Coast and a dozen moles stationed inside the building, reporting by cellphone to the growing crowd outside.

“Racist, sexist, antigay,” the demonstrators recalled shouting. “Hey, recruiters, go away!”