Biography
Named plaintiff in Panagacos v. Towery (W.D. Wash. No. 3:10-cv-05018-RBL), the federal civil-rights lawsuit filed in January 2010 by seven Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) activists against the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, Pierce County, the City of Lakewood, and Army intelligence operative John Towery. Towery, working under the alias "John Jacob" out of the Force Protection Service (CIFA successor) at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, spent more than two years (2007-2009) inside the PMR/SDS scene in Olympia attending meetings, hosting parties, befriending members, and feeding their identities, license plates, and political analyses to the Army, FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, and local fusion-center police. The infiltration was exposed in July 2009 when Olympia activists Brendan Maslauskas Dunn and Drew Hendricks obtained Towery's identity through a Washington Public Records Act request. The case survived motions to dismiss (782 F. Supp. 2d 1183, 2011; 9th Cir. aff'd 2012) but was dismissed on summary judgment by Judge Ronald B. Leighton in 2014, with the 9th Circuit hearing the appeal in 2017. Panagacos — the lead-named plaintiff — was a PMR organizer in Olympia and was arrested at the November 2007 Port of Olympia blockades against the USNS Brittin Stryker offload.