Officials: Pentagon Probed Finances

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Citizens' Records Culled in Expanded Intelligence Efforts
The Defense Department has used a long-standing authority to acquire the personal financial records of American citizens in military-related criminal and other investigations as part of an expansion of the Pentagon's gathering of counterterrorism intelligence at home, officials said yesterday.

"There are certainly types of information and transactions that are valuable to the department when conducting counterintelligence and counterespionage investigations," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

Whitman emphasized that although the FBI can compel banks, credit card companies and other private institutions to produce such records by issuing a National Security Letter, the military is authorized only to request that the institutions turn them over.

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The agency was criticized in December 2005 after it was revealed that a database managed by CIFA, called TALON, contained unverified, raw threat information about people who were peacefully protesting the Iraq war at defense facilities, including recruiting offices. In August, CIFA Director David A. Burtt II and his top deputy, Joseph Hefferon, resigned in the wake of a scandal involving CIFA contracts that went to MZM Inc., a company run by Mitchell J. Wade. Wade pleaded guilty last February to conspiring to bribe then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif).



Staff writers Walter Pincus and Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/13/AR2007011301486.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Prediction:

The Democratic Congress is gonna crawl up some 5-sided assholes on a 24ft extension ladder, on this one.

Tailor-made for a real spanking.