The Pentagon's New Spies

[Flabbergasted]

The Pentagon's New Spies
ROBERT DREYFUSS, Rolling Stone

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m22933&l=i&size=1&hd=0



April 28, 2006

The military has built a vast domestic-intelligence network to fight terrorism -- but it's using it to track students, grandmothers and others protesting the war

Last October, before the public learned that president Bush had secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without a court order, the Pentagon approached the Senate intelligence committee with an unprecedented request. Military officials wanted the authority to spy on U.S. citizens on American soil, without identifying themselves, in order to collect intelligence about about terrorist threats. The plan was so sweeping, according to congressional sources who reviewed it, that it would have permitted operatives from the Defense Intelligence Agency to spy on dissidents by posing as peace activists and infiltrating anti-war meetings.

Senators on both sides of the aisle refused to go along with the plan. "The Department of Defense should not be in the business of spying on law-abiding Americans -- period," said Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. In closed-door deliberations, the intelligence committee blocked the request.

In fact, however, the Pentagon has already assembled a nationwide domestic spying machine that goes far beyond the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of telephone and e-mail traffic. Operating in secret, the Defense Department is systematically gathering and analyzing intelligence on American citizens at home -- and a new Pentagon agency called Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) is helping to coordinate the military's covert efforts with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Those responsible for the military's new spy network insist that it is aimed at preventing another attack by Al Qaeda. "The premise is that there needs to be a nexus to foreign terrorism," says David Burtt, CIFA's director. "In the wake of 9/11, there was a lot of criticism about the ability to collect dots and connect dots."

So far, the military's efforts at domestic spying have caught few, if any, terrorists. But the Pentagon has tracked the activities of anti-war activists across the country who have staged peaceful demonstrations against military bases and defense contractors such as Halliburton. Traditionally restricted to action overseas, America's armed forces -- including the National Guard -- are now linked in a growing domestic spying apparatus which, thanks to technology, has far greater power than the Army units that conducted a massive operation to infiltrate, disrupt and destabilize Vietnam and civil rights protests during the 1960s and '70s. "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America," said Wyden. "This is a huge leap without even a congressional hearing."

[sweetheart]

1. We are the enemy

We disagree. We are oppressed by them, and they suck our
lifeforce to pay for their military prison empire... watching
their victems to make sure we can't get away from the
tentacles of war.

[cornermouse]

2. Well, whoever is watching me is dying from boredom.

[MikeNearMcChord]

3. The power of State to rule over the

people rest in it's war powers. Spying on Granmothers, I guess Al-Qaida, China, Russia, the Venezuelans all are taking notes and don't disguise their agents as old ladies.B-)