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Pentagon Fascists Expand Domestic Spying Program
(Robert Dreyfuss, Rolling Stone, Apr 18, 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. . . . 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." . . . Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed by many government agencies, which are often little more than rumors based on unfounded information -- a financial officer who notes an odd money transfer or a military spouse who spots a suspect individual near a base. More official are Threat and Local Observation Notices (TALONs), part of a surveillance program started by the Pentagon in 2003. More than 15,000 TALONs have been collected so far, from sources such as soldiers manning gates outside military bases, law-enforcement agencies, local businesses and the media. . . . "We get reports if somebody's pounding on a cockpit door in flight, or there's a drunk passenger, or somebody's taped a note in an airplane restroom." But the list also includes a category for "civil disturbances of more than 1,000 persons" -- a directive broad enough to include an anti-war demonstration or anti-globalization protest. . . . Ever since 1878, when the Posse Comitatus Act barred the U.S. military from taking part in law enforcement, the responsibility for domestic security has traditionally resided with the police and the FBI. The Defense Department, for the most part, has been confined to protecting U.S. military bases. But shortly after September 11th, the Pentagon began muscling in on the FBI's turf. . . . The agency got another boost last year when a commission appointed by Bush urged that CIFA be empowered to collect and analyze intelligence "both inside and outside the United States." Three of the commission's consultants, it turns out, were employees of MZM -- one of CIFA's primary contractors . . . From a small unit designed as a clearinghouse for reports, CIFA was transformed overnight into a major arm of domestic intelligence. Both its budget and its staff, thought to be in excess of 1,000 people, are classified. . . . According to a Defense Department strategy paper, military spying encompasses not only "defense critical infrastructure" -- highways, bridges, communications facilities, chemical plants and nuclear reactors -- but also the "defense industrial base," which the paper describes as "a worldwide industrial complex with capabilities to perform research and development and design, produce, and maintain military weapons systems, subsystems, components or parts to meet military requirements." In other words, the Pentagon sees itself as defending the entire military-industrial complex -- a mission broad enough to include intelligence on virtually any conceivable threat. . . . In December, NBC News reported that CIFA had collected dozens of incident and threat reports on peace activists and other nonviolent organizations that have nothing to do with terrorism. By matching the unnamed groups in the news reports to specific activities of activists nationwide, the American Civil Liberties Union discovered that the military's spying effort had ensnared the American Friends Service Committee, United for Peace and Justice, and Veterans for Peace, as well as local anti-war groups from Florida to California. . . . A group at University of California Santa Cruz called Students Against the War was included in CIFA's terrorism database in April 2005, when it staged a protest against military recruiters on campus. Although the protest was peaceful, a TALON report called the demonstration a "threat," an assessment that CIFA deemed "credible." A Florida group called the Truth Project ended up in the database in November 2004, when they gathered at a Quaker meetinghouse to plan a protest against high school recruiting by the military. Five months earlier, ten peace activists in Texas merited a TALON report for donning papier-m?ch? masks and handing out peanut-butter sandwiches to highlight "war profiteering" outside the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney's former firm, the defense contractor Halliburton. . . . In May 2005, a California group called the Raging Grannies ran afoul of military spies when it helped organize a peaceful Mother's Day demonstration to protest the war in Iraq. . . . "Our fear is that this was part of a federally sponsored effort to set up domestic surveillance programs in a way that would circumvent the Posse Comitatus Act." . . . The ACLU, which is demanding more information about CIFA's activities, cites a "broad and disturbing pattern" in the military's intelligence gathering, saying the efforts are being used to target legitimate protesters. "The chilling effect of this may be the most significant," says ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner. "There is a real danger when the military is seen as being used as part of the administration's political goals." . . . Some of the military intelligence, in fact, appears to be based on very little intelligence. "These reports are nothing more than a gossip and rumor index," says Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer who exposed some of the abuses by military spy agencies in the 1960s. "A lot of them are filed by paranoid housewives and rabid, retired colonels with nothing better to do than spy on the people around them." . . . With the military spying on peace groups, some activists say they are on the lookout for moles within their own ranks. Ray Del Papa, who attended the Truth Project meeting in Florida, told reporters that he believes government agents infiltrated the organization. "You could pretty much pick out who are the infiltrators," he said. "It gets you mad. It is wrong for anyone from the government to have to spy on U.S. citizens." . . . The broader threat is that military spies will gradually expand their anti-terrorist mission to include more and more ordinary citizens. "The danger is that we create an apparatus for spying -- and that becomes the essential apparatus of a police state," says Pyle, the former intelligence officer.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 4:50 AM

 

Pentagon confirms it spied on gay groups
(Advocate.com, April 12, 2006)
The Department of Defense released documents confirming that the U.S. government conducted surveillance on gay groups, the military advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network announced Tuesday. . . . The surveillance documents, called TALON reports, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by SLDN in January and revealed that the Pentagon carried out surveillance of gay and lesbian groups that conducted protests at New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. The campus protests denounced the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which bars gay, lesbian, and bisexual military personnel from serving openly. . . . The Department of Defense admitted it "inappropriately" collected information on protesters in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to a February report from United Press International. . . . "That [inappropriate] information should be destroyed, and no similar surveillance should be authorized in the future," Osburn said. "Free expression is not a threat to our national security." . . . The TALON reports may not represent a complete list of gay groups spied on by the Pentagon, according to SLDN.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 5:50 AM

 

Federal Jury Indicts Mentally Ill Patient For Threatening Bush
(Yvonne Lee, All Headline News, April 7, 2006)
East St. Louis, IL (AHN) - A Palestinian mental health patient has been indicted on two felony counts of "knowingly and willfully" threatening to harm President George W. Bush. . . . The Associated Press reports federal grand jurors indicted Arafat Nijmeh on March 23. But it was only made public this week. . . . He is accused to telling two employees at the Alton Mental Health Center that he wants to castrate Mr. Bush. The next day, he repeated his threats to Secret Service agents contacted by the center. . . . . . . According to the indictment Nijmeh 26, told agents that his threat "is not too harsh, considering what he has done to my country. If not that than maybe something else, you know?" . . . Nijmeh said later that he was joking about the threats. . . . J. Steven Beckett, a University of Illinois law professor, says to the AP that Nijmeh's threats may only be the "delirious rantings of a mental patient." . . . He says, "It's national security gone berserk." . . . He speculated that some details of the case have been kept secret, but added, "My immediate reaction here is, 'Who's nuts?'" . . . Randy Massey, the acting U.S. attorney for southern Illinois, did not immediately return a message seeking comment Friday. . . . Eric Pingolt, head of the Secret Service's Springfield office, says the Secret Service takes all threats seriously and considers the suspect's mental state before deciding the threat's validity. . . . He says, "Everything is judged case by case."

[COMMENT by Lorenzo: If this wasn't so serious it would be really funny, at least in a "Brave New World" kind of way. We are told that 95% of the shipping containers coming into this country are NOT inspected. But Petty Tyrant Bush's homeland security storm troopers use their umpressive resources to save us from a madman making a joke about our Benevolent Dictator. It seems we are quickly moving even beyond mere fascism. . . . "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?]

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 7:04 AM

 

Gonzales says court order no longer required to tap your phone
(Dan Eggen, Washington Post, April 6, 2006)
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday left open the possibility that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States. . . . Such action would dramatically expand the potential reach of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance program. . . . In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said the government would have to determine if a conversation was related to al-Qaida and crucial to fighting terrorism before deciding whether to listen in without court supervision. . . . "I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said of the possibility of monitoring purely domestic communications. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: Of course, the only way Big Brother can decide if your conversation should be flagged is to first "listen" to it by sending EVERY domestic call through the NSA filters. Your telephone conversations ARE being listened to. You now live in a fascist state . . . might as well get used to it.] . . . The comments mark a dramatic departure from previous statements by Gonzales, President Bush and others within the Bush administration, who have repeatedly stressed that an NSA eavesdropping program ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks was focused only on international communications. . . . Gonzales also reiterated earlier hints that there may be another program, or an expanded version of the NSA program, that has not been revealed. . . . Administration officials have acknowledged that Bush issued an order in October 2001 authorizing the NSA to intercept phone calls and e-mail between the United States and foreign nations in which one of the parties was suspected of some link to al-Qaida. . . . Gonzales and the Justice Department have argued that the program is constitutional and was effectively authorized by Congress when it approved the use of force against al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attacks. . . . Many Democrats and some Republicans say that Congress intended no such authorization and that the program violates a 1978 intelligence law that set up a special court to oversee and approve all clandestine surveillance within the United States.

ALSO SEE: AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA's Domestic Spy Network

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 9:20 AM