This Is A Cover-Up: Illegal Spying To Get Buried DEEP In The Pentagon

[kpete]

Well, as luck would have it, on the very same day that the Pentagon released documents to the ACLU revealing that CIFA had abused National Security Letters to (among other things) collect information on a few Pentagon employees, http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/34724prs20080401.html the Pentagon has announced it is shutting down CIFA. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/washington/02intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Pentagon is expected to shut a controversial intelligence office that has drawn fire from lawmakers and civil liberties groups who charge that it was part of an effort by the Defense Department to expand into domestic spying.

..................

The intelligence unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity office, was created by Mr. Rumsfeld after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of an effort to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terror groups inside the United States and abroad.

Yet the office, whose size and budget is classified, came under fierce criticism in 2005 after it was disclosed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls.

The Pentagon’s senior intelligence official, James R. Clapper, has recommended to Mr. Gates that the counterintelligence field office be dismantled and that some of its operations be placed under the authority of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the officials said.

The NYT presents advocates saying the closure is a great thing and others suggesting this is just a cover-up--that the domestic spying will get buried deep in the Pentgon where we'll have to ferret it out again. Me, I'm in the latter category.

But since the NSL documents turned over to ACLU are apparently significant enough to cause the Pentgon to take this face-saving gesture (or at least say they're going to make the gesture), I suspect those documents are rather interesting, don't you?


more at:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/04/01/pentagon-closing-cifa/#more-1978

[Mnemosyne]

1. .

:kick:

[Donnachaidh]

2. My thoughts on another thread - glad firedoglake started the questioning

from my previous post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3252494&mesg_id=3252500

[screembloodymurder]

3. Hate to say it, but I think our military needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.

We need to weed out those who think the military makes policy.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "But I am the Decider. Smirk." - Commander AWOL

[DCKit]

5. I thought that, like the CIA, the military was prohibited from domestic operations.

Spying, yet? On the Quakers? If they have a group so highly trained and qualified to take on the Quakers, I would suggest they be re-tasked to hunting down Bin Laden, Inc. and allow those agencies tasked with domestic issues trample the Constitution and Bill of Rights here at home.

[bleever]

6. K&R.

:kick:

[aldo]

7. Full spectrum dominance in the information war

Of course they are spying.