[IP] Mission creep?
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Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889
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From: EEkid@xxxxxxx
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 08:54:26 -0400
Subj: Mission creep?
Mission creep?
A new bill could expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside
the United States
By Michael Isikoff
Investigative Correspondent
Newsweek June 21 issue - Last February, two Army counterintelligence agents
showed up at the University of Texas law school and demanded to see the roster
from a conference on Islamic law held a few days earlier. Their reason: they
were trying to track down students who the agents claimed had been asking
"suspicious" questions. "I felt like I was in 'Law & Order'," said one student
after being grilled by one of the agents. The incident provoked a brief campus
uproar, and the Army later admitted the agents had exceeded their authority.
But if the Pentagon has its way, the Army may not have to make such amends in
the future. Without any public hearing or debate, NEWSWEEK has learned, Defense
officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could
vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United
States, including recruiting citizens as informants.
Ever since the 1970s, when Army intel agents were caught snooping on antiwar
protesters, military intel agencies have operated under tight restrictions
inside the United States. But the new provision, approved in closed session
last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would eliminate one big
restriction: that they comply with the Privacy Act, a Watergate-era law that
requires government officials seeking information from a resident to disclose
who they are and what they want the information for. The CIA always has been
exempt—although by law it isn't supposed to operate inside the United States.
The new provision would now extend the same exemption to Pentagon agencies such
as the Defense Intelligence Agency—so they can help track terrorists. A
report by the Senate Intelligence Committee says the provision would allow
military intel agents to "approach potential sources and collect personal
information from them" without disclosing they work for the government. The
justification: "Current counterterrorism operations," the report explains,
which require "greater latitude ... both overseas and within the United
States." DIA officials say they mainly want the provision so they can more
easily question American businessmen and college students who travel abroad.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman concedes the provision will also be
helpful in investigating suspected terrorist threats to military bases and
contractors inside the United States. "It's a new world we live in," he says.
"We have to do what is necessary for force protection." Among those pushing for
the provision, sources say, were officials at northcom, the new Colorado-based
command set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to oversee "homeland
defense." Pentagon lawyers insist agents will still be legally barred from
domestic "law enforcement." But watchdog groups see a potentially alarming
"mission creep." "This... is giving them the authority to spy on Americans,"
said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studie
s, a group frequently critical of the war on terror. "And it's all been done
with no public discussion, in the dark of night."
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