-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
>
> MSNBC.com
>
> Is the Pentagon
> spying on Americans?
>
> Secret database obtained by NBC News
> tracks ‘suspicious’ domestic groups
>
> By Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella
> and the NBC Investigative Unit
> Dec. 14, 2005
>
>
> WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth,
> Fla., a
> small group of activists met to plan a protest of military
> recruiting at local
> high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come
> to the
> attention of the U.S. military.
> A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News
> lists the
> Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500
> “suspicious
> incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.
> “This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is
> incredible,”
> says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth
> Project.
> “This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It's an
> example of
> paranoia by our government,” he says. “We're not doing anything
> illegal.”
> The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the
> U.S.
> military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country
> since 9/11,
> which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-
> military
> recruitment groups.
> “I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has
> reached too far,” says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.
> The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News
> for an
> interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence
> information is “properly
> collected” and involves “protection of Defense Department
> installations,
> interests and personnel.” The military has always had a legitimate
> “force
> protection” mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and
> facilities from
> potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic
> intelligence that goes
> beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military
> installations, say critics.
> Four dozen anti-war meetings
> The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen
> anti-war
> meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from
> any military
> installation, post or recruitment center. One “incident” included
> in the
> database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los
> Angeles last
> March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest
> banners.
> Another incident mentions a planned protest against military
> recruiters last
> December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald’s
> National Salute
> to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort
> Lauderdale, Fla.
> The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat
> and a
> column in the database concludes: “US group exercising
> constitutional rights.”
> 243 other incidents in the database were discounted because they
> had no
> connection to the Department of Defense — yet they all remained in
> the database.
> The DOD has strict guidelines adopted in December 1982, that limit
> the extent
> to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
> Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S.
> citizens or
> U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the
> Defense
> Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring
> activities. One DOD
> briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted
> increased
> communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]
> nternet,” but no “
> significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring
> instigators at
> protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”
> The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers.
> “It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s
> at those
> protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says
> Arkin. “On
> the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the
> beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the
> military.”
> Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern.
> George Lotz,
> a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel,
> held the
> post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
> Oversight from
> 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a
> consulting
> business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and
> improve oversight of
> their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD
> has been
> collecting is not justified.
> Make sure they are not just going crazy
> “Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not
> going crazy
> and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or
> rationale,” says Lotz. “I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in
> 1963 in Washington,”
> he says, “and I certainly didn’t want anybody putting my name on
> any kind
> of list. I wasn’t any threat to the government,” he adds.
> The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is
> disturbing —
> but familiar — to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence
> officer.
> “Some people never learn,” he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle
> blew the
> whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating
> anti-war and
> civil rights protests when he published an article in the
> Washington Monthly in
> January 1970.
> The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation
> followed
> that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at
> least 100,000
> American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to
> testify that
> they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them anti-
> war protestors
> and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle
> helped
> Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside
> the U.S.
> But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts,
> says some
> of the information in the database suggests the military may be
> dangerously
> close to repeating its past mistakes.
> “The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting
> investigations and maintaining records on civilian political
> activity. The military
> made promises that it would not do this again,” he says.
> Too much data?
> Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next
> 9/11, the
> U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its
> own
> analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of
> rubble in order
> to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling
> U.S. citizens
> in the U.S. military’s expanding and quiet collection of domestic
> threat
> data.
> Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency,
> Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and
> “maintain a domestic
> law enforcement database that includes information related to
> potential
> terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-
> Deputy Secretary
> of Defense PAUL WOLFOWITZ established a new reporting mechanism
> known as a
> TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now
> provide “
> non-validated domestic threat information” from military units
> throughout the United
> States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The
> reports include
> details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen
> vehicles, bomb
> threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year,
> the agency
> received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by
> NBC News is
> generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.
> CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S.
> national
> security community. Its “operational and analytical records”
> include “reports of
> investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals,
> affidavits,
> correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative
> or analytical
> efforts” by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify
> terrorist
> and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33
> million in
> contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation,
> Computer
> Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that
> comb through
> classified and unclassified government data, commercial information
> and
> Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.
> One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by
> Northrop Grumman
> and dubbed “Person Search,” is designed “to provide comprehensive
> information
> about people of interest.” It will include the ability to search
> government
> as well as commercial databases. Another project, “The Insider Threat
> Initiative,” intends to “develop systems able to detect, mitigate
> and investigate
> insider threats,” as well as the ability to “identify and document
> normal and
> abnormal activities and ‘behaviors,’” according to the Computer
> Sciences Corp.
> contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense
> contractor seeks to develop methods “to track and monitor
> activities of suspect
> individuals.”
> “The military has the right to protect its installations, and to
> protect its
> recruiting services,” says Pyle. “It does not have the right to
> maintain
> extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities,
> or of their
> base activities,” he argues.
> Lotz agrees.
> “The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to
> demonstrate,
> to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or
> disagree with
> the government’s policies,” the former DOD intelligence official says.
> 'Slippery slope'
> Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at
> the U.S.
> Army War College and a former Marine, says “there is very little
> that could
> justify the collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites
> States military. If
> we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to go
> back to a
> place we never want to see again,” he says.
> Some of the targets of the U.S. military’s recent collection
> efforts say they
> have already gone too far.
> “It's absolute paranoia — at the highest levels of our government,”
> says
> Hersh of The Truth Project.
> “I mean, we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House,” says Truth
> Project
> member Marie Zwicker, “and several of us are Quakers.”
> The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained
> information on
> the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war
> activists a “
> terrorist threat.”
> URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/
>
>
>
>
> Senator demands
> investigation of spy database
>
> Pentagon defends domestic intelligence collection,
> vows to cooperate
> By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
> Updated: 1:07 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2005
>
>
> WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 — A Florida senator is demanding an
> investigation into a
> secret Pentagon database that collects information on American anti-
> war
> activists. As NBC News reported first on Dec. 13, the Pentagon has
> been monitoring
> anti-war groups across the country.
> Wednesday, some members of a Florida anti-war group called "The Truth
> Project" demanded that the Pentagon turn over all information
> collected about their
> group.
> And Florida Senator Bill Nelson wrote Defense Secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld,
> asking how this peaceful group could be listed a "threat" in a
> previously secret
> Pentagon database.
> "When the Pentagon starts going into a Quaker meeting house in
> Florida, then
> it's a question of invasion of privacy," says Nelson, R-Fla.
> Wednesday, a Pentagon spokesman defended the collection of domestic
> intelligence in the database, which lists 1,500 "suspicious
> incidents" over a 10-month
> period. The spokesman said the military has "a legitimate interest in
> protecting its installations and... people, and to the extent that
> they use
> information collected by law enforcement agencies to do that,
> that's... appropriate."
> Some incidents in the database do refer to FBI reports. But
> information on a
> weekly protest at an Atlanta recruiting station comes not from law
> enforcement, but from the Army's 902nd military intelligence group.
> So does a report on a
> protest at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
> "This document, it's a clue that shows the level of surveillance,
> the level
> of domestic surveillance that the U.S. military is now involved
> in," says Bill
> Arkin, an NBC News military analyst.
> The Pentagon still refuses to say how it's collecting this
> information,
> whether the military itself is spying on protest groups, or asking
> local law
> enforcement to do surveillance and report back.
> URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10481600/
>
> Defense Department spokesman
> claims "no personal knowlege"
> of surveillance report
> WAVY-TV
> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10466494/from/RL.4/
> PENTAGON The Pentagon isn't denying the existence of a previously
> secret
> 400-page report on its domestic surveillance activities. But
> spokesman Larry
> DiRita says he has "no personal knowlege of the document."
> The existence of the document was first reported by NBC News.
> Another Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, says the
> military "has a
> legitimate interest in protecting its people and its
> installations." And as
> it seeks to do that it, he says, it "has reviewed information"
> collected about
> people and groups by domestic law enforcement agencies.
> Critics claim the Pentagon is gathering information that goes
> beyond simply
> protecting members of the military and Defense Department property,
> and that
> it's targetting anti-war protesters and religious groups.
> Whitman says "the allegation that the department is interested in
> domestic
> surveillance is not consistent with our policies and procedures."
>
>
>
> Pentagon reviewing
>
> handling of information
> on suspicious people
> WAVY-TV
> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10471760/from/RL.1/
> WASHINGTON The Pentagon says its reviewing how it uses a classified
> database
> of information about suspicious people and activities in the U-S.
> The review comes after NBC news reported that the database lists
> activities
> of anti-war groups that don't directly threaten Pentagon security.
> The news report was based on a document generated by an obscure and
> secretive
> Defense Department agency that provides counterintelligence support to
> protect Pentagon personnel and property.
> NBC reported the agency's database lists as a "threat" a 2004
> meeting where
> activists planned to protest military recruiting at local high
> schools. It also
> said some of the nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests in
> the
> database took place far from any military installation or
> recruitment center.
> The Pentagon has issued a written statement implying, but not
> explicitly
> acknowledging, that some information had been handled improperly.
>
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> <P align=center><FONT size=6><FONT face="Georgia, 'Times New > Roman', Times, serif"
color=#cc0000>Is the Pentagon </FONT></FONT></P>
> <P align=center><FONT size=6><FONT face="Georgia, 'Times New > Roman', Times, serif"
color=#cc0000>spying on Americans?</FONT></ > FONT></P>
> <P align=center><FONT size=6><FONT face="Georgia, 'Times New > Roman', Times, serif"
color=#cc0000></FONT><BR></FONT><FONT > face=Tahoma size=4><B>Secret database obtained by NBC News </B></ >
FONT></P>
> <P align=center><FONT face=Tahoma size=4><B>tracks ‘suspicious’
> domestic groups</B></FONT></P>
> <P align=center><STRONG><FONT face=Tahoma size=4></FONT></ >
STRONG> </P>
> <DIV><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>By Lisa
> Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella </B></FONT></DIV>
> <DIV><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>and the
> NBC Investigative Unit</B></FONT></DIV>
> <DIV><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Dec. 14,
> 2005</FONT></DIV>
> <DIV><BR>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">WASHINGTON -
> A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small
> group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at
> local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting
> had come to the attention of the U.S. military.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A secret 400-
> page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the
> Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500
> “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month
> period.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“This
> peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is
> incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called
> The Truth Project. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“This is
> incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It's an example of
> paranoia by our government,” he says. “We're not doing anything
> illegal.”</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Defense
> Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S.
> military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country
> since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war
> and counter-military recruitment groups. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“I think
> Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has
> reached too far,” says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin. </ > FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The
> Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an
> interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence
> information is “properly collected” and involves “protection of
> Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.” The
> military has always had a legitimate “force protection” mission
> <I>inside</I> the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from
> potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic
> intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism
> or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>Four dozen
> anti-war meetings</B><BR>The DOD database obtained by NBC News
> includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including
> some that have taken place far from any military installation, post
> or recruitment center. One “incident” included in the database is a
> large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last
> March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest
> banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against
> military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest
> last April at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a
> military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Fort
> Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a
> column in the database concludes: “US group exercising
> constitutional rights.” 243 other incidents in the database
> were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of
> Defense — yet they all remained in the database.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The DOD has
> strict guidelines adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent
> to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
> </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Still, the
> DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or
> U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that
> <STRONG>the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic
> monitoring activities</STRONG>. One DOD briefing document stamped
> “secret” concludes: <STRONG><EM>“[W]e have noted increased
> communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]
> nternet,”</EM></STRONG> but no “significant connection” between
> incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or
> “vehicle descriptions.” </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The increased
> monitoring disturbs some military observers. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“It means
> that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those
> protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says
> Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I
> think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief
> for the military.”</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some former
> senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a
> 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held
> the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
> Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who
> recently began a consulting business to help train and educate
> intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection
> process, believes some of the information the DOD has been
> collecting is not justified. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>Make sure
> they are not just going crazy</B><BR>“Somebody needs to be
> monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting
> things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or
> rationale,” says Lotz. “I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in
> 1963 in Washington,” he says, “and I certainly didn’t want anybody
> putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn’t any threat to the
> government,” he adds. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The
> military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is
> disturbing — but familiar — to Christopher Pyle, a former Army
> intelligence officer. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“Some people
> never learn,” he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the
> whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating
> anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in
> the Washington Monthly in January 1970.<B> </B></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The public
> was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed
> that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at
> least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military
> agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S.
> citizens — many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights
> advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress
> write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S. </ > FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">But Pyle, now
> a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of
> the information in the database suggests the military may be
> dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><STRONG>“The
> documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting
> investigations and maintaining records on civilian political
> activity. The military made promises that it would not do this
> again,”</STRONG> he says.<B> </B></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>Too much
> data?</B><BR>Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to
> thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much
> data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts
> to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially
> key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the
> U.S. military’s expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat
> data. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><STRONG>Two
> years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency,
> Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and
> “maintain a domestic law enforcement database</STRONG> that
> includes information related to potential terrorist threats
> directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary
> of Defense <STRONG><FONT color=#ff0000><U>PAUL WOLFOWITZ</ > U> established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or
> Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide “non-
> validated domestic threat information” from military units
> throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a
> CIFA database.</FONT></STRONG> The reports include details on
> potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb
> threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year,
> the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database
> obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field
> Activity. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">CIFA is
> becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national
> security community. Its “operational and analytical records”
> include “reports of investigation, collection reports, statements
> of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation
> pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts” by the DOD and
> other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other
> threats. <STRONG>Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33
> million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys
> Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman</ > STRONG> to develop databases that comb through classified and
> unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet
> chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">One of the
> CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman
> and dubbed “Person Search,” is designed “to provide comprehensive
> information about people of interest.” It will include the ability
> to search government as well as commercial databases. Another
> project, “The Insider Threat Initiative,” intends to “develop
> systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats,”
> as well as <STRONG><FONT color=#ff0000>the ability to “identify and
> document normal and abnormal activities and ‘behaviors,’”</FONT></ > STRONG> according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A
> separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense
> contractor seeks to develop methods<I> </I>“to track and monitor
> activities of suspect individuals.” </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“The military
> has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its
> recruiting services,” says Pyle. “It does not have the right to
> maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting
> activities, or of their base activities,” he argues. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Lotz agrees.
> </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“The harm in
> my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to
> hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or
> disagree with the government’s policies,” the former DOD
> intelligence official says.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>'Slippery
> slope'<BR></B>Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and
> Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College and a former Marine,
> says <STRONG>“there is very little that could justify the
> collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites States military.
> If we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to
> go back to a place we never want to see again,”</STRONG> he says. </ > FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some of the
> targets of the U.S. military’s recent collection efforts say they
> have already gone too far. </FONT></P>
>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans- > serif"><STRONG><EM><FONT color=#ff0000>“It's absolute paranoia — at
> the highest levels of our government,”</FONT></EM></STRONG> says
> Hersh of The Truth Project.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“I mean,
> we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House,” says Truth Project
> member Marie Zwicker, “and several of us are Quakers.” </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Defense
> Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the
> Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war
> activists a “terrorist threat.”</FONT></P></DIV>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2>URL:
> <A href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/";>http://msnbc.msn.com/id/
> 10454316/</A></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face=Verdana></FONT> </P>
> <P><IMG src="http://c.msn.com/c.gif? >
NC=1255&NA=1154&PS=73838&PI=7329&DI=305&TP=http% >
3a%2f%2fmsnbc.msn.com%2f"> </P>
> <DIV>
> <TABLE style="WIDTH: 100%">
> <TBODY>
> <TR>
> <TD><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=3><B></B></ >
FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
> <P align=center><FONT face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, > serif" color=#cc0000
size=5><FONT size=6>Senator demands </FONT></ > FONT></P>
> <P align=center><FONT face="Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, > serif" color=#cc0000 size=5><FONT size=6>investigation of spy
> database</FONT> </FONT></P>
> <P align=center><FONT face=Georgia color=#cc0000 size=6></ > FONT><BR><FONT face=Tahoma size=4><B>Pentagon defends domestic
> intelligence collection, </B></FONT></P>
> <P align=center><FONT face=Tahoma size=4><B>vows to cooperate</B></ >
FONT></P>
> <DIV><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B>By Lisa
> Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit</B></FONT></DIV>
> <DIV><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Updated:
> 1:07 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2005</FONT></DIV>
> <DIV><BR>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">WASHINGTON,
> Dec. 14 — A Florida senator is demanding an investigation into a
> secret Pentagon database that collects information on American anti-
> war activists. <A href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/";>As NBC
> News reported first on Dec. 13</A>, the Pentagon has been
> monitoring anti-war groups across the country.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wednesday,
> some members of a Florida anti-war group called "The Truth Project"
> demanded that the Pentagon turn over all information collected
> about their group.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And Florida
> Senator Bill Nelson wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asking
> how this peaceful group could be listed a "threat" in a previously
> secret Pentagon database.</FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">"When the
> Pentagon starts going into a Quaker meeting house in Florida, then
> it's a question of invasion of privacy," says Nelson, R-Fla.</ > FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wednesday, a
> Pentagon spokesman defended the collection of domestic intelligence
> in the database, which lists 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-
> month period. The spokesman said the military has "a legitimate
> interest in protecting its installations and... people, and to the
> extent that they use information collected by law enforcement
> agencies to do that, that's... appropriate." </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some
> incidents in the database do refer to FBI reports. But information
> on a weekly protest at an Atlanta recruiting station <STRONG>comes
> not from law enforcement, but from the Army's 902nd military
> intelligence group</STRONG>. So does a report on a protest at the
> University of California at Santa Cruz. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><STRONG><FONT > color=#ff0000>"This document, it's a clue that shows the level of
> surveillance, the level of domestic surveillance that the U.S.
> military is now involved in,"</FONT></STRONG> says Bill Arkin, an
> NBC News military analyst. </FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Pentagon
> still refuses to say how it's collecting this information, whether
> the military itself is spying on protest groups, or asking local
> law enforcement to do surveillance and report back. </FONT></P></DIV>
> <P><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">URL: <A > href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10481600/">http://msnbc.msn.com/id/
> 10481600/</A></FONT></P>
> <P><FONT face=Verdana></FONT> </P>
> <H1 align=center>Defense Department spokesman</H1>
> <H1 align=center> claims "no personal knowlege" </H1>
> <H1 align=center>of surveillance report</H1>
> <DIV class=p14 id=finalPos></DIV>
> <DIV class="WCCol w300 fR clrR">
> <DIV style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 20px">WAVY-TV</DIV>
> <DIV style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 20px"><A href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/ >
10466494/from/RL.4/">http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10466494/from/RL.4/</ > A></DIV></DIV>
> <DIV class=mR165>
> <P class=textBodyBlack><SPAN id=byLine></SPAN>
> <P>
> <P>
> <P>
> <P>
> <P>PENTAGON The Pentagon isn't denying the existence of a
> previously secret 400-page report on its domestic surveillance
> activities. But spokesman Larry DiRita says he has "no personal
> knowlege of the document."</P>The existence of the document was
> first reported by NBC News.
> <P></P>Another Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, says
> the military "has a legitimate interest in protecting its people
> and its installations." And as it seeks to do that it, he says, it
> "has reviewed information" collected about people and groups by
> domestic law enforcement agencies.
> <P></P>Critics claim the Pentagon is gathering information that
> goes beyond simply protecting members of the military and Defense
> Department property, and that it's targetting anti-war protesters
> and religious groups.
> <P></P>Whitman says "<STRONG>the allegation that the department is
> interested in domestic surveillance is not consistent with our
> policies and procedures</STRONG>."</DIV>
> <DIV class=mR165> </DIV>
> <DIV class=mR165> </DIV>
> <DIV class=mR165> </DIV>
> <DIV class=mR165>
> <H1 align=center>Pentagon reviewing </H1>
> <H1 align=center>handling of information </H1>
> <H1 align=center>on suspicious people</H1>
> <DIV class=p14 id=finalPos></DIV>
> <DIV class="WCCol w300 fR clrR">
> <DIV style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 20px"><LINK href="/css/html40.css" > type=text/css
rel=stylesheet><LINK href="/default.ashx/id/3053751/" > type=text/css rel=stylesheet></DIV>
> <DIV style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 20px">WAVY-TV</DIV>
> <DIV style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 20px"><A href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/ >
10471760/from/RL.1/">http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10471760/from/RL.1/</ > A></DIV></DIV>
> <DIV class=mR165>
> <P class=textBodyBlack><SPAN id=byLine></SPAN>
> <P>
> <P>
> <P>
> <P>
> <P>WASHINGTON The Pentagon says its reviewing how it uses a
> classified database of information about suspicious people and
> activities in the U-S.</P>The review comes after NBC news reported
> that the database lists activities of anti-war groups that don't
> directly threaten Pentagon security.
> <P></P>The news report was based on a document generated by an
> obscure and secretive Defense Department agency that provides
> counterintelligence support to protect Pentagon personnel and
> property.
> <P></P>NBC reported the agency's database lists as a "threat" a
> 2004 meeting where activists planned to protest military recruiting
> at local high schools. It also said some of the nearly four dozen
> anti-war meetings or protests in the database took place far from
> any military installation or recruitment center.
> <P></P><STRONG>The Pentagon has issued a written statement
> implying, but not explicitly acknowledging, that some information
> had been handled improperly.</STRONG></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>
>
> -------------------------------1134716285--
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