CIA Spying in the US

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 Studies, a group frequently critical of the war on terror. "And it's 
all been done with no public discussion, in the dark of night."
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.


_______________________________________________
heads mailing list
[email protected]
http://ballistichelmet.org/mailman/listinfo/heads/
http://ballistichelmet.org/donate/