"A huge Chilling Effect" on US Secret Police

A story in today's NYT, Military Data Reveal Tips on Antiwar Activities centers around what, in the days of the republic, would have been a startling admission: US Military Intelligence was collecting information within the U.S. on the administration's political opponents.

Follow below the fold, to see if you can qualify for the Secret Enemies of the State List (you may already be a winner!)

Fortunately, we concerned citizens need no longer worry about this, the problem has been fixed, and we can go about our daily routine of Vigilant Freedom™. According to Daniel J. Baur, current acting head of CIFA (the  CounterIntelligence Field Activity, tasked with protecting military installations from threats foreign and, apparently,  domestic):

we fixed it

What a relief. Now back to fearing them terrists, and sympathizing with the poor secret police, and the problems our nosing about has caused. Apparently the fleeting media mentions were enough to discourage Americans from ratting out their neighbors.

Amid public controversy over the database, leads from so-called neighborhood watch programs and other tips about possible threats are down significantly this year, Mr. Baur said. While the system had been tightened, he said he was concerned that the public scrutiny had created “a huge chilling effect” that could lead the military to miss legitimate terrorist threats.

As if there were any domestic terrorist threats.

Lazy Americans will never make the kind of really slick police state that the East German Stasi ran, despite best efforts of our neo-stasis.

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CIFA has worried many people, for many reasons. Some worry that the scope of operations undertaken on U.S. soil in the name of protecting military installations goes beyond an appropriate role for the U.S. military. Others are concerned that the semi-privatized military intelligence functions of this 4-year old agency skirt accountability and the chain of command, while potentially providing access to this domestic surveillance information to politically connected cronies. Yet others are only concerned by the huge growth of the secret budget for this operation, and its very vague mission.

Almost a year ago Walter Pincus wrote this in the Washington Post:

CIFA is a three-year-old agency whose size and budget remain secret. It has grown from an agency that coordinated policy and oversaw the counterintelligence activities of units within the military services and Pentagon agencies to an analytic and operational organization with nine directorates and ever-widening authority.

Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) "assists in preserving the most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping control the intelligence domain," the fact sheet said. Those roles can range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States. The DX also provides "on-site, real time . . . support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host nation personnel from a variety of threats," the fact sheet said.

...

CIFA manages the Pentagon database that includes Talon reports, consisting of raw, unverified information picked up by the military services on suspicious activities that could involve terrorist threats. The Pentagon acknowledged last week that the Talon database contained reports on peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations that should have been purged long ago under Defense Department regulations.

...

A former senior Pentagon intelligence official, familiar with CIFA, said yesterday, "They started with force protection from terrorists, but when you go down that road, you soon are into everything . . . where terrorists get their money, who they see, who they deal with."

He added, noting that there had been no congressional oversight of CIFA, that the Defense Department is "too big, too rich an organization and should not be left unfettered. They rush in where there is a vacuum."

A former senior counterterrorism official, also familiar with CIFA, said, "What you are seeing is the militarization of counterterrorism."

But, as I said there is nothing to worry about, trust the NYT and the Pentagon:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that “a church service for peace” would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding “nonviolence training” sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The Defense Department tightened its procedures earlier this year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist threats — and not peaceable First Amendment activity — was included in the database.

The head of the office that runs the military database, which is known as Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been collected in the first place.

“I don’t want it, we shouldn’t have had it, not interested in it,” said Daniel J. Baur, the acting director of the counterintelligence field activity unit, which runs the Talon program at the Defense Department. “I don’t want to deal with it.”

Mr. Baur said that those operating the database had misinterpreted their mandate and that what was intended as an antiterrorist database became, in some respects, a catch-all for leads on possible disruptions and threats against military installations in the United States, including protests against the military presence in Iraq.

“I don’t think the policy was as clear as it could have been,” he said. Once the problem was discovered, he said, “we fixed it,” and more than 180 entries in the database related to war protests were deleted from the system last year. Out of 13,000 entries in the database, many of them uncorroborated leads on possible terrorist threats, several thousand others were also purged because he said they had “no continuing relevance.”

What we did not learn is what exactly happened with those entries before and after they were 'deleted' Surely there are backups, and Rove has his printouts presumably. If they were simply moved to a more secret "potential threats" database we would never know about it...

I may be paranoid, so I'll let the ACLU and others judge the credibility of a Pentagon Counterintelligence Mouthpiece:

Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. in New York, said the new documents suggested that the military’s efforts to glean intelligence on protesters went beyond what was previously known. If intelligence officials “are going to be doing investigations or monitoring in a place where people gather to worship or to study, they should have a pretty clear indication that a crime has occurred,” Mr. Wizner added.

The leader of one antiwar group mentioned repeatedly in the latest military documents provided to the A.C.L.U. said he was skeptical that the military had ended its collection of material on war protests.

“I don’t believe it,” said the leader, Michael T. McPhearson, a former Army captain who is the executive director of Veterans for Peace, a group in St. Louis.

Mr. McPhearson said he found the references to his group in the Talon database disappointing but not altogether surprising, and he said the group continued to use public settings and the Internet to plan its protests.

“We don’t have anything to hide,” he said. “We’re not doing anything illegal.”

Nothing to hide... unlike certain lawless administrations.

So now we recall that CIFA is a huge but secretive military intelligence operation currently in progress wherever a US military installation or support facility is located, and that they have a catch-all database that a gate guard or MP can type your license plates into if he doesn't like your bumper sticker. We infer from the ACLU statement that there are counterintelligence operatives undercover in various organizations which may oppose administration policies. We have no idea whether this database is connected with the mysterious but politically tilted no-fly list, nor do we know what private contractors have had legal or unauthorized access to the data.

Now when the president asks for broader authority, which he claims not to need, for watching "terrorists" we know that what he means, and has demonstrated is that he will continue to use the tools of state to hold power and punish political opponents.  This is an engish-only administration and they have banished the glorious concepts and latin phrases of our forefathers to the dustbin of history: Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, Posse Comitatus all ancient history. Ave atque Vale

So the question you have to ask yourself is this: Does CIFA have me in their Talon, and if not, why not?
Can you, a kossack reader and potential semi-activist, really surf contentedly knowing that the administration has a vast computerized database of potential political threats and you're not in it? This diary is my bid. Where's yours?