[Infowarrior] - Pentagon Is Expected to Close Intelligence Unit

[Richard Forno]

April 2, 2008
Pentagon Is Expected to Close Intelligence Unit
By MARK MAZZETTI
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/washington/02intel.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&p
agewanted=print

WASHINGTON ‹ 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 move, government officials say, is part of a broad effort under Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates to review, overhaul and, in some cases, dismantle
an intelligence architecture built by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

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 Pentagon¹s 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 government officials said.

Pentagon officials said Mr. Gates had yet to approve the recommendation.

Mr. Gates, a former director of central intelligence, has promised to
improve coordination of the Pentagon¹s intelligence collection with other
spy agencies and help rebuild some of the relationships bruised under Mr.
Rumsfeld¹s tenure. Mr. Rumsfeld and some of his aides had expressed deep
suspicion toward the Central Intelligence Agency in particular, and some
people accused Mr. Rumsfeld of trying to build an intelligence empire of his
own.

Shortly after taking over the Pentagon last year, Mr. Gates ordered a broad
review of its intelligence operations and of the Defense Department¹s
relationships with other spy agencies.

It is unclear whether Mr. Clapper is also recommending tighter restrictions
on Pentagon counterterrorism and counterespionage operations in the United
States.

Some civil liberties groups said they worried that the change might be
cosmetic and that the Pentagon might be closing the office to farm out its
operations to other agencies that receive less scrutiny.

Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said the recommendation to
close the office had nothing to do with its troubled history. The move is
aimed, Colonel Ryder said, at ³creating efficiencies and streamlining²
Pentagon efforts to thwart operations by foreign intelligence services and
terror networks.

Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, called the decision long overdue.

Mr. Reyes said the office ³was a Rumsfeld-era relic that triggered major
concern about domestic intelligence gathering by the Pentagon against
Americans.²

The work of coordinating the Pentagon¹s various counterintelligence
activities would remain important, Mr. Reyes said, but ³vigorous oversight²
would be needed under the new structure.

Some current and former Pentagon officials expressed concern that putting
the mission of countering foreign intelligence services under the Defense
Intelligence Agency could signal a decline in its priority. But Colonel
Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said the recommendation to close the
counterintelligence office was intended to strengthen counterintelligence
operations.

Pentagon officials said that the database that housed information about the
war protesters was built to track terrorist threats against domestic
military bases and that reports about war protesters were put into it by
mistake. Mr. Clapper ordered an end to the database, called Talon, last
year.

The disclosure that the Pentagon was collecting information about citizens
in the United States prompted memories of its activities decades ago, when
the military used electronic surveillance to monitor civilians protesting
the Vietnam War. The Pentagon is traditionally barred from conducting
domestic intelligence operations.

The counterintelligence office was also brought into the scandal surrounding
Representative Randy Cunningham, a California Republican, who resigned from
Congress in 2005 after pleading guilty to taking bribes from military
contractors. Some of the contracts that Mr. Cunningham channeled to Mitchell
J. Wade, a longtime friend, were for programs of the counterintelligence
office.

Newly declassified documents released on Tuesday shed more light on another
activity coordinated by the Pentagon¹s counterintelligence office, issuing
letters to banks and credit agencies to obtain financial records in
terrorism and espionage investigations.

The Pentagon has issued hundreds of so-called national security letters,
which are noncompulsory, as a tool to examine the income of employees
suspected of collaborating with a foreign spy service or international
terrorist network.

The documents, released as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought
by the American Civil Liberties Union, include an internal review begun in
2007 that examined the Pentagon¹s use of the letters. The review found poor
coordination and a lack of standardized training inside the Defense
Department about using the letters, but uncovered no instances where the
department broke any laws.

The Pentagon is authorized to issue the letters, sometimes in coordination
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to obtain financial records of
civilian and military Defense Department employees and their families.

Colonel Ryder said that since the Sept. 11 attacks there had been six cases
where the letters were used to obtain records about the family members of
Defense Department employees.