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Christian Science Monitor - October 11, 2005
Pentagon wants new spying powers in US
Pentagon says it won't spy on 'innocent' Americans,
but critics say past record shows this is false
By Tom Regan
Claiming it needs greater latitude for the war on terror, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a request from the Pentagon for the right to "covertly" gather intelligence on US citizens in order to determine whether they can recruit them as informants, without telling them that they are doing so on behalf of the US government. Reuters reported Friday that the Pentagon said the measure, which is aimed at the Muslim community in the US, could help them fight insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We believe there are people in the United States who have information of value to us," said Jim Schmidli, deputy general counsel for operations at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. "That information is within different ethnic communities in this country -- recent additions to our population from distressed areas of the world, primarily the Middle East."
But civil libertarians and leaders of the Muslim community charge, however, that the Pentagon is using the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to reclaim domestic spying powers that Congress had taken away from it after those powers were abused to spy on Americans during the Vietnam era.
The intelligence committee has backed the request as part of the 2006 intelligence spending authorization bill. The full Senate will take up the bill later this month. The Pentagon's request was not included in the House version of the bill, which was passed in June. The bill will now go to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Newsweek reported recently that this is not the first time the Pentagon has asked for these powers.
The provision was included in last year’s version of the same bill, but was knocked out after its details were reported by Newsweek and critics charged it could lead to “spying” on US citizens. But late last month, with no public hearings or debate, a similar amendment was put back into the same authorization bill—an annual measure governing US intelligence agencies—at the request of the Pentagon. A copy of the 104-page committee bill, which has yet to be voted on by the full Senate, did not become public until last week.
Newsweek also reported that the committee included two other controversial amendments in the spending bill: one that would allow intelligence agencies greater access to databases on US citizens, and one that would grant the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency the right not to disclose "operational files" under the Freedom of Information Act. ………
In late September, The New York Times reported that Republican members of Congress were expressing concerns that the Pentagon "may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence," John D. Negroponte.
“We see indications that the [Pentagon] is trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else,” Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R) of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.
Mr. Hoekstra said he believed the activities were designed to "obscure" the Pentagon's intelligence activities in order to keep them out of Mr. Negroponte's jurisdiction.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1011/dailyUpdate.html
The Detroit News - Saturday, October 1, 2005
Committee says Pentagon may collect
citizen data covertly
By Grey Miller
WASHINGTON -- Pentagon intelligence operatives would be allowed to collect information from U.S. citizens without disclosing their status as government spies under legislation approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee and publicly released this week.
The bill would end a long-standing requirement that military intelligence officers disclose their government ties when approaching an American citizen in the United States -- a law designed to protect Americans from domestic intelligence activities by the Department of Defense.
The provision is one of several sections that would roll back privacy-related protections as part of an effort to improve U.S. intelligence agencies' ability to detect and prevent domestic terrorist plots. Another provision would make it easier for U.S. spy agencies to gain access to sensitive records on U.S. citizens that are held by the government and generally prohibited from being disseminated under privacy laws.
The changes are part of an intelligence authorization bill that calls for what officials described as a "significant" increase in funding for U.S. spy agencies, and would shift money away from controversial satellite programs that many lawmakers consider outdated and unnecessary.
Actual budget numbers are classified, but annual intelligence spending is said to exceed $40 billion. The authorization bill was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in closed session last week, but the text of the legislation was not released publicly until Thursday, when the bill was filed with the U.S. Senate.
Although the bill was endorsed unanimously by committee members, two Democrats expressed concern with the privacy provisions in written comments attached to the legislation.
Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said they considered the military intelligence provision a mistake. Pentagon operatives "should be required to tell United States citizens in the United States who are not suspected of any wrongdoing that they work for the government," the senators wrote. They added that they "intend to support changes to this authority as the legislation moves forward." …….
http://www.detnews.com/2005/politics/0510/01/polit-333696.htm
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