[Peace-discuss] quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Dan Schreiber]

Here's a story you might all enjoy:

Last March the Mennonite Church hosted Dr. Strada of Emergency USA (he is an
Italian docter who builds hospitals in war zones for civilian war wounded).
He was on AM 580 and members of the general public came to the talk.  At one
point he made a side remark that those who go to war to solve problems
suffer from mental illness, refering to our dear president.

The next day, we got a call from the local FBI office saying that someone in
the audience had called them very upset and wanted the FBI to make sure that
his charity was legitimate.  On top of that, the agent said that the person
reported that an associate of Dr. Stada's was carrying a handgun.  This was
especially funny - a man who builds hospitals in war zones that does not
allow any guns in his hospitals, bringing a gun to a Mennonite Church as a
foreigner on a visa.

The FBI agent was very polite and said he was just obligated to follow up.
He said this happens not infrequently - that people inflate charges to get
attention, and it worked in this case.

So, this is a case of a fellow citizen making stuff up to get their fellow
citizens in trouble with the FBI, and not the FBI acting on their own, but
annoying nonetheless.

Dan



> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net]On Behalf Of Ricky
> Baldwin
> Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 3:43 PM
> To: peace discuss
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
>
>
> Funny this should come up.  Wonder if it's related:
> Paul Wood from the News-Gazette just emailed me to ask
> whether the FBI was "investigating" us, noting that
> it's "happening elsewhere".
> (I just told him we have always assumed they were
> keeping tabs, but that we have no secrets and that we
> know of nothing specific about our own spies.)
>
> -Ricky
>
> --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> > [I've suggested that AWARE is the best thing that's
> > happened
> > in years to the C-U FBI office: they now have
> > potential
> > "terrorists" to track, along with the state and
> > local police
> > departments -- much more interesting than busting
> > kids for
> > pot, say.  But here from MSM is an account of how
> > the Pentagon
> > is horning in on the action.  Must make for for some
> > tense
> > meetings over who's going to bug our meetings...
> > --CGE]
> >
> >   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
> >   Updated: 7:51 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 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.” Two-hundred and
> > forty-three
> > 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 (.PDF link), 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 also
> > 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 “threat.”
> >
> > © 2005 MSNBC.com
> >
> > URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >
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> >
>
>
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