Pentagon officials said on Friday they could fight insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan more effectively if Congress would allow intelligence operatives to hide their identities from potential informants in the U.S. Muslim population.
Civil liberties advocates say the Pentagon is simply using troubles abroad to reacquire domestic espionage powers that Congress revoked in the wake of Vietnam-era abuses.
They warn that any change in the law would erode privacy protections, especially for Muslim American citizens and resident aliens with personal ties to countries at the forefront of the U.S. war on terrorism…
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has backed the Pentagon’s request in its fiscal 2006 intelligence spending authorization bill, which could be taken up by the full Senate later this month….
“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.”
Congressional aides said the proposed privacy law change has been in the works for years and had little to do with insurgents when first put forward for debate.
Other potential targets for defense intelligence operatives in the United States would be foreign-born U.S. nationals with ties to Iran and North Korea.
“What we want is to find a green-card holder who has relatives back in the old country…
The most relevant comment I can think to make on this is to suggest that if you have not read it, that you print yourself a copy of the Anti-Terrorism Safety Checklist
Even if you have read it, print out a copy anyway. There might be someone near you who could really use it.
