US military to increase domestic surveillance

"Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr (R) of Georgia, a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian.

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The Washington Post reported last month that the plan does not ask for new legal authority to use US military forces on US soil (which is prohibited by the Posse Comitatus act of 1848), and draws a "distinct line" between a leading role in overseas operations and a support role in domestic affairs.

In a related development, The New York Times reported in July that senior Pentagon planners are "challenging" the idea the US needs to be able to fight two wars on two fronts at the same time. Instead, they want to focus on fighting just one war, and "devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts."

In a nutshell, strategies that order the military to be prepared for two wars would argue for more high-technology weapons, in particular warplanes. An emphasis on one war and counterterrorism duties would require lighter, more agile forces - perhaps fewer troops, but more Special Operations units - and a range of other needs, such as intelligence, language and communications specialists.

But critics of the Pentagon's new counterterrorism strategy still don't like what they see. Timothy H. Edgar, a national security specialist with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that while certain sections of the document have language that limits military action, they seem at odds with other sections. "They seem to be trying to have it both ways," Mr. Edgar told the Post.

Meanwhile, Mr. Barr says the Pentagon's plan is yet another attempt to revive the failed Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, which he called a "massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals" that was killed by Congress in 2002.

"This is TIA back with a vengeance," said Barr. "What they have come up with here is a much vaguer and much broader concept that sounds more innocuous. [The Pentagon] is getting much smarter in how to sell these things."

FloridaToday.com argued in an editorial Tuesday that there is already evidence that the government is abusing existing law to subvert the First Amendment rights of those opposed to the US government's policies.

Last month, the FBI was forced under the Freedom of Information Act to reveal it has collected at least 3,500 pages of files on groups that have opposed Bush White House policies on the Patriot Act, Iraq war, civil rights and the environment.

Among those targeted were the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace. The FBI won't say what's in the files, and the ACLU has filed a lawsuit we hope it wins to find out.

"Spies and cops have different roles and operate under different rules for a very important reason: to ensure that our law enforcement agencies stay within the Constitution, [said Mr. Edgar]. This proposal could erode the FBI's law enforcement ethic and put parts of the FBI under the effective control of a spymaster who reports to the president - not the attorney general."

Also, in recent interviews with FoxNews former intelligence agents for the US military and the CIA claimed the "intelligence community" ignored threats from Osama bin Laden that were "detailed in television documentaries, books and all over the Internet in scores of languages" before 9/11 because they were "open source." These agents say this overreliance on 'secret' information "has caused an institutional bias against publicly available information that could otherwise help identify terrorist threats across the globe before the damage is done."

"Everything we needed to know to prevent 9/11 was either known to elements of the US government but not shared across agency boundaries, or openly published in foreign language media we chose to ignore," said Robert Steele, a former clandestine officer who now heads Open Source Solutions Network Inc., a global provider of open source networking and analysis training.

"[Al Qaeda] was publishing its plans and intentions publicly for years," Steele said. "All of the literature is quite clear."

Also...
• US recruitment hit by Iraq effect ( BBC)
• The terrorist theory of victory ( PHXnews.com)
• Rethinking professional military education ( The Heritage Foundation)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan .