Pentagon accused of spying on Americans
Officials will say they will review program that collects data on opponents of the war.
NBC News reported earlier this week that it had obtained a secret US Department of Defense document that shows the
department is now monitoring "peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups." Today,
The Washington Post reports that Pentagon officials say they will review the program, since NBC's document shows that information has been collected on "peace protesters and others whose activities posed no threat and
should not have been kept on file." Pentagon officials say the information collection was aimed at countering terrorism.
"On the surface, it looks like things in the database that were determined not to be viable threats were never deleted but should have been," [a senior defense department official] said. "You can also make the argument that these things should never have been put in the database in the first place until they were confirmed as threats."
The program is known as "Talon," and is supposed to compile unconfirmed reports of threats to defense facilities. The
Post reports that the program is "part of a broader effort by the Pentagon to gather counterterrorism intelligence within the United States," and has raised concerns for civil libertarians and members of Congress recently. Any information that is not considered threatening is supposed to be removed from the Talon database within 90 days.
The
Palm Beach Post reports on The Truth Project of Lake Worth, Florida, one of the groups
considered a threat according to the Talon database. The group consists of about 20 people, including five Quakers and a 79-year old grandmother. Their original meeting, held in 2004 at the local Quaker meeting house, was one of 1,500 "suspicious" incidents in the database.
"When we saw (the database), our eyes fell out of our heads," said [Evelyn Grachow,], of West Palm Beach. "We really couldn't believe what we were seeing, because all we do is give information to the young people in high schools who have been harassed by recruiters. There is never talk of our doing violence."
Lisa Stewart, a Quaker who attended the Truth Project meeting, said the Quakers investigated the group before allowing them to use the meetinghouse. She said she shares the group's concern that a draft might be instituted during the Iraq war and wanted to find ways to deter students from enlisting. "I just wanted to make sure this group was on the up and up and they weren't a bunch of hotheads," said Stewart, 68, a member of The Truth Project. "They were very much in keeping with (Quaker) principles."
NBC military analyst Bill Arkin says all Americans
should be concerned by the Pentagon's actions.
"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." Columnist Arianna Huffington, writing in the
Los Angeles Times, notes that it's not just the Pentagon that's been watching antiwar demonstrations, as "documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been recording the names and
license plate numbers of peaceful antiwar protesters."
It wasn't that long ago that [former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's] notorious COINTELPRO program was illegally infiltrating Students for a Democratic Society and setting out to destroy the reputations and lives of "Negro radicals" such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Our government lied, cheated, harassed, intimidated, burglarized, vandalized, framed and spread false rumors � to say nothing of keeping voluminous files on everyone from John Lennon to Lucille Ball � in an effort to quash legitimate dissent against the Vietnam War and the racist practices of the South. We can't let it happen again.
The
Associated Press reports that in a statement announcing the review of 'Talon,' the Pentagon stopped short of acknowledging any fault, but
hinted that some information had been mishandled.
The Pentagon said Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, ordered a full review of the system for handling such information to ensure that it complies with Pentagon policies and federal law. Cambone also ordered a review of whether Pentagon polices are being applied properly with respect to reporting and storing information about "US persons" - people, not necessarily US citizens, inside the United States. And he ordered the database to be reviewed "to identify any other information that is improperly in the database," according to the Pentagon statement. Meanwhile,
USA Today reports on the Pentagon's
$300 million psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the US government as the source, according to one of the military officials in charge of the program.
Run by psychological warfare experts at the US Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and "novelty items" such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.
The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict.
Military officials say that, while they will not plant false stories, they will not always reveal their role in distributing pro-US messages – unless they are directly asked by journalists.
USA Today also reports on the
three companies that have won five-year contracts from the US military, at $20 million a year, to "develop slogans, advertisements, newspaper articles, radio spots and television programs to build support for US policies overseas." Documents show that companies bidding for the contract were worried about media scrutiny.
During the bidding process for federal contracts, potential contractors can ask questions and make suggestions that are answered by contracting officials. One question for this contract was whether the command would "protect them from US and foreign media inquiries into this project." The command said it would follow the law but consult with contractors before answering requests for details filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The media campaign hasn't begun, and the military has spent only $700,000 on the project so far, according to US officials with the project.
Also...
•
Mid-East press upbeat on Iraqi poll (
BBC)
•
Israel raises alarm over Iran (
Globe and Mail)
•
UN struggles to complete text on Lebanon murders (
Reuters)
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