Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
No Big Deal, Pentagon Says

Oh my goodness, Donald Rumsfeld, says. Well-meaning, honest mistakes: "no big deal."

That's how the Secretary of Defense describes his Department's own admission to Congress that the Pentagon "inappropriately" collected information on anti-war and anti-military protestors in the United States.

I've written in these pages that in contrast to the government's remorseless defense of warantless domestic NSA surveillance, the Pentagon has been quick to apologize for its post 9/11 overreach.

"There is nothing more important to the U.S. military than the trust and good will of the American people," the Department wrote (pdf) to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) on January 27. "The DOD values that trust and good will and consequently views with the (sic) great concern any potential violation of the strict DOD policy governing the protection of civil liberties."
Is that all there is here? A few over zealous protectors of America just trying to connect the dots?

Ever since I worked with NBC News in December to first report the existence of Pentagon databases that were tracking domestic demonstrations and anti-military activity, the Defense Department has moved quickly to review the TALON force protection reporting system that it instituted in 2003.

The Department describes TALON "as a source of timely information about possible foreign terrorist threats to their personnel and facilities." TALON reports were collected by military intelligence, counterintelligence, and law enforcement personnel together into a database which was used to analyze patterns of activity and security issues. It was the military's version of connecting the dots.

In a January 26 letter to Sen. Levin and other Congressional leaders, the Defense Department admits:

"Although the TALON reporting system was intended to document suspicious incidents possibly linked to foreign terrorist threats to DOD resources, some came to view the system as a means to report information about demonstrations and anti-base activity… A very small percentage of these reports were submitted to the TALON/CORNERSTONE database."

All sorts of new procedures and reviews are being implemented, according to the Pentagon, to ensure that the military doesn't inadvertently collect information on U.S. persons in the course of its counter-terrorism and force protection operations.

Speaking at the National Press Club on February 6, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked about the reports of domestic spying by the Pentagon, and said that what took place was "a perfectly understandable thing."

The military, Rumsfeld says,

"decided to establish a program whereby they would be able to observe and do the kind of counter surveillance to see who was taking pictures of military installations or sensitive activities and who was observing them and gather information of that type so that we would not be accused of failing to protect our forces and their families and the military installations in the country."

"Everyone accused the government of not connecting the dots," Rumsfeld continued. "So here they are trying to connect the dots, and someone looks on it and says, oh, my goodness gracious. Isn't that terrible? You're collecting information on people in the United States."

My goodness gracious indeed. Rumsfeld is trying to gloss over the fact that military police and intelligence personnel clearly collected information far beyond potential terrorist's casing U.S. facilities.

Maybe it is no big deal, but more likely, as I've been told by numerous military sources, since 9/11, the military intelligence and counter-terror warriors, like other government spies, have taken it upon themselves to leave no stone unturned, to let no previous restriction stop them in the process of perhaps, maybe, finding terrorists.

These same sources say that for all of the sensitivity training and reform now, if intelligence indicates that terrorists are using student or anti-war groups as cover for their activity, the government won't hesitate to spy and collect information.