U.S. MILITARY ACTIVELY SPYING ON THE HOMEBOYS
the potential long-term effect of an increasing military role in police and law
enforcement activities is "a military contemptuous of American society and unresponsive to civilian
authorities."
truthout.org
latimes.com
Mission Creep Hits Home
By William M. Arkin
Los Angeles Times
Sunday 23 November 2003
American armed forces are assuming major new domestic policing and
surveillance roles.
Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001, the American public has
paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of
anti-terrorism. Under the banner of "homeland security," the military and intelligence communities are
implementing far-reaching changes that blur the lines between terrorism and other kinds of crises and
will break down long-established barriers to military action and surveillance within the U.S.
"We must start thinking differently," says Air Force Gen. Ralph E. "Ed" Eberhart, the newly
installed commander of Northern Command, the military's homeland security arm. Before 9/11, he
says, the military and intelligence systems were focused on "the away game" and not properly
focused on "the home game." "Home," of course, is the United States.
Eberhart's Colorado-based command is charged with enhancing homeland security in two ways: by
improving the military's capability to defend the country's borders, coasts and airspace —
unquestionably within the military's long-established mission — and by providing "military assistance
to civil authorities" when authorized by the secretary of Defense or the president.
That too may sound unexceptionable: The military has long had mechanisms to respond to a
request for help from state governors. New after 9/11 are more aggressive preparations and the
presumption that local government will not be able to carry the new homeland security load. Being the
military, moreover, contingency planners approach preparing by assuming the worst. All of this is a
major — and potentially dangerous — departure from past policy.
The U.S. military operates under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the direct use of
federal troops "to execute the laws" of the United States. The courts have interpreted this to mean that
the military is prohibited from any active role in direct civilian law enforcement, such as search, seizure
or arrest of civilians.
"There are abundant reasons for rejecting the further expansion of the military's domestic role,"
says Mackubin T. Owens, a professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College. Looking
at the issue historically, Owens wrote in an August 2002 essay in the National Review's online edition
that "the use of soldiers as a posse [places] them in the uncomfortable position of taking orders from
local authorities who had an interest in the disputes that provoked the unrest in the first place."
Moreover, Owens said, becoming more involved in domestic policing can be "subtle and subversive … like a lymphoma or termite infestation."
Though we are far from having "tanks rumbling through the
streets," he said, the potential long-term effect of an increasing military role in police and law
enforcement activities is "a military contemptuous of American society and unresponsive to civilian
authorities."
Eberhart says his Northern Command operates scrupulously within the bounds of the law. "We
believe the [Posse Comitatus] Act, as amended, provides the authority we need to do our job, and no
modification is needed at this time," he told the House Armed Services Committee in March.
Of course, what he knows is that amendments approved by Congress in 1996 for that earlier civilian
war, the war on drugs, have already expanded the military's domestic powers so that Washington can
act unilaterally in dispatching the military without waiting for a state's request for help. Long before
9/11, Congress authorized the military to assist local law enforcement officials in domestic "drug
interdiction" and during terrorist incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the
president, after proclaiming a state of emergency, can authorize additional actions.
Indeed, the military is presently operating under just such an emergency declaration. Eberhart's
command has defined three levels of operations, each of which triggers a larger set of authorized
activities. The levels are "extraordinary," "emergency" and "temporary." At the "temporary" level, which
covers such things as the Olympic Games or the Super Bowl, limited assistance can be provided to
law enforcement agencies when a governor requests it, primarily in such areas as logistics,
transportation and communications. During "emergencies," the military can provide similar support,
mostly in response to specific events such as the attacks on the World Trade Center.
It is only in the case of "extraordinary" domestic operations that the unique capabilities of the
Defense Department are deployed. These include not just such things as air patrols to shoot down
hijacked planes or the defusing of bombs and other explosives, , but also bringing in intelligence
collectors, special operators and even full combat troops.
Given the absence of terrorist attacks inside the United States since 9/11, it may seem surprising
that Northern Command is already working under the far-reaching authority that goes with
"extraordinary operations." But it is.
"We are not going to be out there spying on people," Eberhart told PBS' NewsHour in September.
But, he said, "We get information from people who do." Some of that information increasingly comes
not from the FBI or those charged with civilian law enforcement but from a Pentagon organization
established last year, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). The seemingly innocuous CIFA
was originally given the mission of protecting the Defense Department and its personnel, as well as
"critical infrastructure," against espionage conducted by terrorists and foreign intelligence services.
But in August, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expanded CIFA's mission, charging it with
maintaining "a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential
terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." The group's Assessments and
Technology Directorate, which shares offices with the Justice Department's Foreign Terrorist Tracking
Task Force, has already identified 200 foreign terrorist suspects in the U.S., according to a Defense
Department report to Congress.
This year, the Pentagon inspector general authorized assigning military special agents to 56 FBI
Joint Terrorism Task Force operations at FBI field offices. These military agents will pursue leads in
local communities of potential threats to the military. Eberhart also plans to have his own cadre of
agents working with local law enforcement. Next year, he plans to transform Joint Task Force Six, a
drug interdiction unit of 160 military personnel at Ft. Bliss, Texas, into Joint Interagency Task Force
North. The new task force will be given nationwide responsibility for working with law enforcement
agencies.
CIFA, moreover, has been given a domestic "data mining" mission: figuring out a way to process
massive sets of public records, intercepted communications, credit card accounts, etc., to find
"actionable intelligence." "Homeland defense relies on the sharing of actionable intelligence among the
appropriate federal, state, and local agencies," says Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson III, Eberhart's
deputy.
Another ambitious domestic project is being undertaken by the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency, which is gathering "geospatial information" about 133 cities, the borders and seaports. This
"urban data inventory" combines unclassified and classified data (including such things as the location
of emergency services, communications, transportation and food supplies) with a high-resolution
satellite map of the United States. When the mapping efforts are completed, a national "spatial data
infrastructure" will be created down to the house level. Intelligence analysts speak of one day being
able to identify individual occupants, as well as their national background and political affiliations.
Though the military is just getting its systems in place, there can be no other conclusion: Domestic
surveillance is back.
It's not that we're heading toward martial law. We're not. But outside the view of most of the public,
the government is daily expanding military operations into areas of local government and law
enforcement that historically have been off-limits. And it doesn't seem far-fetched to imagine that those
charged with assembling "actionable intelligence" will slowly start combining databases of known
terrorists with seemingly innocuous lists of contributors to charities or causes, that membership lists
for activist organizations will be folded in, that names and personal data of anti-globalization protesters
will be run through the "data mine." After all, the mission of Northern Command and other Pentagon
agencies is to identify groups and individuals who could potentially pose threats to Defense
Department and civilian installations.
Given all this, it might be a good time for state and local governments to ask themselves whether
the federal government, through the military, is slowly eroding their power to manage what — for very
good reasons — have always been considered local responsibilities. |
