DOD Collects 'Raw Data' On Suspicious Activity From Military, Civilians

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Sun, 11 Dec 2005 13:00:36 -0800 (PST)

DOD Collects 'Raw Data' On Suspicious Activity From Military,

Civilians

 

 

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/10/AR2005121000893.\

html

 

 

Defense Facilities Pass Along Reports of Suspicious Activity

'Raw Information' From Military, Civilians Is Given to Pentagon

 

By Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page A12

 

Day after day, reports of suspicious activity filed from military

bases and other defense installations throughout the United States

flow into the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, a

three-year-old Pentagon agency whose size and budget remain classified.

 

The Talon reports, as they are called, are based on information from

civilians and military personnel who stumble across people or

information they think might be part of a terrorist plot or threat

against defense facilities at home or abroad.

 

 

The documents can consist of " raw information reported by concerned

citizens and military members regarding suspicious incidents, " said a

2003 memo signed by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.

The reports " may or may not be related to an actual threat, and its

very nature may be fragmented and incomplete, " the memo said.

 

The Talon system is part of the Defense Department's growing effort to

gather intelligence within the United States, which officials argue is

imperative as they work to detect and prevent potentially catastrophic

terrorist assaults. The Talon reports -- how many are generated is

classified, a Pentagon spokesman said -- are collected and analyzed by

CIFA, an agency at the forefront of the Pentagon's counterterrorism

program.

 

The Pentagon's emphasis on domestic intelligence has raised concerns

among some civil liberties advocates and intelligence officials. For

some of them, the Talon system carries echoes of the 1960s, when the

Pentagon collected information about anti-Vietnam War groups and peace

activists that led to congressional hearings in the 1970s and limits

on the types of information the Defense Department could gather and

retain about U.S. citizens.

 

" I am particularly apprehensive about the expansion of our military's

role in domestic intelligence gathering, " said Washington lawyer

Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the Sept. 11 commission at that

panel's final news conference last week, noting that Congress has yet

to pay attention to the Talon program. The Pentagon's collection of

data, he said, was a " cause for concern, " partly because little is

known about it publicly.

 

" Programs such as CIFA, Eagle Eyes and Talon -- names unfamiliar to

most Americans -- must receive robust scrutiny by Congress and the

media, " Ben-Veniste said.

 

CIFA, according to a Pentagon background paper provided to The

Washington Post in response to inquiries, has established standards

for Talon reports and handling that " meet intelligence oversight

requirements. " The statement said " U.S. person information " -- reports

concerning people in the United States -- " is collected and retained

only as authorized " by presidential executive order.

 

Spokesmen for the FBI, Director of National Intelligence John D.

Negroponte and the National Counterterrorism Center all said their

principals would not comment on CIFA's Talon activities.

 

Talon, which stands for " threat and local observation notice, "

captures raw information about " anomalies, observations that are

suspicious . . . and immediate indicators of potential threats to DoD

[Defense Department] personnel and or resources, " according to an

attachment to Wolfowitz's memo.

 

Talon reports grew out of a program called Eagle Eyes, an

anti-terrorist program established by the Air Force Office of Special

Investigations that " enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members

and citizens in the war on terror, " according to the program's Web

site. A Pentagon spokesman recently described Eagle Eyes as a

" neighborhood watch " program for military bases. The Air Force

inspector general newsletter in 2003 said program informants include

" Air Force family members, contractors, off-base merchants, community

organizations and neighborhoods. "

 

In the period after Sept. 11, 2001, an intelligence and security panel

working under sponsorship of the Joint Staff adopted Talon to be the

Defense Department reporting system " to assemble, process and analyze

suspicious activity reports to identify possible terrorist pre-attack

activities, " according to the background paper.

 

CIFA, which was created in February 2002, was given responsibility for

analyzing the Talon reports. CIFA was originally asked to coordinate

policy and oversee the counterintelligence activities of the Air

Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Defense agencies such as the

National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. CIFA's initial role also

included the establishment of the common standards for training and

collection of data.

 

Since that time, under its director, David A. Burtt II, CIFA has

rapidly expanded its mandate inside the United States as the

Pentagon's domestic intelligence activities have grown since Sept. 11.

 

It is unclear how many Talon reports are filed each year. But just one

of the military services involved in the program, the Air Force,

generated 1,200 during the 14 months that ended in September 2003,

according to the inspector general's newsletter.

 

Among the types of information worth recording, according to a Talon

report guide that accompanied the Wolfowitz memo, are threats or

incidents that " may indicate a potential for a threat . . . whether

the threat posed is deliberately targeted or collateral. " Another

trigger for reporting would be attempts by individuals to monitor U.S.

facilities, including the taking of pictures, annotating maps or

drawings of facilities, use of binoculars " or other vision-enhancing

devices " or attempts to obtain " security-related or military specific

information. "

 

Other categories for reports were attempts to acquire badges, passes

or theft of materials that could be used to manufacture false

identification cards or thefts of military uniforms.

 

A former senior CIA official with wide counterintelligence experience,

who is familiar with CIFA's growth, said the agency's mandate is

" ambiguous, but the Defense Department is using its assets in its

broadest terms. " He added that efforts such as Talon " could be a

well-intentioned effort and it could develop important information. "

But, he said that in his view, " the Pentagon has chosen to err on the

side of over-collection " of information.

 

His concern, he said, was who does the intelligence " go to, and what

do they do with it. "