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Jedburgh
09-19-2007, 08:16 PM
GWU's National Security Archive, 17 Sep 07:

The Pentagon's Counterspies: The Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB230/index.htm)

Today the National Security Archive publishes a collection of documents concerning the organization and operations of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) and the TALON / CORNERSTONE database it has maintained. As the Defense Department announced on August 21, today that database will be terminated while work on new procedures for reporting of threats to the Defense Department and its facilities continues. In the interim, threat reports will be transmitted to the FBI.

The declassified documents published today include the key Department of Defense directive on the collection of information about Americans, as well as documents on the organization and missions of CIFA, an evaluation of charges of mismanagement by CIFA executives, and examples of data collected about protest activities as part of the Threat And Local Observation Notice (TALON) system.

Central to the collection are the documents that show the internal and public response by the Defense Department to questions raised about the propriety of the data base - specifically, its collection and retention of data on political protests. Also, included is a DoD Inspector General report on the operation of the TALON system, identifying a number of problems in operation of the system....

Adrian
09-20-2007, 03:43 PM
CIFA does the necessary job of force protection for military bases, but it makes me pretty uneasy that they are within DoD - I'd feel more comfortable if the mission was given to either the FBI which already does domestic counterterror stuff, or local police. No real intellectual argument, it just makes me nervous. Then with the TALON and JPEN abuses on top of that...

bourbon
09-20-2007, 07:41 PM
Jedburgh, Thank you for the link, good stuff as always.


CIFA does the necessary job of force protection for military bases, but it makes me pretty uneasy that they are within DoD - I'd feel more comfortable if the mission was given to either the FBI which already does domestic counterterror stuff, or local police. No real intellectual argument, it just makes me nervous. Then with the TALON and JPEN abuses on top of that...

I share your concern. But I would disagree about giving the mission over to the FBI. It pains me to say it, because of my family’s connection to the Bureau (my Grandfather did 20 years service with them), but I question whether the FBI should even have a counter-terror role. Hopefully, things there are better than I gather, but what I have read has been appalling.