Pentagon, CIA step up spying on Americans
Pentagon, CIA step up spying on Americans
They use national security letters to get financial data
- Eric Lichtblau, Mark Mazzetti, New York Times
Sunday, January 14, 2007
(01-14) 04:00 PST Washington -- The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
The CIA also has issued what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.
Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of U.S. military personnel and civilians, officials say.
The FBI, the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans' private lives.
But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the CIA have been using their own "noncompulsory" versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.
The military and the CIA have long been restricted in their domestic intelligence operations, and both are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work. The CIA's role within the United States has been largely limited to recruiting people to spy on foreign countries.
Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said intelligence agencies like the CIA used the letters on only a "limited basis."
Pentagon officials defended the letters as valuable tools and said they were part of a broader strategy since the Sept. 11 attacks to use more aggressive intelligence-gathering tactics -- a priority of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The letters "provide tremendous leads to follow and often with which to corroborate other evidence in the context of counterespionage and counterterrorism," said Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.
Government lawyers say the legal authority for the Pentagon and the CIA to use national security letters in gathering domestic records dates back nearly three decades and, by their reading, was strengthened by the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.
Pentagon officials said they used the letters to follow up on a variety of intelligence tips or leads. While they would not provide details about specific cases, military intelligence officials with knowledge of them said the military had issued the letters to collect financial records regarding a government contractor with unexplained wealth, for example, and a chaplain at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, erroneously suspected of aiding prisoners at the facility.
Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and seldom have led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.
"We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we're out of it," said Thomas Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.
Military intelligence officers have sent letters in up to 500 investigations over the last five years, two officials estimated. The number of letters is likely to be well into the thousands, the officials said, because a single case often generates letters to multiple financial institutions. For its part, the CIA issues a handful of national security letters each year, agency officials said. Congressional officials said members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been briefed on the use of the letters by the military and CIA.
Some national security experts and civil liberties advocates are troubled by the CIA and military taking on domestic intelligence activities, particularly in light of recent disclosures that the Counterintelligence Field Activity office had maintained files on Iraq war protesters in the United States in violation of the military's own guidelines. Some experts say the Pentagon has adopted an overly expansive view of its domestic role under the guise of "force protection," or efforts to guard military installations.
"There's a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the CIA who is dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. "They're moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Rumsfeld directed military lawyers and intelligence officials to examine their legal authority to collect intelligence both inside the United States and abroad. They concluded that the Pentagon had "way more" legal tools than it had been using, a senior Defense Department official said.
Military officials say the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, which establishes procedures for government access to sensitive banking data, first authorized them to issue national security letters.
One prominent case in which letters were used to obtain financial records, according to two military officials, was that of James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo who was suspected in 2003 of aiding terror suspects imprisoned at the facility. The espionage case against Yee soon collapsed.
Eugene Fidell, a defense lawyer for the former chaplain, said he found the use of the letters to be "disturbing," in part because the military does not have the same checks and balances when it comes to Americans' civil rights as does the FBI. "Where is the accountability?" he asked. "That's the evil of it -- it doesn't leave fingerprints."
Page A - 3
©2007 San Francisco Chronicle
They use national security letters to get financial data
- Eric Lichtblau, Mark Mazzetti, New York Times
Sunday, January 14, 2007
(01-14) 04:00 PST Washington -- The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
The CIA also has issued what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.
Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of U.S. military personnel and civilians, officials say.
The FBI, the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans' private lives.
But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the CIA have been using their own "noncompulsory" versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.
The military and the CIA have long been restricted in their domestic intelligence operations, and both are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work. The CIA's role within the United States has been largely limited to recruiting people to spy on foreign countries.
Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said intelligence agencies like the CIA used the letters on only a "limited basis."
Pentagon officials defended the letters as valuable tools and said they were part of a broader strategy since the Sept. 11 attacks to use more aggressive intelligence-gathering tactics -- a priority of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The letters "provide tremendous leads to follow and often with which to corroborate other evidence in the context of counterespionage and counterterrorism," said Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.
Government lawyers say the legal authority for the Pentagon and the CIA to use national security letters in gathering domestic records dates back nearly three decades and, by their reading, was strengthened by the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.
Pentagon officials said they used the letters to follow up on a variety of intelligence tips or leads. While they would not provide details about specific cases, military intelligence officials with knowledge of them said the military had issued the letters to collect financial records regarding a government contractor with unexplained wealth, for example, and a chaplain at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, erroneously suspected of aiding prisoners at the facility.
Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and seldom have led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.
"We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we're out of it," said Thomas Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.
Military intelligence officers have sent letters in up to 500 investigations over the last five years, two officials estimated. The number of letters is likely to be well into the thousands, the officials said, because a single case often generates letters to multiple financial institutions. For its part, the CIA issues a handful of national security letters each year, agency officials said. Congressional officials said members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been briefed on the use of the letters by the military and CIA.
Some national security experts and civil liberties advocates are troubled by the CIA and military taking on domestic intelligence activities, particularly in light of recent disclosures that the Counterintelligence Field Activity office had maintained files on Iraq war protesters in the United States in violation of the military's own guidelines. Some experts say the Pentagon has adopted an overly expansive view of its domestic role under the guise of "force protection," or efforts to guard military installations.
"There's a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the CIA who is dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. "They're moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Rumsfeld directed military lawyers and intelligence officials to examine their legal authority to collect intelligence both inside the United States and abroad. They concluded that the Pentagon had "way more" legal tools than it had been using, a senior Defense Department official said.
Military officials say the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, which establishes procedures for government access to sensitive banking data, first authorized them to issue national security letters.
One prominent case in which letters were used to obtain financial records, according to two military officials, was that of James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo who was suspected in 2003 of aiding terror suspects imprisoned at the facility. The espionage case against Yee soon collapsed.
Eugene Fidell, a defense lawyer for the former chaplain, said he found the use of the letters to be "disturbing," in part because the military does not have the same checks and balances when it comes to Americans' civil rights as does the FBI. "Where is the accountability?" he asked. "That's the evil of it -- it doesn't leave fingerprints."
Page A - 3
©2007 San Francisco Chronicle
posted by Walking Contradiction at 1/19/2007 09:29:00 PM
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