ACLU Calls on White House to Resist Creation of Secret Police

April 13, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON - In rare agreement, the American Civil Liberties Union today joined with Justice Department officials and FBI directors from both the Clinton and Bush administrations in urging the White House to resist the creation of a domestic intelligence agency, which could easily employ the same kind of dirty tricks the CIA uses overseas here in the United States against American citizens.

"Even during the most frigid days of the Cold War, we never saw the need to create a secret police force that would work outside of the constraints of the Constitution," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director.

"As the 9/11 commission has already shown, much of the government’s failure before 9/11 was related to a lack of skilled analysts, the enormous amount of threat intelligence that had to be analyzed and a culture of only telling people about things on a need-to-know basis," Romero added.

At issue are reports that the president might endorse a series of recommendations that call for the transfer of the FBI’s traditional counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism functions, generally run by agents trained to protect essential constitutional civil liberties, to a more secretive domestic intelligence agency that would gather, analyze and disseminate information about Americans without any sort of law enforcement role.

(More)
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=15462&c=206

--------
It's coming folks - the 9/11 report will blame everything on civil rights laws that hamstrung law enforement, and the secret policy will be born.....

I can't believe my eyes when I see a headline worded like this. I think back a few years, and it would have been impossible to imagine. Now, it is an acceptable matter in our society to discuss whether or not we want to have SECRET POLICE!

Insane.

WTF is happening to our country? The land of the FREE and home of the BRAVE and all? Now we're scared little sheep who need some wolves to protect us? Uh, yeah right. They create the gustapo/KGB squads and I'm outa here. Shame on this ruthless, bloodthirsty cabal.

Thanks for breaking the news, as ugly as it is.

We always were at odds with the Soviet Union for being willing to start wars so that their form of government could spread around the world as we did in Iraq. We always use to criticize them for having a secret police which we will soon have. We always criticized them for not having tolerance for various religions like the Christian fundies in this country. We called ourselves the free world while saying the Russian people lived under the iron fist of communism now we are willing to give up our freedoms to live under the iron fist of BushCo fascism.

We have met the enemy and they are us.

third or fourth secret police force.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org
Distrusting the Government Since 1984

n/t

John Edwards introduced a bill in the Senate which would establish a "Homeland Intelligence Agency." Apparently the Agency's charge is to conduct domestic intelligence gathering. It was referred to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but no action has been taken on it since. I heard this on Neo-con Back Channel Nightly News tonight.

The text of the bill can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov
In the Search box underneath the heading "Search Bill Text 108th Congress", type in S.410.

After all, it would be secret.

Wouldn't surprise me anyway.

After all, it would be "secret."


Wouldn't surprise me anyway.

`UNDISCLOSED PARTICIPATION IN RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL GROUPS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM PURPOSES...

IOW..there WILL definitely be imbedded spies into all religious activities and political groups...

Link to the above named document.. table of contents page..

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query

It will just cause an uprising that much sooner. The Founding Fathers would be DEMANDING a revolution if/when they make a domestic intel agency (notice how it was compared to the CIA - bad, bad, bad news folks.)

...people just ignored it, accepted it, denied it, or didn't know about it.

:kick:

This MUST get out to the American public.

Ooh we hate it! Yet we let our CIA do it internationally.

Kinda NIMBY

Perhaps if we find a reasonable approach, with oversight and and respect for liberties; and then apply the same restrictions to the CIA and NSA.

Spin this into progressive brinksmanship and undo some of the massive harm that started in 1947 and created the Bush monster and so many others.

suggest this type of organization during his 9/11 testimony?