America’s Secret Police?

Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.

An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a possible merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well-established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defense contractors’ employees.

snip:
Pentagon officials began discussions about merging the two after the commission issued its recommendations. An initial round of meetings about the merger, however, failed to come up with a plan. In the meantime, CIFA, a mysterious and secretive unit created in 2002 and charged with making Defense counterintelligence efforts more effective, became the subject of two public controversies.

snip:
The first erupted late in 2005 when documents surfaced indicating that CIFA (whose mission, according to its own officials, is supposed to be limited to analysis of counterintelligence data produced by other agencies) was discovered to have put together a database that included reports on anti-administration demonstrators, including peace activists protesting alleged “war profiteering.” (NEWSWEEK’s Michael Isikoff reported on this in depth earlier this year in this story.) CIFA and Pentagon officials subsequently assured Congress in writing that CIFA’s activities would be more carefully focused in the future on genuine potential terror threats to defense facilities and personnel and that data collected on legitimate peaceful protestors would be destroyed.

snip:
Both Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12290187/site/newsweek/

over operations of several plants that produce US MILITARY EQUIPMENT!

Expect them to try to pull off anything at all (as if they haven't already).

but such peace activists NEED to be investigated.

If they are allowed free rein to pursue their single-minded, messianic visions then who knows-- these people could put a dent in war profiteering.

And we can't have THAT, can we?
:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

...but it would definitely be a big force.

Notice how they initially created two isolated groups (one old, one new), and, just like corporations, they "merge" them to form something that was never originally intended? Everytime they do this it requires tremendous amounts of tax money (or borrowed from future taxes) to merge computer systems, accounting systems, staffing systems, physical locations, etc...

Not to mention, it ends up creating some hybrid bureaucratic monster with some obscure "mission objective" that probably doesn't fuction very well or at least as good as the agency heads claims it does. They make all these pie in the sky fantasy claims of all the great things they'll be able to do that no agency has ever been able to do before. Words like "synergy" and "force multipliers" are used.

Once a scandal happens or it's finally realized that the agency doesn't serve any valuable function, the political shuffle happens all over again....

What a fucking waste of money and time, as well as a danger to our National Security. I'm so happy these people are wasting our tax money and putting our lives in danger.