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Friday, July 01, 2005

Maybe calling them Nazis IS wrong
Posted by Jill | 7:12 AM

They're really more like paranoid old-style Soviet apparatchiks.

First the Bush Administration takes the first step towards setting up a secret police organization:

President Bush ordered another shake-up of the nation's intelligence services yesterday, forming new national security divisions within both the FBI and the Justice Department and, for the first time, putting a broad swath of the FBI under the authority of the nation's spy chief.

Building on previous changes required by Congress, the reorganization cements the authority of the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, over most of the FBI's $3 billion intelligence budget. It also gives him clear authority to approve the hiring of the FBI's top national security official and, through that official, to communicate with FBI agents and analysts in the field on intelligence matters.

"Spies and cops play different roles and operate under different rules for a reason," said Timothy Edgar, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The FBI is effectively being taken over by a spymaster who reports directly to the White House. . . . It's alarming that the same person who oversees foreign spying will now oversee domestic spying, too."


And Alberto "Torture is Fun!" Gonzales is going to decide what's OK and what isn't.

Think I'm being overly dramatic, that this is just a pragmatic way of streamlining bureaucracy, that our good Republican leaders, with their well-known respect for the Constitution, would NEVER even THINK of abusing such spying authority to crack down on simple First Amendment-protected dissent and protest? Think again:

Groups with names such as Raging Grannies, Gold Star Families for Peace and CodePink may not sound very threatening to our national security. Yet last month a special intelligence unit of the California National Guard was quietly tracking these groups as they prepped for an anti-war protest in front of the Capitol.
As the San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday, the California National Guard has established an "Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion" program. It's a legacy of Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres, the Guard leader who was forced to retire this month. The unit's purpose, according to the Guard, is to monitor, analyze and distribute information on potential terrorist threats.

Leaders of the California National Guard say the unit doesn't collect information on U.S. citizens. Maybe not, but it came dangerously close to crossing that line, if not charging across it, at the Mother's Day rally last month .

That's the rainy day when a few dozen Californians, including families of soldiers killed in the Iraq war, attended a rally outside the state Capitol. Three days beforehand, an aide in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office had alerted the California National Guard to the coming protest, according to the Mercury News.

The Guard sprung into action.

"Sir," one colonel wrote to his boss, Col. Jeff Davis, who oversees the intelligence unit. "Information you wanted on Sunday's demonstration at the Capitol."

"Thanks," Davis replied, in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper. "Forwarding same to our Intell. folks who continue to monitor."

Guard officials say they did not send anyone to physically monitor the protest. They just kept tabs on it from a distance. A spokesman said the Guard would be negligent in not tracking anti-war rallies, which could easily escalate into a riot.

"Who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up?" said spokesman Lt. Col. Stan Zezotarski about CodePink and the Raging Grannies. "After all, we live in the age of terrorism."


Ah yes, the T-word...it can be used to justify just about anything these days.
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