PLRC Blog

This Blog Supplements Chapter 4 of America in Peril

and my Blog dated April 10, 2008

(“Pentagon to Shut Down CIFA – Don’t Bet On It”)

10 August 2008

I wrote in my April 10^th Blog that the Pentagon might shut down its domestic spying agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) which was established by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s in early 2002.  CIFA originally only gathered and stored information on the domestic scene, but in late 2005 it was assigned to actually investigate certain crimes within the US, even if committed by civilians.  That big creep from only investigating military espionage was stretched further in December 2005 when the Pentagon tasked CIFA with actually assigning domestic spying to various agencies of the armed forces. 

CIFA, with its TALON database, became a hot potato when the public discovered that it contained raw and unverified information about people peacefully protesting White House policy.  The outrage and negative publicity hurt the Pentagon’s image.  Its first attempt to limiting damage was to ostensibly shut down TALON in 2007.  Later the Pentagon announced that it might close CIFA.  All of this is discussed more fully in my April 10th Blog.

Now the Pentagon has piled on more public deception.  On August 4^th it announced that CIFA had actually been shut down – “disestablished” in Pentagonese.  Now we can relax.  That nasty CIFA is gone.  Another stigma of the Rumsfeld era is expunged.  Yes, the military would be happy if we were so naïve.  But there is more to that August 4^th announcement.  Obviously meant to salve citizen hostility, it told how CIFA responsibilities will be carried out more efficiently by a newly-created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center, overseen by the Defense Intelligence Agency.  That confusing mouthful merely indicates that the military will continue to spy on us here at home – it will be business as usual.

What about the purportedly defunct TALON database?  We should not idealistically accept that it was actually destroyed.  Those things just don’t happen in the Bush government.  It has certainly been given some secret code name that we will never hear about, and it will continue to support this new CIFA replacement.

Now CIFA and Talon have gone the way of  TIPS, TIA, MATRIX, and more, at least the titles.  But a concerned citizen and true patriot will not relax.  An old saying warns that the more things appear to change the less they actually do.  The military apparatus to spy on Americans – renamed, reshuffled, and reassigned – continues unabated.

Bob Aldridge

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