America's top spy says extensive domestic surveillance continues; Leaves out great deal Michael Roston

Published: Tuesday June 26, 2007 Print This Email This An article in July's edition of the journal Foreign Affairs gives Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell an opportunity to outline his plans for 'Overhauling Intelligence.' The article is notable both for what it includes - a discussion of domestic intelligence gathering activities - as well as what it leaves out. While earlier public statements and writings from McConnell have emphasized the need to modernize the laws governing intelligence gathering, the nation's second National Intelligence Director excluded those issues from this article. In McConnell's 10-page essay, he puts the threat of terrorist groups to US interests up front, and discusses the activities that are being conducted in the US to counter the danger. One major challenge the Bush appointee focuses on "is determining how and when it is appropriate to conduct surveillance of a group of Americans who are, say, influenced by al Qaeda's jihadist philosophy. On one level, they are U.S. citizens engaging in free speech and associating freely with one another. On another, they could be plotting terrorist attacks that could kill hundreds of people." Taking up this challenge, McConnell states that civil liberties watchdogs within his office are working to balance the privacy needs of Americans with the intelligence community's efforts to sift through the data it collects. "New technology being developed by the Office of the DNI's chief information officer and chief technology officer to access and process vast amounts of digital data to find terrorist-related information is being overseen by the DNI's Privacy and Civil Liberties Office," he writes. McConnell also discusses what he sees as a need to cooperate more with local law enforcement authorities in the United States. "The way to do so would be to share threat information with state and local officials as well as members of the private sector. The unique contribution made by men and women on the ground is vital to U.S. national security," he writes, identifying some examples in which local authorities uncovered purported terrorists threats. "State and local partners should no longer be treated as only first responders; they are also the first lines of prevention." Perhaps more notable than what McConnell says in his article is what he leaves out. He does not expand upon or echo the message he delivered in a May 21 op-ed in the Washington Post on the need to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "If we are to improve our ability to protect the country by gathering foreign intelligence, this law must be updated to reflect changes in technology and the ways our adversaries communicate with one another," the National Intelligence Director wrote at the time. These issues that McConnell left out from his article on 'Overhauling Intelligence' produced significant criticism from intelligence watchdogs in Congress. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee had before the Post op-ed was published told RAW STORY that he was 'deeply troubled' by McConnell's requests for freeing the government's hand on wiretapping. He expanded on his criticism in a response to the opinion piece. "In his May 21 op-ed, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, tried to make the case for the administration's new proposal for rewriting FISA. But his complaints about the current system were inaccurate," wrote Rep. Reyes (D-TX) in the May 30 response. "In fact, I believe it was the administration's cumbersome, uncoordinated process and not the statutory requirements that led the president to authorize an end-run around FISA." McConnell also touched other subjects in his Foreign Affairs article. For one, he discussed the new technology being used by the Federal Bureau of Intelligence overseas to identify individuals who are 'in custody.' "[The Rapid Technology Transition Initiative] has already shown its value. Since its deployment late last year, the FBI's Biometric Quick Capture Platform - a portable database funded through RTTI - has facilitated the biometric identification of suspects in custody overseas....the bureau's field personnel were using this tool to identify whether individuals in custody overseas had criminal records or were dangerous threats to U.S. forces," he wrote. Notably, McConnell did not say in whose custody such detainees were being held at the time the FBI employed this tool. Additionally, McConnell identified some of the major targets of the US intelligence community other than terrorists affiliated with al Qaida. "The U.S. intelligence community also needs to know where collection gaps exist, where it needs greater specific intelligence, and on what areas it is overly focused," he writes. "Some gains have been made with the creation of mission managers - a recommendation of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission - who oversee and manage high-interest topics, such as North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence, for appropriate collection and analysis." McConnell's full article can be downloaded from the ODNI website.



