Pentagon spy network revealed

[emad]

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday January 24, 2005
The Guardian

A previously unknown intelligence programme set up two years ago by the Pentagon has been operating in states deemed to be "emerging target countries", the Washington Post reported yesterday.
Providing further evidence of the centralisation of power around Donald Rumsfeld, the Strategic Support Branch was created to give the defence secretary the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to Pentagon documents quoted by the paper.

The programme reportedly conducts operations in friendly and unfriendly states where conventional war might not even be a distant prospect. It deploys intelligence officers, including linguists, technical specialists and interrogators, alongside secret special forces in countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, the Philippines and Georgia, the Washington Post said.

The deployment of the unit further muddies the issue of accountability for covert and clandestine intelligence operations in the "war on terror". The programme was established by diverting existing Pentagon funds, thus freeing it from any congressional oversight.

Recent administration guidelines suggest that the Pentagon need not report all "deployment orders" to Congress, as it did previously. Pentagon lawyers argue that by defining the "war on terror" as indefinite, global and ongoing, the defence secretary's war powers are extended beyond times of imminent combat.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1396996,00.html

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1. duplicate topic

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