Newsweek on Pentagon's attempt to create: America’s Secret Police?

[ProSense]

America’s Secret Police?

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

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:18 p.m. ET April 12, 2006

April 12, 2006 - A threatened turf grab by a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit is causing concern among both privacy experts and some of the Defense Department’s own personnel.

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.

The merger was initially suggested by a government commission set up to recommend military base closures last year. The commission said that the Pentagon could achieve some savings by relocating both CIFA, now housed in a building near Washington’s Reagan National Airport and DSS, headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va. The panel suggested moving the two agencies to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., where FBI training and laboratory facilities are also based.

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission also suggested that the Pentagon could “disestablish” CIFA and DSS and “consolidate their components into the Department of Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.”

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.

more...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12290187/site/newsweek/from/RSS/{/div]

[windy252]

1. K & R n/t

[Lerkfish]

2. CIFA + DSS = SS

[stillcool]

3. aren't they a little late?...

[Spazito]

4. Whoa, very interesting reading! n/t

[Faygo Kid]

5. There should be no surprise. This must be accelerating.

Given the singular disasters confronting this Administration, and the danger that their attempts to rig a midyear election is likely to go wrong, plus add in one revelation after another (even beyond what is speculated about here at DU), I do not think this is paranoid. Sadly.

[marmar]

6. I never thought I'd live under totalitarianism...

This is some very scary stuff. :scared:

[lovuian]

7. We have NSA the Gestapo and the SS=DSS

This failed and very badly too!!! but they did have shiny boots...

[EVDebs]

10. DSS is successor to Army Security Group that spied on MLK

domestically. They had to give 'em a new name after the domestic spying revelations during the '70s.

I just wish they would have looked a little deeper into the Ptech/GoAgile computer access that a Saudi software firm with terrorist funding ties has with existing US government agencies and bureaus. Even the WH, according to Rachel Ehrenfeld's

Dollars of Terror
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17730

""Ptech’s clients in 2001 included the Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, Customs, Air Force, the White House, the FAA, IBM, Sysco, Aetna, and Motorola, to name just a few.""

The DSS should have done background checks on this firm, with FAA access during 9-11 and possible foreknowledge of the wargames ongoing during 9-11 also. Plus, the NSA's spiking of any investigations,

See No Evil: What Bush Didn't (Want To) Know About 9/11
http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=195&row=0

"" After Bush took office, he said, "there was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off-limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations -- at least before 9/11 -- began to die. ""

Major policy shift at NSA to back off on investigating Saudi financing of terror networks...

Bush appears to have revised the Watergate mantra into "Don't follow the money" !

[salin]

8. Yet another step towards a police state? n/t

[Monk06]

9. Food for thought

The Trial of German Major War Criminals

Two Hundred and Fifteenth Day: Friday, 30th August, 1946
(Part 11 of 15)

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-22/tgmwc-22-215-11.shtml


"The Gestapo was founded by defendant Goering on 26th April, 1933, at the time when he was Prime Minister of Prussia. During the early period of its existence it was directed by him in person.
Gradually, however, Reichsfuehrer of the SS Heinrich Himmler centered all direction of the political police of the Federal territories in his own hands. The law of 10th February, 1936, declared the Gestapo a "special police" organization for the entire Reich. By his decree of 17th July, 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler as Chief of the German Police, thus legitimizing the "personal union" which had already largely been achieved by the SS and the police.

In harmony with this principle of "personal union" Himmler, by his very first decree on the structure of the German Police, dated 25th June, 1936, appointed Reinhardt Heydrich as Chief of the Sipo (Security Police) which already included within the same system both the Gestapo and the Criminal Police. Heydrich's' successor, after his death, was the defendant Kaltenbrunner.

THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE NAZI RSHA and the US DHS

A rearrangement of the central security organizations took place in 1939, in consequence of the consolidation of the leading role of the SD in the general security plan of the Nazi State, and for further unification of the police under a single leadership. This resulted in the fusion of the "Chief SS Security Administration" with "Chief Administration of the Security Police" in one single SS semi- government, semi-party organization - the "Reich Security Head Office," i.e., the RSHA.
Thus the Secret State Police, then briefly known as the "Gestapo," and up to then existing as part of the "Chief Administration of the Sipo," became Section IV of the RSHA.
Snip

NAZI PREVENTIVE ARREST AND US MILITARY RENDITION

"From the very beginning of its existence the Gestapo had wide powers in connection with extra-legal measures of reprisal directed against elements "threatening" the Nazi State or the Nazi Party.

One of the main types of reprisal used against such elements was the utilization of the right of "preventive arrest" and "preventive custody" which the Gestapo used widely both in the territory of the Reich and in the areas later annexed or occupied by Germany.

The places of preventive arrest were the widely-known and notoriously gloomy German concentration camps. Confinement in a concentration camp could take place on the strength of a simple written directive from the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Heydrich, whose place was later taken by Kaltenbrunner, or by order of the Chief of Section IV of the RSHA, Muller. In many cases the order for confinement in a concentration camp was issued personally by the Reichsfuehrer of the SS, who was simultaneously Chief of the German Police - Heinrich Himmler.

Never did the victim of preventive arrest know for just how long he would be condemned to torture and suffering - the length of confinement depended entirely on the arbitrary decision of the Gestapo. Even when the Gestapo knew the length of time during which it planned to keep the man in prison, it was still strictly forbidden to disclose this either to the prisoner or to his kin."

The last paragraphs in each of the two quotes say it all.

First step consolidation of all police entities into one unite covering all ordinary as well as political crimes.

Step two put in place the legal codification and physical infrastructure necessary for arbitrary
indefinite and most importantly secret detention.

[cassiepriam]

11. The dictatorship is coming along quite nicely :( nt