Pentagon says intel contractors went too far

[unhappycamper]

Pentagon says intel contractors went too far
(AP) – 14 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A military contractor says he'll fight Pentagon accusations that his people went too far in gathering intelligence in Afghanistan that ended up being used to target militants.

A high-level Defense Department inquiry concluded that defense contractor Michael Furlong, a retired Army officer, ran what amounted to an illegal spying ring of private military contractors.

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In an interview, Furlong denied the accusations and said he never was questioned by the investigators nor has the Pentagon shared the report with him so he can answer the charges. He currently is on administrative leave, pending final review of the case.

The dispute over the Capstone operation centers on the military's struggle over the past two years to ramp up intelligence gathering to support counterinsurgency. The strategy includes elements of nation-building, which requires more social, civil and economic data, as well as the tactical intelligence needed for targeting.

The outgoing head of military intelligence operations in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, wrote a controversial public critique of intelligence-gathering in the war zone earlier this year. Flynn criticized the military intelligence gathering structure as too focused on hunting al-Qaida, to the exclusion of building a multilayered picture of Afghan civil society.