...Majikthise reminds us that there is still skulking going on:
If you thought CIFA was scary, wait until you here what's up next. MSNBC reports that the Pentagon is trying to merge merge CIFA and the DSS to create a single secret police force:
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.As you may recall, CIFA was implicated in domestic spying and the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. If the merger goes through, the scandal-plagued CIFA may also gain access to the DSS's vaults of secret files on Defense Department employees, information which is supposed to be off limits to CIFA.
And it looks like this grab is happening in all the right ways and for all the right reasons (emphasis mine):
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.
Keep asking questions, people. Combining this kind of stuff is something the government should do in order to save some rent money.
Posted by binky at April 15, 2006 07:12 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Free Speech | J. Edgar Hoover | Liberty | The Ever Shrinking Constitution