WASHINGTON (WaPo) Nov. 29 -- Yesterday, Walter Pincus reported in The Washington Post about the Defense Department's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), certainly one of the more mysterious Pentagon agencies, and one that is at the center of the Defense Department's expanded programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States.

Proposals, Pincus said,"would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage."

On May 2, 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz signed a memorandum (large pdf) directing the military to collect and report "non-validated threat information" relating to U.S. military forces, installations or missions. His memorandum followed from the establishment of the Domestic Threat Working Group after 9/11, the intent of which was to create a mechanism to share low-level domestic "threat information" between the military and intelligence agencies.

It is the military's equivalent of the FBI and intelligence community's post 9/11 shift, and Wolfowitz directed the sharing of reports on ambiguous activity.  This new reporting mechanism -- called TALON for Threat and Local Observation Notice -- applies to seven reporting categories:

• Non-specific threats
  
• Surveillance
  
• Elicitation
  
• Test of security
  
• Unusual repetitive activity
  
• Bomb threats
  
• Other suspicious activity

The revelation that the National Security Agency was allowed to conduct non-FISA intercepts of American citizens should bring last summer's hearing on John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations back into focus.

Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."

Newsweek report “Spying: Giving Out U.S. Names”

The Bush administration continues to mimic and trace the trajectory of the Nixon administration. There on the front of your New York Times you see the big article: Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, where it is revealed that ...

Now, let's get in our time machine:

On October 29th and November 6th, 1975, the Church Commission held hearings on THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY AND FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS. It was the first time most of the general public had ever heard of our largest intelligence agency.