National Counterterrorism Center to maintain files on millions of Americans

The Wall Street Journal, which, since being acquired by Rupert Murdoch, has been heavy on right-wing propaganda and weak on news, has exposed a major program by the Obama administration to conduct a massive sweep of government and private databases to build up terrorist suspect computerized dossiers on millions of Americans.

The program, operated by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in McLean, Virginia, so egregiously affects the constitutional rights of Americans that Mary Ellen Callahan, the Chief Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security, recorded her objections.

The decision rolls back years of federal privacy legislation going back to the Privacy Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1974. No longer does the government need a legal predicate to amass data on citizens. The NCTC will have the right to keep data on citizens for up to five years without court authorization and authorize the transfer of the information to foreign governments, including Israel, Canada, and Saudi Arabia.

During the Bush administration, Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-contra scandal infamy, attempted to establish a massive database on American citizens’ personal data known as Total Information Awareness (TIA). However, Congress pulled funding for the project which was being operated from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the case of NCTC, which is nominally a part of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) but is staffed by a number of CIA and FBI personnel, the proposed massive database appears to be either an extension of the current Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database or an adjunct system.

The Privacy Act of 1974 and other privacy laws were passed in the wake of revelations that the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon were conducting massive spying on Americans citizens during Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.

The Eric Holder Justice Department and DNI, under James Clapper, are rolling back curbs placed on law enforcement and the intelligence community after a number of congressional investigations, including the Frank Church Senate Committee and the Otis Pike Committee and Bella Abzug subcommittee in the House, uncovered illegal surveillance by the government on American citizens.

Now that over thirty-five-year old controls on government surveillance activities are being eliminated, it is important to consider what sorts of 1960s and 1970s operations may now be re-introduced and the impact they will have in an age of new information technology.

The Obama administration, through the NCTC program, is bringing back the CIA’s old Operation CHAOS, a program to infiltrate and disrupt U.S. political groups, and, where it was discovered they had foreign links, exchange intelligence with “friendly” intelligence services abroad. One of the largest recipients of FBI and CIA surveillance data on U.S. citizens, especially Arab-Americans, was Israel’s Mossad. Other recipients included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’s intelligence agency, the Presidential Security Command, which received U.S. intelligence on anti-Marcos Filipino-American activists in the United States.

CHAOS also conducted illegal operations against the anti-war Liberation News Service (LNS). The CIA shared surveillance information with the Army Counterintelligence Branch, FBI, and Secret Service. The CIA also placed one of its agents inside the LNS staff as a journalist who informed Langley on all the organization’s activities. Through the FBI’s COunter INTELligence PRogram (COINTELPRO), the antiwar Buffalo Town Crier was subjected to an FBI harassment campaign because it was being printed in a non-union shop. The FBI began an unlikely campaign of supporting the labor union cause against a small paper.

Even those within the CIA who objected to CHAOS were placed under surveillance, something that should be kept in mind by Homeland Security officials who objected to the NCTC’s new surveillance database on “terrorists.”

In 1970, Nixon aide Tom Huston put together a 43-page report called the “Huston Plan,” whiich would permit federal agents to conduct illegal burglaries, conduct illegal wiretaps, and illegally open up mail in a targeted campaign against left-wing radicals. The plan so egregiously violated the law, it was strongly opposed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who was certainly no great protector of civil rights. Hoover was backed up in his opposition by Attorney General John Mitchell, who would later be jailed over his role in the Watergate break in cover-up.

In 1972, the CIA was so concerned about its domestic surveillance operations being discovered, the agency’s Deputy Director for Plans, Thomas Karamessines, changed the name of the Domestic Operations Division (DO) to the Foreign Resources Division (FR). In 1972, the CIA employed Project MUDHEN, which targeted columnist Jack Anderson with illegal wiretaps and surveillance, including photographic surveillance. The CIA also taregted Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Peter Camejo with illegal surveillance.

The following year, CIA Inspector General William V. Broe sent a memo to agency director William Colby on the CIA’s use of real estate, procurement, cover, and support in “activities directed against U.S. citizens” and related “collection activities.” CIA director James Schlesinger, in 1973, asked for an accounting of the CIA’s activities with local police departments, including the New York City, Washington, DC; Boston, and Los Angeles Police Departments, and American companies in the United States. Activities of the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service were also investigated for collection of intelligence of foreign students studying in the United States.

The CIA’s Project RESISTANCE targeted black movements, including black stuident groups on college campuses, the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP), and left-wing newspapers. The CIA maintained a list of 50,000 PFP members from California alone. Another CIA program specifically targeted Ramparts magazine through the Special Service Staff, an office of the Internal Revenue Service that carried out political harassment of individuals and organizations on behalf of the CIA. Project MERRIMAC specifically targeted anti-war groups in the Washington, DC, area (ZRMETAL).

In 1975 and 1976, the CIA had relationships with the Arnold & Porter law firm and the Robert R. Mullen and Company, a Washington, DC, public relations firms that employed E. Howard Hunt of the CIA under its corporate cover. The CIA’s relationship with think tanks and private foundations and Langley’s influence on their publications was rampant. Through Project DTPILLAR, the CIA funded the activities of the Asia Foundation until 1967.

In 1975, it was revealed that the CIA’s MK-ULTRA project had subjected American citizens to “professionally unethical” medical experiments. The following year, the details of the CIA’s HTLINGUAL became known. Under the program, the mail of U.S. citizens was routinely opened at the main post office in New York City. HTLINGUAL was also called the New York Intercept Program. Among those who had his mail opened by the CIA was Victor Reuther, the brother of United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther.

A companion project, SHAMROCK, run by the National Security Agency in New York, intercepted all telegrams sent to and from the ITT, RCA, and Western Union offices in New York City. NSA’s Project MINARET conducted surveillance on all electronic communications of U.S. citizens on a pre-determined “watch list.”

The CIA used an agent named Sal Ferrera to infiltrate left-wing publications as a radical journalist, working undercover for Washington’s Quicksilver Times and The Libertarian, and later for LNS and the College News Service. While RESISTANCE was used to attack the left-wing underground press, the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD employed thousands of agents in the mainstream media to promote the CIA. These included Newsweek’s Ben Bradlee, columnists Joseph Alsop, his brother Stewart Alsop of the New York Herald Tribune, and The New York Times’s James Reston. United Press Internatonal even had its own CIA code name, HTENFORCE.

The FBI later reasoned that if they could cut off advertising revenue from record companies to the underground press, they would be forced out of business. This pressure was applied on the Berkeley Barb, the Free Press of Washington, DC, the Madison Kaleidoscope, and Mobile’s Rearguard.

The days of the underground printing presses are largely long gone. However, in the age of the Internet, we may soon see the CIA, DNI, FBI, and others applying pressure on cable companies, Internet service providers, and web hosting providers to deny service to those who are considered to be “terrorists.”

There is a reason why WMR maintains an Underwood manual typewriter.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2012 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).