Another One Bites The Dust
The folks over at Nukes & Spooks are reporting that another bad idea of the staff of Rumsfeld, the Chauncey Gardiner of the Pentagon, has been stamped out
Today comes the news, not unexpected, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has shuttered–the official euphemism is “disestablished”–the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA.
CIFA was widely criticized for gathering data on anti-war protesters, allegedly because they represented a threat to military bases and facilities, under a program known as Talon. The agency was the brainchild of Rumsfeld aides Stephen Cambone and Paul Wolfowitz. (Our colleague Walter Pincus of the Washington Post did a lot of the groundbreaking reporting on this issue).
The Talon database, itself shut down last year, had about 13,000 entries, including nearly 3,000 reports on U.S. citizens.
I’m not sure that you could call anything proposed by Cambone and Wolfowitz a “brainchild”, as that presupposes the presence of a brain. There is more evidence of brain activity in mildew than those two.
I’m sure there will be someone somewhere who is decrying our loss of the ability to track the nefarious activities that take place at Quaker potlucks and vegen picnics, but if they would switch from Cheetos to carrot sticks, they would feel better.
