R Cunningham, Potzi and the Fonz.

DOMESTIC MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ON THE RISE

The military role in domestic intelligence collection appears to be
rapidly shifting in subtle and profound ways, as new missions are
assigned to little-known military organizations and most
congressional overseers are silently acquiescent or actively
supportive.

One of the public manifestations of the changing landscape is a new
Defense Department Instruction that "establishes procedures, and
assigns responsibilities ... for the conduct and administration of
DoD counterintelligence (CI) collection reporting activities."

See "DoD Counterintelligence Collection Reporting," DoD Instruction
5240.17, October 26, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/i5240_17.pdf

The Instruction was issued by Stephen A. Cambone, the Under Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence. His authorities and responsibilities
are themselves defined in the updated DoD Directive 5143.01, dated
November 23, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5143_01.pdf

The expansion of domestic military surveillance was reported in the
Washington Post on November 27, and was elaborated with new details
by William M. Arkin in his Washington Post blog. See "Domestic
Military Intelligence Is Back," November 29:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/


HEARING: FOIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The strengths and weaknesses of the Freedom of Information Act were
explored in a May hearing of the House Government Reform Committee,
the transcript of which has just been published.

The lead witness was Allen Weinstein, the Archivist of the United
States, who recalled that long before he became Archivist, he sued
the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, which is indeed an
excellent credential. Other witnesses included representatives of
the Justice Department, the Government Accountability Office, media
and public interest groups.

See "Information Policy in the 21st Century: A Review of the Freedom
of Information Act," hearing before a subcommittee of the House
Government Reform Committee, May 11:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2005/foia.html


CIA RECRUITMENT FLOURISHES

The Central Intelligence Agency is in several respects a wounded
agency. Its authority is diminished, and its credibility on
everything from weapons of mass destruction to information
classification policy is in tatters, leaving it an object of
derision.

See, for example, "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters
All These Years," which is intended to be a satire, in The Onion,
November 30:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43014

But there are still plenty of people who are eager to work there,
more than the Agency can even consider hiring.

See "It's no secret: CIA scouting for recruits" by John Diamond, USA
Today, November 23:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-22-cia-recruit_x.htm

In recent years, "We had 100,000 applicants for CIA," said Rep. Randy
"Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) at an October 19 hearing of the House
Intelligence Committee. "You know how many got looked at? Thirty
thousand. Seventy thousand never even got a letter back. That's
bad."

Speaking of bad, Rep. Cunningham, who was an intelligence
subcommittee chairman, resigned in disgrace from Congress on
November 28 after admitting that he accepted millions of dollars in
bribes and evaded taxes.

The public policy consequences of such gross corruption at the
highest levels of the intelligence oversight process have barely
begun to be assessed.

Rep. Cunningham was a reliable advocate of unbending secrecy in
intelligence matters. On at least two occasions, in 1997 and 2000,
he voted against public disclosure of the aggregate intelligence
budget figure-- since that would damage national security.