Originally published in Z Magazine, October 2010. Reposted here with permission of the author, Anthony B. Newkirk of Philander Smith College, Little Rock, AR.
Fusion Centers and the Maryland Spying Scandal: Domestic Spying and Intelligence Sharing
By Anthony B. Newkirk
In July a series on the organization and financing of the federal government’s post-9/11 secret programs ran in the Washington Post. Investigative journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin call attention to the fact that nearly two thousand private corporations administer and provide essential services to this “alternative geography.” This supports claims made by a growing number of observers that, like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the conduct of homeland security is a byproduct of business-government collaboration that poses a direct threat to constitutional rights. One incident in this story (the ramifications of which are studiously by the mainstream media, including the Washington Post itself) is the Maryland Spying Scandal that was briefly in the news in 2008-2009 (the officially-admitted events took place in 2005-2006).
Besides being latter-day variations on COINTELRPO courtesy of fusion-center technology (to say nothing of aiding and abetting the military’s growing footprint in domestic affairs), matters like the Maryland Spying Scandal show the true role of the Department of Homeland Security and of “public-private partnerships” in intelligence matters. A much-ignored development in our times is the greater interdependence between national and regional police in tandem with private industry.
What little prominence that the Maryland State Police (MSP) has traces to the racial profiling of African-American motorists a decade ago and the traffic stop of a suspected 9/11 hijacker two days before the attacks on the Twin Towers. The MSP’s role in spying on non-violent activists in much less known. In fact, a report authored in 2008 by former Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs – the only official state investigative report on these doings –
has “cover-up” written all over it.
For 14 months in 2005-2006, MSP agents spied on a wide range of activist groups in Maryland, including those committed to anti-death penalty, peace, immigrant-rights, and environmental causes. As reported for a brief time in the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post (presumably before they lost interest), even protests against utility rate hikes and “third political parties” were caught up in this covert dragnet. The MSP shared surveillance reports on meeting locations, posting fliers, activists’ political beliefs, and the like data with several municipal police department in Maryland, the military, and the National Security Agency. How did the MSP do this? It is at this point where fusion centers come into the story.
According to official testimony, in 2004 the agency was shopping for a cheap software program to hold all of its “intelligence” data. The MSP happened upon a software program called Case Explorer operated by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program, which is administered by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in collaboration with other federal and state agencies (according to HIDTA literature, its staff is drawn from regional law enforcement and National Guard agencies). The HIDTA evidently offered free access to Case Explorer. In return, the MSP had to share the data it collected with a HIDTA fusion center in the Washington, DC-Baltimore area. The MSP accepted the proposal.
The official purpose of the HIDTA Program is to coordinate federal, state, and local intelligence-collection about the illegal narcotics trade. This did not stop the MSP from submitting information to it about Marylanders (and in at least one case, someone from out of state) who were involved in the aforementioned civil liberties. Furthermore, at least 53 of these people were categorized as “terrorists” in the MSP’s Case Explorer files – files that were presumably shared with the HIDTA and perhaps other fusion centers around the country. These Americans were further designated as being “Anarchists,” “Anti-War Protestors,” “Environmental Extremists,” and the like. And often as being more than one of these things, sometimes in the same report.
Take the Washington, DC-based DC Anti-War Network (DAWN). a group that has conducted protests at military recruiting stations in Maryland. An entry created in 2005 designates DAWN’s primary crime as “Terrorism – Anti-War Protestors.” The entry offers no explanation of DAWN’s secondary terrorist crimes, which are “White Supremacy/Hate Groups” and “Anti-Govern[ment].” A 2006 entry lists DAWN’s primary crime as “Terrorism – Environmental Extremists” but its secondary crime, also unexplained, appears to involve several terrorist offenses: “Sovereign Citizens/Tax Protestors,” “Pro-Life,” “Anti-War Protestors,” and “Animal Rights.” Or take the Maryland Green Party. A 2006 entry on this group lists its primary crime as “Terrorism – White Supremacy/Hate Groups.” A later entry identifies the organization as a “Civil rights group.”
Or take the case of Max Obuszewski, who is an organizer with the Baltimore chapter of the Pledge of Resistance. His surveillance logs never referred to drug-trafficking and stated that he lacked a criminal record. One Case Explorer entry indicates, without explanation, that Mr. Obuszewski’s “Primary Crime” is “Terrorism – Anti-Govern,” his “Secondary Crime” is “Terrorism – Antiwar Protestors,” and the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is his “security threat group” (by the way, it has emerged that the MSP is not the only law enforcement agency that spied on Obuszewski).
The Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center (MCAC) is another major fusion center in Maryland. It was established in 2003 by the Maryland Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council, which is part of a coalition of over 250 federal, state, and local agencies plus “representatives from the private sector.” MCAC personnel come from federal, state, and local law enforcement, emergency response, and military agencies. The MCAC shares “terrorism” intelligence with the ONDCP, the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Interestingly, Interpol and “Various Private Sector Workgroups” are included on this list. It is possible that one of the private contractors that has representatives working at the MCAC is a California-based data broker called Entersect. In March, the director of the MCAC met with Baltimore-area civil liberties activists who were concerned with the situation. In that meeting, he indicated that the MCAC has given assistance to Northrup Grumman.
The federal Department of Homeland Security has employees that assist in fusion centers in 24 states plus the District of Columbia. Besides helping to fuel an atmosphere of paranoia, unclassified “intelligence” bulletins issued by the DHS since the start of 2009 draw on regional fusion centers for what can only be described as crackpot conspiracy theories about “leftwing extremists” and “rightwing extremism.” There are indications that the DHS was party to MSP spying, as evidenced by unclassified DHS documents and publicly-released Case Explorer entries. Are we to infer that such an action by the DHS is not extremism?
The DHS communicated with the MSP at least once about Maryland dissidents. According to the Washington Post, the HSID received two e-mails in 2005 from the DHS office in Atlanta, Georgia, containing DAWN’s plans to picket a military recruiting center. And this was attested to by the Maryland Attorney General’s office, no less, in a redacted document (dated June 21, 2005) that it released to the ACLU. Maryland activists have challenged the veracity of the explanation dished out by the DHS that a member of the Federal Protective Service (a DHS affiliate) probably found the emails posted on the internet and sent them to the MSP.
Apparently dissatisfied with earlier responses from the DHS, Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Russell Feingold (D-WI) sent letters to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and FBI Director Robert Mueller in February, 2009 (Senators Mikulski and Feingold did not respond to my queries if they had received answers to their letters). On May 20, 2010, the Chief Counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee told me that he could not find record of a response to Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), who had also written to the administration with the same concerns.
So what is the current status of the matter? The state of Maryland has not released all of the spy files as it claimed in 2008 that it would do. Media and public interest in the affair is evaporating. But political surveillance is becoming more deeply rooted in the domestic power structure in the guise of homeland security.
A whole series of very disturbing things have been happening in post-Bush America, which makes one wonder how “post-Bush” is the United States today. Along with the latest incarnation of corporate welfare known as “the bailout,” all citizens regardless of political affiliation or cause should be sensitive to the dangers and see that they have more in common than they may imagine. Here is a selected list of recent developments:
• In 2009, stimulus funding for the Fusion Center Initiative amounted to $250 million.
• July 2009: It came to light that a member of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency spied on groups that protested the export of military equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan through seaports in the state of Washington since at least 2007.
• September, 2009: The DHS made public a joint effort with the Pentagon to make classified military intelligence available to selected state and local fusion centers.
• December 2009: The Obama administration released documents in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the ACLU which confirmed that the DHS sent an email in 2007 to federal intelligence agencies, congressional staffers, and “at least one state government entity,” about a conference attended by representatives of the Nation of Islam. According to the DHS, this “intelligence note” was swiftly recalled.
• March 2010: General Victor Renuart, who heads Northern Command and NORAD, confirmed to Congress that the Pentagon shares information with local police.
• May 2010: The White House released the latest National Security Strategy, which expresses concern about “individuals radicalized at home.”
• June 2010: The Defense Intelligence Agency indicated that it is planning to create Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records, a computer database that may contain information about U.S. citizens. This database “replaces” TALON, a program that amassed thousands of reports on U.S. citizens between 2002 and 2007.
For more on the Maryland Spying Scandal, see the article by Anthony B. Newkirk in the October issue of Z Magazine on the stand now.
