Reports on Pentagon's New Spy Units Set Off Questions in Congress

[True_Blue]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Senior members of Congress said Monday that they would seek to determine whether the Pentagon had overstepped its bounds by creating new secret battlefield intelligence units within the Defense Intelligence Agency.

A senior military officer and a senior Defense Department official confirmed at a hastily called Pentagon briefing on Monday, after news reports had disclosed the existence of the expanded intelligence operations, that small teams of civilian intelligence specialists were being created to work with Special Operations forces and other troops worldwide on secret missions, including counterterrorism operations.

The officials said the teams had been formally established in the fiscal year 2005 defense budget using existing authority to replace ad hoc defense intelligence units that had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for more than two years.

In interviews, however, members of Congress from both parties questioned whether the secret missions being carried out by the units might amount to covert actions - a legal definition for missions in which the United States government denies any role and that can be undertaken only by presidential directive and with formal Congressional notification.

more....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/politics/25intel.html

[Rose Siding]

1. The discovery of Rumsfeld's SS validates every Sy Hersh has written

These are the very teams that he told us were operating in Iran already.

[fooj]

2. Why is it that everything that was adamantly denied...

has turned out to be true and NO ONE CALLS THEM ON IT? I should hope Congress has questions! GEEEEEZ!

[0007]

3. It appears that everything is going around congress these days.

Everyday a new investigation.

"Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that the intelligence teams were "vital to our national security interests"

Duncan Hunter of California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a written statement. "The notion by some that various steps taken by the Department of Defense to enhance such intelligence is somehow sinister and illegitimate is nonsense."

I don't trust those two guys.

[DC Law]

4. end run around separation of powers

What's really nefarious is how, as explained in this article, the Pentagon is taking the most generous interpretations of both Titles 10 and 50, in order to avoid Congressional attention and intervention.

Also, here we have yet another instance of the indefinite-duration "War on Terror" providing the military with an indefinite-duration blank check to skirt checks and balances.

Talk about consolidation of Executive power...

[burrowowl]

5. Checks-and-balances

going, going .... GONE!

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Do you all think that Rumsfeld is going to get the

Tom Delay Velvet Slap treatment?