Spencer Ackerman reports Pentagon Wants Spy Troops Posing as Businessmen.
"If the Pentagon gets its way, the gentleman doodling on his notepad as your next overseas business trip goes on endlessly could be a soldier, sailor, airman or marine in disguise. This extraordinary redefinition of the U.S. military’s authorities for clandestine action overseas is officially part of a Pentagon wish list for revisions to its legal authorities recently sent to Congress."
"This is why medical aid workers had such a negative reaction to the CIA’s use of a Pakistani doctor to collect DNA in the town where Osama bin Laden was hiding under the cover of a vaccination program. If civilian activities become tied up with military activities, then the civilians who perform them will be seen as military targets, even if they have nothing to do with the military themselves."
2 comments:
This is a little scary, but the redundancy of it seems wasteful. We already have departments to do those sorts of things; why does the military need to get in on it? If there is a real operational hole, they should focus on information sharing policies, not authorizing new redundant capabilities.
I suspect it has to do with special forces becoming more dominant. We've seen reports that they have more and more of their own intelligence services that supposedly operates faster for the kinds of info they need. This is probably them wanting to followup on leads they generate.
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