DOD ‘Talon’ Database DeclawedThe Quakers can sleep easier. This morning, the Pentagon announced that it’s canceling a database created to monitor threats to Defense Department installations in the U.S. that ended up compiling lists of citizens engaged in peaceful, constitutionally-protected protest speech. For good measure, the Talon database was run by an intelligence office that doled out millions to crooked defense contractor MZM.
Talon, which compiled unverified threat information related to domestic Pentagon-run facilities, will go out of business on September 17. That’s a long-planned obsolescence: in April, Defense intelligence chief James Clapper stated that the Pentagon needed to “lay to rest the distrust and concern about the department’s commitment to civil rights.” And for good reason. Internal DOD memoranda obtained and disclosed by the ACLU revealed that Talon had ensnared information on over 2,000 American citizens, some for posing little more of a threat than “the possibility” of “some type of vandalism.”
Additionally, a recent Pentagon inspector-general report found irregularities and unanswered questions about how Talon purged information on American citizens deemed not to pose a security threat. Notably, DOD announced today that the agency overseeing Talon, known as the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), will “maintain a record copy of the collected data in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements.” In other words, CIFA will keep records both of what Talon possesses and what information it deleted, in order to demonstrate that it wasn’t covering up for improper or illegal intelligence collection.
CIFA has a reputation as a hive of corruption. Thanks to corrupt congressman Duke Cunningham, CIFA channeled millions of dollars in contracts to MZM, whose chief, Mitchell Wade, bribed Cunningham and larded CIFA with his cronies.
According to the Pentagon, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, Pete Verga, will come up with an alternative program “to document and assess potential threats to DoD resources.” It remains to be seen whether Talon will essentially live on under a different name.