Thursday, December 17, 2009 3:28 AM
BY DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2009/12/17/Intel_paper_1217.ART_ART_12-17-09_A3_1VG198I.html?sid=101
WASHINGTON -- Homeland security officials improperly gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam, a black Muslim group, but government rules were "unintentionally and inadvertently violated" and only publicly available information was collected, according to documents made public yesterday.
Internal correspondence shows that the 2007 report -- titled "Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks" -- was created by an intelligence group working within the Homeland Security Department.
Hours after the report was issued in 2007, officials recalled it, deciding that the report violated intelligence rules against collecting or disseminating information on U.S. citizens for an extended period. It had been disseminated widely over the Internet to numerous federal agencies, state and local law enforcement agencies, several congressional committees, intelligence agencies and parts of the private sector, a reviewing officer found.
One official wrote that "the organization, despite its highly volatile and extreme rhetoric, has neither advocated violence nor engaged in violence" and should not have been the subject of intelligence gathering.
The documents were released yesterday as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit, but the Homeland Security report itself was not released, nor were any examples of what the analysts considered extreme rhetoric.
L.A. Broughton, an oversight official at Homeland Security, wrote in a 2008 follow-up memo that the document "discussed the possible succession of leadership of (the Nation of Islam) and the direction the group may take depending on who becomes the new leader, their personal philosophy and their ability to keep the organization from further splintering."
Department spokesman Matthew Chandler said that since the report was created, the agency "has implemented a strong and rigorous system of safeguards and oversight to ensure similar products are neither created nor distributed."
Messages left yesterday for top officials in the Chicago-based movement were not immediately returned.
The Obama administration has pledged to be more open than its predecessor, and in the past year it has released numerous previously classified details of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs, including how CIA interrogators used harsh techniques on detainees.
The latest release of government documents were the result of separate Freedom of Information lawsuits by two civil-liberties groups: the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
David Sobel, senior counsel for the foundation, said: "There remains a lot of material that continues to be withheld. To the extent that today's disclosures indicate a new approach to the Freedom of Information Act, we welcome it."
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Good info thanks for posting, if you check the map, NOI is listed as a hate group, this is from SPL, which is probably a CIA operation if not directly indirectly.( jmo)
SPLCenter.org: Hate Groups Map
... publishes a yearly map tracking hate groups active in the U.S. ...
The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 926 active hate groups in the United States in 2008. ...
https://theblacklist.net/
Replies
SPLCenter.org: Hate Groups Map
... publishes a yearly map tracking hate groups active in the U.S. ...
The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 926 active hate groups in the United States in 2008. ...
www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp