I Wish I Was Surprised

MSNBC is reporting on a letter that Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Roger W. Rogalski sent in reply to a memo from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt:

The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department'’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report.

There was more, of course, but that gives you a basic understanding of what's going on here. More from the MSNBC article:

In 2003, the Defense Department directed a little-known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), to establish and "“maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established TALON at that time.

The original NBC News report, from December, focused on a secret 400-page Defense Department document listing more than 1,500 "“suspicious incidents"” across the country over a 10-month period. One such incident was a small group of activists meeting in a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., to plan a protest against military recruiting at local high schools.

Rogalski said such "anomalies" in the TALON database were removed.

Still, the database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One briefing document stamped "“secret" concludes: "[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the Internet,"” but no "“significant connection"” between incidents, such as "“reoccurring instigators at protests"” or "vehicle descriptions."

So tell me: When does it officially become a police state?

Pentagon Domestic Spying CIFA TALON