From The Seattle Times, 3/18/06:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002873042_contractor18.html
Pentagon contracted for satellite photos of U.S. locations
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON --
A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on U.S. anti-war
activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy
"Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of
worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United
States.
MZM, headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling
more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to
the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder.
The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those
intelligence services entailed.
MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of
dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted
beginning in 2002.
MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and
unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are
the focus of investigations by the Pentagon and Department of Justice.
In February 2003, MZM won a two-month contract worth $503,144 to
provide technical support to the Pentagon's Joint Counterintelligence
Field Activity, or CIFA.
The top-secret agency was created five months earlier primarily to
protect U.S. defense personnel and facilities from foreign terrorists.
The job involved advising CIFA on selecting software and technology
designed to ferret out commercial and government data that could be
used in what's called a Geospatial Information System (GIS).
A GIS system inserts information about geographic locations, such as
buildings, into digital maps produced from satellite photographs.
MZM was to "assist the government in identifying and procuring data"
on maps, "airports, ports, dams, churches/mosques/synagogues, schools
[and] power plants," said the statement of work.
It isn't clear why U.S. intelligence agencies couldn't do the work
themselves.
CIFA recently has come under fire after disclosures that it maintained
information on individuals and groups involved in peaceful anti-war
protests at defense facilities and recruiting offices.
The information was stored in a database that was supposed to be
reserved for reports related to potential foreign terrorist activity.
The disclosure that CIFA was storing information on anti-war
activities added to concerns that the Bush administration may have
used its war on terrorism to give government agencies expanded power
to monitor Americans' finances, associations, travel and other
activities.
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Turned over another rock and look at what we found.
Harry
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