CIFA Authority Expanding

The authority granted to the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) has grown dramatically in the last couple of years, according to an article today in the WaPo.

Readers of this blog are long familiar with the odious CIFA, which has recently been participating in domestic spying against peace groups. CIFA, whose official size is classified, is believed to have grown from an operation of fewer than one hundred employees to having tasking authority for thousands of investigators. The tasking business is an important distinction, since many U.S. intelligence activities must rely on other community agencies or offices to receive their marching orders. Not so with CIFA.

CIFA has grown from a role of mainly coordination and oversight to an operational entity with nine directorates:

Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) "assists in preserving the most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping control the intelligence domain," the fact sheet said. Those roles can range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States. The DX also provides "on-site, real time . . . support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host nation personnel from a variety of threats," the fact sheet said.

(...)

Another CIFA directorate, the Counterintelligence and Law Enforcement Center, "identifies and assesses threats" to Defense personnel, operations and infrastructure from "insider threats, foreign intelligence services, terrorists, and other clandestine or covert entities," according to the Pentagon.

(...)

A third CIFA directorate, Behavioral Sciences, "has 20 psychologists and a multimillion-dollar budget," and supports both "offensive and defensive counterintelligence efforts," according to a government biography of its director, S. Scott Shumate. Shumate was the chief operational psychologist for the CIA's counterterrorism center until 2003. His group has also provided a "team of renowned forensic psychologists [who] are engaged in risk assessments of the Guantanamo Bay detainees," according to his biography.

The evolution of CIFA appears to be a classic case of mission creep:

A former senior Pentagon intelligence official, familiar with CIFA, said yesterday, "They started with force protection from terrorists, but when you go down that road, you soon are into everything . . . where terrorists get their money, who they see, who they deal with."

He added, noting that there had been no congressional oversight of CIFA, that the Defense Department is "too big, too rich an organization and should not be left unfettered. They rush in where there is a vacuum."

A former senior counterterrorism official, also familiar with CIFA, said, "What you are seeing is the militarization of counterterrorism."

CIFA's authority is still growing. In a new move to centralize all counterterrorism intelligence collection inside the United States, the Defense Department this month gave CIFA authority to task domestic investigations and operations by the counterintelligence units of the military services.

CIFA has had a reputation for a year and a half now for keeping an eye on certain dissident blogs. (Page halfway down the page for the proof.)

Their tradecraft has improved lately.