Watching the Protesters: These spies may have known too much.

[icymist]

Phil Chinn's Ford Taurus moved along with the traffic on Highway 12, heading west in Grays Harbor County and beneath the Devonshire Overpass, where Washington State Patrol trooper Ben Blankenship was waiting. Blankenship put his cruiser in gear and moved down to the four-lane highway, pulling in behind Chinn's vehicle. Within a few miles, he hit his emergency lights. Chinn pulled over. It was May 6, 2007, early afternoon, the beginning of what the state patrol considers a routine traffic stop, but one that would cost taxpayers a half-million dollars.

<snip>
Unbeknownst to Chinn and others at the time, Port protesters had a double agent in their ranks. He went by the name John Jacobs and identified himself to fellow demonstrators as a civilian employee at Fort Lewis. When he joined the movement in early 2007, he offered to provide the inside scoop on Fort operations, and over the next two years would prove a trusted, loyal anarchist. He was given access to the activists' confidential communications, and told his new friends he wanted to start his own faction of war resisters.

Most of his inside information, it turns out, was flowing the other way, according to interviews, court documents, and public records reviewed by Seattle Weekly. He was indeed a civilian employee at the fort—in its Army Force Protection intelligence unit. His true name was John Towery, and his mission was to spy on the protesters from within.

<snip>
By settling, the agencies did not have to reveal details of the intelligence network that aided the stop. Those details could expose a broader spying operation, says Hildes. He is now trying anew to pry loose those sensitive police and military documents with another federal lawsuit, filed in January on behalf of other protesters. Hildes alleges the Army's infiltration of the Port resistance group and its military intelligence–sharing with local cops violates the federal Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from undertaking any unauthorized role in local law enforcement.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2010-06-09/news/watching-the-protesters/

[lurky]

1. Thanks for posting. This detail caught my eye:

Here, they are talking about the Seattle fusion center, which was set up after 9/11 so that state, local, federal, and military intelligence share information on "potential threats". I bolded the statements I thought were most troubling.

Through a series of security corridors, Center employees can also reach the nearby offices of the Puget Sound Joint Terrorism Task Force and the regional FBI Field Intelligence Group. Besides state investigators and analysts, Seattle Police and the King County Sheriff also have full-time intelligence officers at the Fusion Center. Almost every city and county law-enforcement agency in the state is linked to the Center through the secure State Intelligence Network. Operatives also have access to the FBI computer system, and, depending on their security-clearance level and the type of case, can access intelligence from around the globe.

Seattle's Fusion Center is "a model" for other centers, according to Security Management magazine, an industry publication, which reports that Boeing was seeking to place a full-time company intelligence analyst at the Center. Starbucks, Amazon, and Alaska Airlines "have also expressed interest" in working with the Center, the magazine says.

That's a proposal yet to be worked out, say officials. But Richard Hovel, Boeing's senior advisor on aviation and homeland security, told a U.S. House subcommittee last year that "Hopefully, this will be the first of many similar efforts across the nation that will establish a collaborative partnership between the public sector and industry, and protect our critical infrastructure more effectively and expeditiously."

[icymist]

2. You're welcome.

Also, I can't help but wonder about this type of intelligence gathering and what's happening in the Gulf.