Government intelligence a misnomer

[Continental Op]

Government intelligence a misnomer

Jay Bookman

Forget the Dixie Chicks. If you want to understand the very real threat to our rights of free speech and free association, Jimmy Wynn is your man.

Wynn is commanding officer of the Militia of Georgia, a small paramilitary group that believes we are "governed by petty despots and tyrants" who have robbed us of our constitutional rights. Despite that heated rhetoric, however, no available evidence suggests that Wynn has ever advocated violence against the government or law enforcement. He's just an American with an odd point of view.

A year ago, Wynn was working as a salesman at a Norcross gun store when the store owner got a little phone call. It seems that an agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, armed with a classified "intelligence report" containing nothing more than innuendo, wanted to make sure that the owner understood the political leanings of his employee.

Wynn was fired. He never even understood what had happened to him until late last month, when he was told about the secret phone call by Bill Torpy, a reporter for this newspaper. Now Wynn's even more paranoid, and he has every right to be.

This is America. In this country, government agents do not secretly pass along unsubstantiated rumors about a person's political involvement to their employers. They do not pressure employers to fire people who have opinions that government officials do not like.

But in this case, they did.

There's good news here as well, though. Upon discovering what Special Agent John Lang had done, GBI officials acted quickly and appropriately. Despite a sterling record, Lang was reassigned and reprimanded for "an extremely critical lapse in judgment" that was "totally inexcusable."

Lang has appealed that reprimand, claiming that in the wake of Sept. 11, what was once improper has in some cases become necessary. He claims his actions were justified because Wynn's employment in a gun shop posed an imminent threat to the safety of law-enforcement officers.

The claim doesn't wash. There is no evidence that Wynn posed any danger, imminent or otherwise. Lang decided on his own to violate GBI policy against leaking such reports to civilians. In fact, the unconfirmed intelligence report he leaked contained a warning in large, bold type that it was to be shared only among law enforcement.

The GBI's recognition of the problem, and its willingness to act on its own to address it, is a reassuring reminder of the importance of professional law enforcement training.

That's important to keep in mind given what's going on in Washington. A provision now being debated in Congress would allow both the Pentagon and the CIA to investigate U.S. citizens within the boundaries of this country.

If the Pentagon wanted to find out what books you had checked out of the library, all it would have to do is issue a "national security letter" forcing the library to secretly cough up that information. No court order would be needed. If the CIA wanted to find out what Internet sites you visited, it could do so, again without a court order.

The CIA is an intelligence agency created to focus on foreign targets, not on the American people. The Pentagon is a military organization. Neither is primarily a law enforcement agency; neither has the professional training, the guidelines or the mind-set that would allow it to do such work without stomping on constitutional rights.

But like Lang, proponents of the change claim that Sept. 11 justifies changing all that.

Within the borders of this country, terrorism is a law enforcement problem, not a military problem. If the Pentagon or CIA has reason to believe that residents of this country may be involved in terrorism, it can and should work through the FBI, which is trained to handle that task. While that agency is far from perfect, it is at least designed to work within a constitutional framework.

Today, Jimmy Wynn is wrong about America. I want him to be wrong about it tomorrow too.

[zeugma]

Good post.

Today, Jimmy Wynn is wrong about America. I want him to be wrong about it tomorrow too.

I'd like to hope that he'll be wrong about it tomorrow too, but I think we've already passed the curve on that particular road.