Agencies Monitor Iraqis in the U.S. for Terror Threat
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - The Bush administration has begun to monitor Iraqis in the United States in an effort to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of the Baghdad regime, senior government officials said.
The previously undisclosed intelligence program involves tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending American universities or working at private corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United States-led war against Iraq, officials said.
Some of the targets of the operation are being electronically monitored under the authority of national security warrants. Others are being selected for recruitment as informers, the officials said.
In the event of an American invasion of Iraq, officials would intensify the program's mission through arrests and detentions of Iraqis or Iraq sympathizers if they are believed to be planning domestic terrorist operations....
Next week, federal authorities plan to begin interviewing Arab-Americans, asking them to report suspicious activity related to Iraq, a senior government official said. The interviews will be voluntary, but in the past, such efforts have been criticized by Arab-American groups. The F.B.I. is planning to meet with Arab-American civic leaders to explain the nonclassified aspects of the operation, officials said.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the surveillance program, which is classified. The effort by intelligence agencies, particularly the F.B.I., to strengthen and expand their counterterrorism programs comes at a time of serious discussion in Congress and in the Bush administration about whether to create a domestic intelligence agency like MI-5, the British agency that collects information about internal threats....
The operation draws on the experience of a smaller program that was undertaken in the Persian Gulf war with Iraq in 1991, a conflict that resulted in little immediate threat of terrorism in the United States. During the war, the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization Service conducted thousands of interviews with Iraqis and other Arab-Americans in the United States and investigated hundreds of Iraqis who had entered the United States on visitors' visas and had not left when their entry permits expired.
A large number of government agencies are part of the new operation, including the Pentagon, the F.B.I., the Central Intelligence Agency, the immigration service, the State Department and the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications around the world, officials said.... <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/politics/17INTE.html> -- Yoshie
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