A very interesting article on USNews.com that I came across by way of cryptome.org.
In the Atlanta suburbs of DeKalb County, local officials wasted no time after the 9/11 attacks. The second-most-populous county in Georgia, the area is home to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI’s regional headquarters, and other potential terrorist targets. Within weeks of the attacks, officials there boasted that they had set up the nation’s first local department of homeland security. Dozens of other communities followed, and, like them, DeKalb County put in for–and got–a series of generous federal counterterrorism grants. The county received nearly $12 million from Washington, using it to set up, among other things, a police intelligence unit.
This unit has been doing great work in helping to bring down vegan activists that had the unmitigated gaul to hand out leaflets in front of a store that sold meat. Gimmie a freakin break. The vegan group is now suing the county. I wish them luck. This is just one a many incidents that are drawn upon for this piece. This article reads like something from a film script.
“This is going to be the challenge,” says Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, “to ensure that while getting bin Laden we don’t transgress over the law. We’ve been burned so badly in the past–we can’t do that again.”
This reference was to the “Red Squads” from the 60’s and 70’s. Slippery slope.
[tags]Spies, FBI, Homeland Security[/tags]