Rumsfeld directed military to get financial records
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld directed military lawyers and intelligence officials to examine their legal authorities to collect intelligence both inside the United States and abroad. They concluded that the Pentagon had “way more” legal tools than it had been using, a senior Defense Department official said. But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying. Military intelligence officers have sent letters in up to 500 investigations over the last five years, two officials estimated. The number of letters is likely to be well into the thousands, the officials said, because a single case often generates letters to multiple financial institutions. For its part, the C.I.A. issues a handful of national security letters each year, agency officials said. Military officials say the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, which establishes procedures for government access to sensitive banking data, first authorized them to issue national security letters. The Counterintelligence Field Activity office, created in 2002 to better coordinate the military’s efforts to combat foreign intelligence services, has drawn criticism for some domestic intelligence activities.

The agency houses an antiterrorist database of intelligence tips and threat reports, known as Talon, which had been collecting information on antiwar planning meetings at churches, libraries and other locations. here