Military opens investigation into California National Guard


Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.

Background: Last week, we learned that the California National Guard had formed a domestic intelligence unit that had, among other things, spied on a group of mothers and grandmothers (and Code Pink grrls) attending a Mothers' Day anti-war rally. Then, this week, we learned that the CNG had deleted the contents of a hard drive requested by California Senator Joe Dunn, who is investigating the matter.

Now, it's generally possible to recover some of the data from a hard drive that's merely been reformatted (see, however, these comments on the Daily Kos cross-posting of this week's article). But the CNG protested that it couldn't turn over the hard drive for data recovery because of a pending federal investigation.

Coincidence? Either the CNG knew the US military investigation was pending and wiped the drive anyway (d'oh!), or the US military announced its investigation knowing that Senator Dunn's investigation was pending (d'oh! d'oh!)

Senator Dunn definitely feels that the federal investigation was engineered to interfere with his investigation, already underway.

Lawmaker: Guard spying investigation being blocked
(San Jose Mercury News) Army investigators began looking into concerns Wednesday that the California National Guard was engaging in domestic spying as a state senator looking into the matter charged the federal probe was being used to block his own inquiry.

One day after being denied access to a Guard computer that had its hard drive wiped clean, Sen. Joe Dunn said he would seek legislative subpoenas today to gain access to the information central to his investigation and lashed out at military officials standing in his way.

Dunn launched his investigation last week after the Mercury News reported on the creation of a new National Guard intelligence unit that has been given "broad authority" to set up new anti-terrorism projects in California.

"If they continue in what I refer to as bunker mentality here, it simply confirms to us that our worst suspicions may in fact be true," the Garden Grove Democrat said.


The article goes on to say that Guard officials have asserted that they will honor all of Senator Dunn's requests for information by Friday. This is in direct contradiction to statements earlier in the week that the pending federal investigation would prevent access to the deleted hard drive. Furthermore, it is far from clear that a change of heart on the Guard's part will in any way alter the willingness of the US military to part with hardware it wants to inspect for its own investigation. The Senator is, therefore, proceeding with efforts to secure subpoenas, to be issued in the event that the Guard does not fully cooperate with his information requests.

Anyone want to place bets on whether the Guard forks everything over by end of business tomorrow?

More elsewhere:
Military launches probe of National Guard unit (AP)
National Guard under investigation (KQED's California Report)

Posted: Fri - July 8, 2005 at 07:35 AM   | Category:     |   |   | |


©
eXTReMe Tracker