Thomas Cincotta

Last week, Janet Napolitano reaffirmed America’s unfocused approach to domestic intelligence and counterterrorism in her July 29, 2009 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. The Secretary of Homeland Security embraced the word “terror,” a word missing from her February address to Congress, as the Right was quick to point out.

In February, 2009, members of the Islamic Center of Irvine learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had hired Craig Monteilh, a 46-year-old fitness instructor and convicted con man, to infiltrate their mosque and keep it under surveillance. Members had wondered about Monteilh for a while. Back in 2007, the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), alarmed by his talk of jihad and plans for a terrorist attack, reported him to Irvine police and secured a three-year restraining order against him.

The discovery this month that anarchist “John Jacob,” an activist in anti-militarist organizing in the Pacific Northwest, is really civilian Army intelligence analyst John Towery II, shows that those concerned about civil liberties must remain vigilant in the Obama era. The gathering of domestic intelligence by Army agents highlights real dangers for civil liberties.