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The NYPD's top officials have endorsed the department's surveillance of Muslims and even top-secret missions abroad. According to the author of a new book, though, the FBI says these efforts produced "no intelligence of any value."
That's what reporter Ronald Kessler has found, at least, and he's dug deep to get to the bottom of the NYPD's controversial surveillance tactics that was first uncovered by the Associated Press in recent months. Earlier this year it was discovered that the NYPD had been conducting clandestine surveillance over Muslims and collecting intelligence everywhere from local markets to mosques and even in cities abroad. Kessler investigated that program to put together his forthcoming book,
The Secrets of the FBI, and in an except just released by the author, he writes that even one of America's biggest intelligence agencies is up in arms over the NYPD's actions.
Kessler writes that the efforts under former FBI Director J Edgar Hoover "not only trampled on Americans' rights but often failed to focus effectively on real threats such as spies and terrorists." Decades after Hoover's death, however, Kessler says that those merits are alive and well, but not with the FBI. Even though it's arguably not part of their job, the NYPD has adopted controversial techniques and policies that the author compares to the practices put forth by Hoover.
"In an unprecedented move, Michael B. Ward, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark office, went public to say that the New York surveillance tactics were not an effective form of intelligence gathering and were in fact harming the fight against terrorism by fomenting distrust among New Jersey's Muslims," Keller writes.
Comment: Israel was losing public and international support in the couple years before 9-11. Connection??