The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
The CIA has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, officials say.
Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of U.S. military personnel and civilians, officials say.
The FBI, the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the Sept. 11 attacks, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.
But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the CIA have been using their own “non-compulsory” 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.
The military and the CIA have long been restricted in their domestic intelligence operations, and both are barred from conducting traditional domestic law-enforcement work.
Pentagon officials defended the letters as valuable tools that are part of a broader strategy since Sept. 11 to use more aggressive intelligence-gathering tactics, but some national security experts and civil liberties advocates are troubled.
“There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at the CIA and now dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. “They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating.”