Here is a glimpse into the Army’s Counterintelligence Command. Today, I sat down with senior intelligence/counterintelligence officials as part of a small media roundtable at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.
The officials said that the command currently has more than 200 active national security investigations. But their counterintelligence agents cannot conduct searches, execute warrants, or make arrests off of military installations. And “most of the personnel that are under investigation live off of the installation,” said Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Intelligence.
Instead, agents have had to work with law enforcement agencies, usually the FBI. And he went on to say that “a lot of the cases that we have right now may not gain the interest of a law enforcement agency because we haven’t found the critical information that we need to make this a larger case.”
That changes with the newly passed National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the command new authority. “When that authority is vested in us,” another official told the table of journalists, “we will have the full power, just like our partner agents, our federal partners, to investigate, arrest, and prosecute in any venue or any platform that the adversary shows up on.” More in the report.
