Why is US police spying on Muslim communities?

Police State — 21 February 2012

New details have emerged about the scandal surrounding a joint CIA-New York police program of surveillance of American Muslims. According to Associated Press, when implementing the program, both the CIA and the police violated America’s federal law.

The CIA and New York police began to place their undercover agents into New York’s Muslim communities shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Those agents were to collect the information about all aspects of the local Muslims’ lives.

The initial results of its 8-month-long journalist investigation were published by the Associated Press in August 2011. The report contained evidence that the police and the CIA had spied over New York’s Muslims communities.

According to the publication, in 2002 the then chief of the CIA George Tenet ordered the most experienced agent Lawrence Sanchez to provide assistance to the New York police in organizing a system for surveillance over Muslims.

Sanchez cooperated with David Cohen former CIA agent who headed the information unit formed under the police department soon after the tragic events of 9/11. In the course of the journalist investigation it was also found out that the surveillance over Muslims had been conducted not only in New York but all across the north east of the US.

And now the reporters have found out that the CIA and the police conducted the surveillance operations violating the standard procedure set by the 1981 presidential decree of 1981. Under the US law, the CIA, which main task is to collect the intelligence information abroad is not allowed to conduct surveillance over US citizens.

Under the presidential decree of 1981, the agency has the right to consult other governmental institutions and even provide them with necessary equipment but only on the approval from the senior lawyer of the CIA. Although this permission had not been obtained that did not hamper the CIA to start surveillance over the Muslims resident of New York and in the north east of the country.

They were informed about it by the former CIA agent who preferred to stay anonymous.

Regardless of the protests of human right activists and representatives of the Muslim communities, one can hardly deny the fact that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 the increased attention the authorities pay to religious minorities looks more than justified.

Regular reports on the arrests of radical Islamists which come from different part of the US show that the threat of home-grown terrorism still exists.

At the same time it should be admitted that American Muslims show a rare example of efficient integration into society. Unlike Europe which fails to cope with the growth of radical sentiments in the Muslim environment the US is a good example of relatively peaceful co-existence of different religious and ethnical groups.

That is why such ill considerate activities of the authorities as large scale surveillance over the entire religious community may worsen the situation, undermine the confidence of American Muslims in the authorities and strengthen social contradictions.