The FBI and InfraGard
February 9th, 2008Via: Progressive:
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.
InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.
“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.
InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.
“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.
“At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”
In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”
To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.
FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”
He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”
In an interview with InfraGard after the conference, which is featured prominently on the InfraGard members’ website, Mueller says: “It’s a great program.”
The ACLU is not so sanguine.
“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.
I can soooooooo see my younger brother applying for the New Korporate Deputies and the “shiny badge” it offers to the gun-toting justice-and-glory-to-the-Fatherland under martial law, not to mention the latitude it affords the “savvy” business person in terms an interesting set of networking contacts.
He’s spent the last seven years buying out the early-retiring owner of a specialty industrial-design firm, working mad hours and trashing his health, but making BIG bank in the process — by personally moving the company into the world of defense contracting. Missile defense, et al.
When I think of him, in all his intimidating ex-offensive lineman (U. Oregon) size and toting one of the MANY weapons in his huge underground gun safe (most of which I still fire more accurately than he does, which pisses him off to this very day), I can really feel for the folks he’ll end up riding herd over when and if things get shaky in the Kelso/Vancouver, WA area.
Assuming his application was “accepted”, which it surely was. He’s inside large industrial facilities, from chip fabs to cracker plants around the world, and see’s a great deal that would be of value to the Corporate Intelligence Agency, not to mention the Federal Bureau of Inactivation…
@ Miraculix
As I was clicking on the comments, I was thinking of how many of the Little People will glom onto this kind of InfraPower. Receiving secret warnings! Permission to shoot to kill! Why, that’s instant spook cachet and 007ism. They’re suave Big People now, and get the hell outta their way. And then your fascinating piece on your little bro …
It’s just a slightly different version of the former McDonald’s burger-flipper who is now a bad-assed TSA goon enjoying barking orders at the sheeple in long lines, and paying special insolent attention to the well-dressed ones. Last year, I was behind a gorgeously dressed Asian woman at the airport security checkpoint. The female TSA goons “assisting” her through were particularly rude to her, and I overheard one angrily comment to the other, “Did you get a look at her purse? I bet it cost a thousand bucks!”
A lot of personal scores will be settled by these newly minted, newly elevated power-mongerers as they run amok in the coming Homeland “emergencies”.