Pentagon to shut down controversial domestic threat data base

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The Pentagon said Tuesday it is shutting down a counter-intelligence reporting system called TALON that came under fire for monitoring the activities of anti-war protesters.

The system will be shut down September 17 and reporting on threats to US military installations in the United States will be shifted to the FBI, said Colonel Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.

"It was terminated because reporting had declined significantly, both quantitatively and qualitatively so," he said. "The analytical value was pretty slim."

Keck was unable to explain the decline but the system has been a source of controversy since media revelations in December 2005 that it was used to gather unverified reports of peace activists and others as alleged threats to US military facilities.

The Pentagon said it will keep a copy of an electronic database of threat reports created as part of the system but new reports will go to an FBI database called Guardian until it devises an alternative reporting system.

James Clapper, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, had said in April that he was moving to end the program. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed the order shutting it down.

The Pentagon said it "will propose a system to streamline such threat reporting and better meet the Defense Department's needs."



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