Friday, July 09, 2004
 Newsweek July 7:The selection of Sen. John Edwards as John Kerry’s running mate has raised concerns inside the FBI and among civil-liberties groups that the North Carolina senator will use the campaign to promote his controversial proposal to create a new domestic spy agency.
For the past 18 months, Edwards has been perhaps the Senate's foremost champion of a much-debated proposal to strip the bureau of its intelligence-gathering functions and turn them over to a new domestic spy agency patterned after Britain's M.I.5.
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Edwards has refused to back down—and there are signs that Kerry himself may be warm to the idea. "He thinks it’s still the way to go," said Mike Briggs, Edwards's Senate press secretary on Wednesday when asked about the M.I.5 proposal.
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Although Kerry himself has talked more vaguely about reforming intelligence in his major campaign speeches, a little noticed "Defending the American Homeland" plan on his campaign Web site seems to reach a similar conclusion as Edwards on the subject.
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Edwards went ahead and introduced his bill anyway in February 2003
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Civil-liberties groups have other concerns about the Edwards plan. For decades, FBI agents who seek to develop evidence about potential domestic threats have operated under tight Justice Department guidelines; those guidelines require there be grounds to believe targets are engaged in criminal acts. A new domestic spy agency would not be so encumbered... Civil-liberties advocates say... a domestic-intelligence agency such as Edwards has advocated would inevitably be tempted to spy on legitimate dissenters.
"Senator Edwards’s proposal ignored the serious civil-liberties problems it would have caused," said Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies.
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