Phone conversations in remote parts of the world are
monitored by satellite. In other words, America is spying
on the rest of the world round the clock.
According to the current issue of Time magazine, the
Terrorist Threat Integration Centre (TTIC) is staffed
by professionals from a dozen government entities so that
there is no intelligence-sharing failure as happened before
9/11. The spying operations involve only foreign targets.
The chief of the facility, John Brennen of the CIA, says,
“The centre is helping to monitor a lot of folks
who have acquired US citizenship or green cards that are
engaged in international terrorism.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is said to
keep tabs on about 400 individuals in the US who are thought
to be sympathetic to Al Qaeda or somehow connected to
“Sunni extremism”. The FBI has also tried
to co-opt some of them as informants.
One official told the team of reporters from the magazine
that was permitted to tour the centre, “Our job
is to capture them and kill them.” That means, he
explains, taking action “at the direction of the
president, by formal decree, clandestinely. Sometimes
you’re acting at his direction to change the world.”
He describes work done at the centre “so goddamn
nitty-gritty it’ll turn your mind numb”.
Some of the best intelligence comes from interrogating
captured terrorists. The counter-terrorist Centre helps
direct and analyse those sessions. It’s all about
“who knew who five years ago,” says the official.
“Where did they go after that? How did the network
expand? What were they plotting then? Where did they live?
Who did they live with?”