Daniel Rubin: Faulty intelligence led to Pennsylvania intelligence scandal

It's only fitting that the contract to monitor protest groups in Pennsylvania blew up because of faulty intelligence.

James F. Powers Jr., state director of homeland security, had been warned that the intelligence bulletins the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response generated at his request were getting into the wrong hands.

Institute operatives had read one of their reports on an electronic bulletin board called the Susquehanna County Gas Forum - a warning that activists might be targeting public meetings about gas drilling.

So Powers wrote an e-mail to the person who had posted the bulletin, alerting her that those who opposed drilling in Pennsylvania read the site, too.

"Miss Virginia," began his letter to Virginia Cody, a retired Air Force officer from Factoryville in Wyoming County.

Though Internet forums are a great way to spread the word, he warned, they are public. "We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural-gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies."

The problem was that the Susquehanna Gas Forum is an antidrilling site. And Virginia Cody is one of those pesky activists worried about the quality of her drinking water.

She promptly passed the e-mail to a friend, who leaked it to reporters at Pro Publica and the City Paper, who wrote articles that questioned whether the state and its contractor were favoring the interests of gas companies over those who oppose them.

And that day Gov. Rendell was pounding a lectern, saying he was appalled to have just learned of the monitoring of people exercising their constitutional rights.

I still can't figure how Rendell could not have known. On July 19 I wrote about the institute's contract, and quoted his policy chief, Donna Cooper, who questioned the monitoring of groups such as Good Schools Pennsylvania, which she happened to have founded.

I'm not going to slam Rendell for not seeing the column, or his staff for not putting it under his nose. He's got a lot on his plate.

How wrong was this contract? An obscure security group with an office in Jerusalem and a post-office box in Philadelphia is hired to comb the Web and monitor chatter across the globe to inform Pennsylvania law enforcement of potential dangers - most of which happens to be conducted by progressive groups against big business and industry.

Powers told me in July that the Patriot Act requires him to assess threats against buildings and people and that he had hired the institute because it did the best job of tailoring worldwide intelligence to local needs.

One expert thought its bulletins were quality work. But Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University, did find the wording of the institute's bulletins a little clumsy. That clumsiness used the same tone to describe the activities of jihadists and the gathering of Quakers.

Since Rendell killed the contract on Tuesday, others in law enforcement have been critical of it as well, such as State Police Commissioner Col. Frank Pawlowski, who found that nothing reported "was of any value" to his officers, according to Rendell.

As for Cody, she says she posted the bulletins someone slipped her because they struck her as un-American. She's a former schoolteacher who sketches people's pets for a living. She's 54, a mother, a wife, and she studied journalism in college.

Did the institute's work remind you of the Pinkerton cops who used to protect the rail lines? I asked her.

"More like the Keystone Kops," she said.

"It felt like it was government interference in my life," she said. "They have no business being in my life. I have the right to foment dissent over anything I want. . . . It's in the Constitution."

Now politicians are calling for investigations. A civil rights lawyer has threatened to sue on behalf of unspecified activists. A task force is examining whether existing agencies can do the job right.

And taxpayers get to save $103,000. For that money, Rendell could hire someone to clip the newspapers for him.