Pa. Senate hearing learns officials raised red flags over intelligence contractor

HARRISBURG - On a cold day in January, the head of the state police's special intelligence unit was summoned to the FBI's office in Philadelphia.

The FBI wanted to know why inaccurate information about an alleged terrorist threat to the King of Prussia mall had been so widely disseminated that even law enforcement officials on the West Coast knew about it.

George Bivens, director of the state police's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, said he swiftly alerted the official responsible for distributing the information - James F. Powers, head of the state Office of Homeland Security.

It wasn't the first red flag Bivens raised. And it wasn't the last, he testified Monday.

Bivens told a state Senate committee that he and his superiors warned repeatedly that information provided to Powers' office by a private Philadelphia-based intelligence contractor was often inaccurate and almost always useless.

Worse, Bivens told the Senate Veterans and Emergency Preparedness Committee, Powers' office was circulating the contractor's intelligence alerts to as many as 800 law enforcement and other officials, causing undue alarm and leading the state police to waste time and manpower tracking down bogus leads.

"I likened it to reading the National Enquirer: Every so often they have something right, but most of the time it's unsubstantiated gossip," Bivens said of the data provided by the Institute on Terrorism Research and Response.

In the last two weeks, the institute's $103,000 no-bid contract with the state, awarded last October to help track potential threats to Pennsylvania's infrastructure, has come under intense scrutiny. The attention followed revelations that the institute was reporting on the activities of citizen groups that posed no obvious threat to public safety, including student protesters and opponents of natural-gas drilling.

That information, in turn, was being disseminated in thrice-weekly bulletins, sent out by the Homeland Security Office to law enforcement as well as a number of private companies.

Gov. Rendell has said he was "deeply embarrassed" by the bulletins and their civil-liberties implications, and ordered that the contract not be renewed when it expires next month. He has yet to reprimand or fire anyone in connection with the contract.

Rendell has said he was not aware of the contract and the resulting bulletins until the recent controversy began. But documents revealed Monday contained new suggestions that some of his top appointees knew before that.

At the hearing, officials disclosed an e-mail sent in August from State Police Commissioner Frank Pawlowski to Rendell's chief of staff, Steve Crawford.

The e-mail reflected Pawlowski's skepticism about information the institute had gathered and disseminated. The subject: planned protests at a speech the governor was to give that month.

"This is one of the problems you have when you contract intelligence work to amateurs," Pawlowski wrote to Crawford.

Rendell spokesman Gary Tuma said Monday that the first Crawford learned about "the depth of the state police's anxiety was watching the Senate hearing today."

"That these concerns existed without our knowledge is something that [Crawford] will talk to the governor about," Tuma said.

Pawlowski's e-mail wasn't the first time a top Rendell appointee raised doubts about the value of the institute's work for the state. The governor's policy chief, Donna Cooper, was quoted in an Inquirer column in July questioning the appropriateness of the information the institute was gathering.

For his part, Powers told the Senate panel on Monday that hiring the institute amounted to "an error in judgment."

But he said his office paid for the service because he sincerely believed the information was helpful, particularly to smaller law enforcement agencies around the state that otherwise would not have the resources to track down potential threats to public safety.

"I sincerely apologize to any individual or group, regardless of their views or affiliation, who felt their constitutional rights infringed upon because they were listed in the bulletin," Powers said. "That was never the intention."

The bulletins' repercussions continued to swirl even as the hearings unfolded on Monday. A Luzerne County organization named in at least three of the intelligence alerts filed a federal civil rights suit against Powers and the institute.

The Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, which says it opposes unregulated drilling, contends that being mentioned in the reports unfairly tarnished its reputation and was likely to chill free speech by its members. The suit, filed in Harrisburg, seeks an order halting the surveillance and asks for $125,000 in damages.

That may just be the beginning of the legal paperwork.

Sen. Jim Ferlo (D., Allegheny), a member of the Veterans and Emergency Preparedness Committee, said he planned to file three complaints, including one with the Office of Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Justice.

Ferlo said he is a member of a social-networking group that was listed in one of the 137 bulletins that emanated from Powers' office. The group, called Green Drinks, had a gathering in the spring where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato was invited to speak.

That gathering, Ferlo said, was assigned a "low-to-moderate" security threat rating by the bulletin.

"This contract is reprehensible," Ferlo said Monday at the hearing. "It borders on criminality, in my opinion."

The institute's codirector, Michael Perelman, said his firm had never spied on any groups or individuals. "There is no list," he testified.

He said the institution had merely collected and assessed information from various sources, and forwarded it to the state Homeland Security Office.