All Department of Defense intelligence and counterintelligence personnel will receive “refresher training on the policies for collection, retention, dissemination and use of information related to U.S. persons,” according to a DoD memo dated January 13.

The memo (PDF) says that all such personnel involved in the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) system will receive the training by January 31, 2006.

The TALON system came to light last month after it was revealed that DoD was collecting information on U.S. citizens involved in peaceful protest activities.

Information about U.S. persons which turns out not to be an actual threat to national security is supposed to be deleted after 90 days. The DoD promised to review the program and make any necessary changes.

However, William Arkin points out that TALON is only one program among several in the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) and that while the 90 day requirement applies to all programs, only TALON has been scrutinized closely.

Arkin cites the Joint Protection Enterprise Network database, which is shared between intelligence and law enforcement and managed by CIFA, as an example.

JPEN incorporates not just TALON reporting from the military services, but also intelligence reporting and law enforcement information. Though it must comply with the same requirements to purge information about U.S. “persons” after 90 days if there is shown to be no foreign government, terrorist, or law enforcement connection, the Pentagon has so far managed not to discuss this expanded program of domestic information collection, nor the overall work of the super-secret CIFA. — William Arkin

Arkin, who has been attacked in right-wing circles over his national security reporting, also disagrees with a Newsweek article published this week in which he was a source. The article claims that CIFA may have collected “thousands” of names of U.S. citizens.

“I don’t believe it,” Arkin said. “There is no hard evidence, based on the database I originally obtained for NBC News or any other documents I’ve seen, that CIFA collected any ‘names,’ and certainly not names in the thousands.”

That doesn’t sound like a “bitter anti-Bush partisan” to me, as John Hinderaker called him. And this is why, if you hear anyone denounce someone as being on the “left” or a “right,” it usually means the person speaking has no idea how to respond intelligently to the issue at hand.

(As I said before, finding good “conservative” blogs is extremely difficult, and this of course is a shining example of why I can’t bring myself to read Power Line. In fairness, it’s also extremely difficult to find good “liberal” blogs…)