The Commerce Department’s Secret ‘Gestapo’
When you think of bizarre government coverups, you don’t tend to picture the U.S. Commerce Department. Nevertheless, according to a Senate report put out last year, a little-known security unit within the department was responsible for years of bizarre investigations targeted at the agency’s own employees. The unit, known as the Investigations and Threat Management Service, was apparently tasked with trying to root out foreign espionage. The unit then targeted government employees of Middle Eastern and Chinese heritage, looking for evidence that they were working for a foreign enemy. According to the report, the unit…
“lacked internal policies defining the scope of its investigative authorities for most of its existence, which allowed it to become what whistleblowers described as a ‘gestapo.”’As a result, the unit investigated employees across the Department of Commerce and within the ITMS by designating them as threats to critical assets, often without reasonable suspicion that the subject posed a particularized threat or maintained connections to hostile foreign actors.”
The creepy unit’s activities included breaking into employees’ offices to rifle through their personal documents and also monitoring their social media posts. It was subsequently shut down after the Congressional investigation into its activities.
