Last month the Pentagon quietly released what it termed a new defense “strategy” for the United States that greatly expands the role the US military will play in domestic operations. The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support calls for military deployments on US soil in the event of a terrorist attacks, asserts the authority of the president to make such deployments, assigns new priorities to the military for defending the "homeland," and outlines a greater role for the military in intelligence gathering. Under the new guidelines, the military will team military intelligence analysts with civilian law enforcement to track "terrorists" by developing a "cadre" of Pentagon terrorism specialists to work with domestic law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.

While the military is preparing to increase its domestic activities, the United States military has begun an investigation into charges that the California National Guard was being used to conduct surveillance of antiwar protestors as part of "anti-terrorism" activities (there are reports that the investigation is being obstructed). The intelligence gathering was conducted by the California National Guard’s Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management, and Intelligence Fusion Program and was given the broad charge of assisting in anti-terrorism activities. An email exchange published in the Mercury News showed the Guard conducting surveillance of a rally at the California capitol building consisting of Goldstar Families for Peace, Raging Grannies, and CodePink. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a California Public Records Act request for further documents related to the surveillance in order to obtain a clear picture of how much surveillance has been conducted.

Critics of the both the new expansion and the California National Guard's activities have pointed out the similarities to COINTELPRO, a massive FBI counterintelligence program employed by the FBI from 1956 to 1971 to neutralize dissent by what it termed "radical" political organizations working towards social change by addressing issues such as civil rights and the Vietnam war. During the 1960s the military collected intelligence on more than 100,000 Americans opposed to the war and actively tried to disrupt the antiwar groups in clear violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that banned the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement.