10 times the intel community violated the trust of US citizens, lawmakers and allies
No matter where you stand politically, a growing body of facts raises the question: Is there systemic corruption or misfeasance at work inside America’s intelligence agencies?
By that, I don’t mean people stealing money. I mean officials who are stealing our privacy — using the tools of intelligence-gathering and law-enforcing, which are meant to protect Americans, to instead spy on them, to gather information that isn’t the government’s business (at least not without a court’s approval). And, in some instances, it appears, to punish or silence those with whom they disagree — personal and political foes, in and out of government — rather than to pursue and protect Americans from the country’s real enemies.
Perhaps more alarming is the growing evidence that suggests some officials at all levels in intelligence and justice agencies are operating in a way that is clearly intended to serve their own political beliefs and interests — not the public’s interests.
And sometimes, it appears, they operate not just in direct defiance of their superiors but of the Congress, the courts and the very laws of the land as well.
(Almost as disturbing, Congress, for its part, seems all too willing to allow all of this to take place, when it becomes known, rather than using its authority to stop the misfeasance, punish the miscreants who lie or stonewall, and protect their constituents.)
This is not, in my view, a partisan political question. The evidence leading us to ask such a disturbing question indicates there are forces inside our intelligence agencies that are more persistent and powerful than any single political party or administration. They can usurp the intentions of the many fine intelligence officers serving our country.
The following examples are not a comprehensive list; instead, they are a representative guidepost that demonstrates the cause for concern while showing that this is not a new phenomenon or one confined to a single administration:
Telecom takeover
Joe Nacchio, CEO of telecom giant Qwest, said that after he refused to spy on his customers for the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant in February of 2001, the government retaliated by yanking a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars and filing an insider trading case against him. He went to prison. The government denied charges of retaliation.
Olympic spying
In 2002, the NSA reportedly engaged in “ blanket surveillance ” of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, collecting and storing “virtually all electronic communications going into or out of the Salt Lake City area, including … emails and text messages” to “experiment with and fine tune a new scale of mass surveillance.” NSA officials had denied such a program existed.
Spying on Congress
In 2005 intel officials intercepted and recorded phone conversations between then-Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage. In 2009, someone — exactly who was never revealed — leaked Harman’s “unmasked” name to the press. In 2011, intel officials captured private communications between then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and a Libyan official. The wiretapped recordings were later leaked to the press — again, by unknown sources.
Journalist "witch hunts"
Internal emails from a “global intelligence company” executive in 2010 stated: “Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources. Note -- There is specific tasker from the [White House] to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked.” The name “Brennan” appears to reference then-U.S. homeland security adviser John Brennan , who went on to become CIA director.
Misleading on mass spying
On March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that intel officials were not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden soon revealed material that proved Clapper’s testimony false : The government had been gathering and storing data from ordinary Americans’ phone records, email and Internet use.
More spying on Congress
CIA officials improperly accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computers, according to an Inspector General report in July 2014, contradicting denials by then-CIA Director Brennan. Meantime, Obama intel officials secretly captured communications of a half-dozen members of Congress and organizations in the U.S. while wiretapping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
NSA privacy violations
In fall 2016, the government confessed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “ significant non-compliance ” of crucial procedures designed to protect privacy rights of U.S. citizens. The judge accused the NSA of “institutional ‘lack of candor’” and declared: “This is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”
Intel mutiny?
Government requests to see or “unmask” names of Americans whose communications are “incidentally” captured during national security surveillance are supposed to be rare and justified. Yet Obama administration officials made them on a near-daily basis during the 2016 election year. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice admitted under pressure that she “unmasked” senior Trump transition officials who met with a foreign official under surveillance at Trump Tower. In early 2017, the CIA, NSA and FBI refused congressional requests to provide a list of unmasking requests made by Obama officials. Meantime, the FBI also stonewalled Congress about the opposition research “dossier” against Trump that the FBI obtained during the campaign.
Politically motivated press leak
In May 2017, former FBI Director James Comey secretly orchestrated a “leak” to The New York Times of negative memos he said he wrote contemporaneously about President Trump , with the motive of spurring the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president’s alleged Russia ties. Special counsel Robert Mueller (who has served under Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Obama and both Bushes) was appointed a short time later.
Conflicted investigators
One purpose of special counsel investigations, such as the Russia investigation being led by former FBI Director Mueller, is to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. But multiple investigators working on Mueller’s team have been removed after being caught in compromising positions. They include FBI agent Peter Strzok who sent a questionable text message to a fellow agent with whom he was having an affair. The message talks about needing an “insurance policy” in case Donald Trump were elected president.
Think all this really doesn’t matter to you, as a private citizen? You never know. Reality hit home for me when multiple computer forensics reports confirmed extensive government surveillance of me while I reported for CBS News during the Obama administration. Rather than cooperate or expose the bad actors, today’s Department of Justice is opposing my lawsuit over those intrusions in Virginia federal court.
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Whether you're Republican, Democrat, Independent or consider yourself leaning or tied to any political party, the Intelligence Agencies seem to have taken on an agenda unworthy of American Citizens respect or trust.
The Hill did a great job of completely ignoring the whole warrantless wiretapping thingy by the Bush administration. The DOJ and the Bush Administration documented their FISA violations. There were Congressional hearings. Not a peep about it in the seed. Interesting...
Dulay, you can put them on here, I don't care. My objective is to rid ourselves of the people in the 'Deep State" who are not working for us.
Bullshit.
Trump has a big job ahead of him draining the swamp and dismantling the deep state. Unfortunately he has to fight those he is helping because they bought into the lies and propaganda of the deep state.
Donald Trump IS the swamp, Deano. The right lost their minds over Hillary speaking to Goldman Sachs, but have no problem with Trump putting GS people in place in high level government positions! The CEO of Exxon is the Secretary of State. You can't even make this stuff up, it's so bizarre. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.
Tillerson is probably one of the straight shooters fighting the deep state. Haven’t you noticed their nonstop attacks against him and all the lies? Fortunately few on the right are buying into their propaganda these days.
Ohhh, the 'deep state, ' I see. No, I'm not talking about the irrational, conspiracy theorist, gubmint fearing 'deep state' stupidity, I'm talking about 'the swamp' which most people define as the corporate lobbyists and politicians who are subservient to the corporations and Wall Street.
The government isn't perfect, but it is the only thing standing between us and outright slavery. Trusting huge, heartless, completely amoral corporations over the very people we elect to represent our interests, is insane. The horrible 'regulations' that the right wants to abolish are put in place by OUR representatives, for OUR benefit. Do you want the drinking water everywhere in the country to be like Flint's? I have hope you can see the light one day, Dean, you aren't a hopeless ideologue.
Anytime that happens, you know they are doing a good job.
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected.
Actually what I have noticed most is that Tillerson states what US foreign policy is one day and Trump refutes what he said the next. It's happened multiple times despite the allegation that Tillerson and Trump talk all the time and are on the same page but to our allies, adversaries and the American people, it looks like they aren't reading the same freaking book. They are a national and international embarrassment.