©
Getty Images
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
(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.
Sharyl
Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson)
is an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist,
author of The New York Times bestsellers “The Smear”
and “Stonewalled,” and host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV
program “Full
Measure.”
TAGS DONALD
TRUMP JOHN
BRENNAN JAMES
COMEY SHARYL
ATTKISSON FBI NSA CIA DEPARTMENT
OF JUSTICE FISC EDWARD
SNOWDEN UNITED
STATES FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION UNMASKING
BY U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES MASS
SURVEILLANCE UNITED
STATES INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES
