At a time when warrantless spying on American citizens, and renewal of all or part of the Patriot Act are making the news, perhaps an insight into and/or a close look at the conduct of the people in the intelligence community - the folk on the ground who actually do that warrantless spying and who implement the Patriot Act - could help that discussion. I mean, we're talking about a whole lot of power and authority given to secretive and shadowy people who don't have that much oversight, or that many internal or external checks and balances, to begin with. There's a lot of potential for abuse there. Now they are asking for even more power and authority, with even less oversight, checks, and balances.
Maybe they should get what they're asking for, or maybe they should not. Either way, I think the decision makers could benefit from illustrative examples of spooks taking advantage of the opportunities for corruption, the safeguards in place to prevent such corruption, the response up the spook chain of command when it is made aware of such corruption, and the adequacy of internal oversight and/or command-and-control processes within the intelligence community.
There will be many illustrative examples in this web page, and a quick overview of most is contained in the Complaint (also copied and pasted here). Each is a potential case study in of itself, but my personal favorite revolves around a government official from the intelligence community teaching a prospective recruit about marksmanship over a period of months, during which time that recruit was subjected to various behavioral modification and disorientation technicques, then giving him a scope-mounted rifle with instructions to go after the President (Complaint, para. 104-105). That is actually considered funny by the warped standards of CIA Directorate of Operations humor - but that's another story in of itself.
Now, regardless of what one might think of George W. Bush, most people would probably agree that a government official from the intelligence community handing out scope-mounted rifles to people with instructions to go after the President is probably a bit iffy and illegal. How long do you think it would take before a person given such a rifle and task could get through to a senior official - "hey, that intelligence official/ government employee... yeah, that one... anyhow, on such and such dates, he trained me on marksmanship, then gave me this scope-mounted rifle, and asked me to go after the Prez"? A few hours? A few days?
If your answer was something in the neighborhood of over eight months' worth of writing various whistle-blowing letters to the FBI or the relevant congressional oversight committee or the Department of Justice, among others, and getting form responses like this one or this one from the FBI, this one from the DOJ criminal division, this one from the DOJ civil rights division saying they don't investigate civil rights violations, or just no response at all, you'd be right.
As it turns out, taking my whistleblowing complaints of corruption to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was probably the most fruitless and DOA of my attempts. Guess who was in charge of the Subcommittee on Human Intelligence - the one with direct oversight over the very Directorate of Operations folk whose corruption, bribery, and extortion I was complaining about? Randall "Duke" Cunningham, who recently pled guilty to some breathtaking corruption, bribery, and extortion of his own. To make it worse, one of the Directorate of Operations guys at the heart of this mess was connected to a federal contractor called ADCS, which had lavishly bribed Mr. Cunningham in exchange for millions of dollars in federal contracts.
An added aside is that the chairman at the time of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Oversight used to be in the CIA's Directorate of Operations before going into politics. Once in Congress, he worked his way to being in charge of congressional oversight of his former colleagues in the Directorate of Operations. He is now the Director of the CIA, and as such is the first named defendant in the litigation - arising from the corruption and abuses of power that took place in a vacuum of oversight over the Directorate of Operations back when he was the guy in charge of congressional oversight. The intelligence world is kind of incestuous like that.
Setting aside the Duke-stir, once you experience that kind of FBI/ DOJ bureaucratic apathy and indifference first hand (assuming that's what it was, and not some bent officials simply doing other bent officials a favor), it becomes easier to comprehend how these guys could have had a couple of 9/11 hijackers in their grasp, but still managed to let them away.
It was only after giving up on the DOJ and FBI, who could be too chummy with their CIA counterparts, and contacting people at the 911 Commission instead, that somebody finally arranged to bring the Secret Service into this - at which point things began to move at a faster clip, what with an investigation and subsequent sting operation directed at the intelligence official who'd been handing out scope-mounted rifles, and that resulted in former CIA Director's George Tenet's sudden "resignation." Amazing how fast the machinery of state could move at times - reminds me of the Daily Show's John Stewart likening government to a fat and seemingly lethargic guy who's a mainstay at a local bar, doing nothing for years but chug down beers and watching his gut expand, but who suddenly moves like lightning once in a blue moon when the right buttons are pushed.
Anyhow, whether that's indicative of the overall quality of oversight within the intelligence community or just a fluke, I don't know - but it's probably worth assessing and weighing when making the call on lessening the oversight processes on our spooks.
To put this into perspective, I live in New Jersey, a state whose storied history of corruption by public officials takes a backseat to none. Yet even in my little New Jersey township, the powers that be would probably conduct a halfway decent investigation and make more of an attempt at corrective action if they were notified that, e.g.; patrolman John Smith was abusing his cop priviliges to solicit bribes and/or shake people down for money or sex. Certainly more of a stab at corrective action than the powers that be at the CIA made when apprised that people in their recruitment department were extorting money and sex from prospective recruits (Complaint, para. 36, 48-55, 67-68, and 78).
Not to mention that my local police department probably doesn't have liaison officials on its payroll whose job consists of sweeping the misconduct of dirty cops under the rug and coordinating with other officials to intimidate aggrieved citizens into silence. The CIA on the other hand not only turns a blind eye when apprised of official misconduct and abuses by its personnel, but goes a step further and actually employs liaison officials whose job boils down to sweeping the misconduct of CIA officials under the rug, and coordinating with local officials to intimidate wronged and aggrieved citizens into silence (Complaint, para. 54, 60, 78, 84-99, and 104-111).
Despite fostering a permissive environment that offers plenty of opportunities for misconduct, abuse of power, and corruption, the powers that be at the CIA are just shocked, shocked, whenever one of their own makes the transition from small time corruption to the big leagues, and graduates from chump change bribery, extortion, shaking down people for money and sex, to, say, selling secrets to the Russkies.
The outline and barebones of the story are contained in the "Facts" section of the Complaint such as:
CIA recruiters and other government officials in the intelligence community soliciting bribes and extorting money or sex from prospective recruits as a prerequisite for advancement or as a condition for avoiding adverse official action.
The atmosphere of unchecked racism within the CIA's Directorate of Operations, in which D.O. officials not only think it is OK to refer to African Americans as "niggers," but also feel free to proselytize to all and sundry a white-separatist and neo nazi-esque social philosophy that praises the former apartheid policies of South Africa and thinks slavery in Old Dixie had gotten an underseved bad rap.
The cult-like atmosphere within the CIA's Directorate of Operations that could lead a CIA supervisor to reproach a prospective recruit for "exhibiting signs of independent thinking. The CIA doesn't like independent thinkers - we're looking for 'yes men'," (Complaint, para. 75).
How CIA officials, under the cloak of secrecy and national security, bring the full power of the government to bear upon, harass, and intimidate into silence would-be whistleblowers or those who just don't feel like paying off and otherwise lining the pockets of government officials - we're talking thousands upon thousands of taxpayer-funded man-hours wasted (you are reading this, after all), not in attempt to protect and safeguard the generous taxpayers, but to protect and safeguard the careers of a cabal of corrupt DO officials from embarassment and accountability.
How local officials are co-opted and corrupted (Complaint, para. 84-98) by CIA cleanup crews comprised of government employees whose job is to liason with local officials to sweep CIA employees' misdeeds under the rug. Although that backfired just a little bit, and might have gotten a judge taken off the bench, the odds of criminal prosecution for a judge whose courthouse is a scene for judicial corruption and case fixing are negligible when that judge's brother happens to be the local Commonwealth Attorney (what they call a DA in Virginia).
This part of website is about fleshing out the details of that story.
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