The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving
Itself in Domestic Politics
A letter from House Intelligence Committee members demands answers from the
DNI about illegal breaches of the wall guarding against CIA and NSA domestic
activity.
Glenn Greenwald
Mar 24
Then-Vice President Joseph Biden (L) with former Central Intelligence Agency
Director Leon Panetta (R) at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. (Photo by
Alex Wong/Getty Images)
A report declassified last Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security
is raising serious concerns about the possibly illegal involvement by the
intelligence community in U.S. domestic political affairs.
Entitled "Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021," the
March 1 Report from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was
prepared "in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of
Homeland Security-and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center
(NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)."
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Its primary point is this: "The IC [intelligence community] assesses that
domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of
ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the
United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021." While
asserting that "the most lethal" of these threats is posed by "racially or
ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent
extremists (MVEs)," it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range
of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists,
pro-choice extremists and anarchists: "those who oppose capitalism and all
forms of globalization") to the right (sovereign citizen movements,
anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic
hatreds).
The U.S. security state apparatus regards the agenda of "domestic violent
extremists" as "derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,"
which includes "opposition to perceived economic, racial or social
hierarchies." In sum, to the Department of Homeland Security, an "extremist"
is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for
distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence,
intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a "domestic
violent extremist," subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and
other forms of legal restrictions:
Department of Homeland Security report, Mar.1, 2021
It goes without saying that violence of any kind - including that which is
politically motivated - is a serious crime under U.S. law, and it is the
proper role of the U.S. Government to investigate and prevent it. But there
are real and important legal and institutional limits on the authority of
the intelligence community to involve itself in domestic law enforcement, or
other forms of domestic political activity, that seem threatened here, if
not outright violated.
In particular, the Report's acknowledgement that it was compiled by
institutions including "the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with
contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA)" has alarmed numerous members of the House
Intelligence Committee. On Thursday, all ten minority members of that
Committee wrote a previously unreported letter to Director of National
Intelligence Avril Haines "to raise serious concerns about the production of
this document by the Intelligence Community (IC) and to seek clarification
of the facts related to its production."
Among the issues raised was that the DHS Report was not subject to the
standard rigors of an intelligence community finding, yet continually makes
sweeping claims that it prefixes with the authoritative phrase "the IC
assesses." The Committee members found this "to be misleading," adding: we
"urge you to clarify which elements in the IC concurred with this judgement
and the intelligence basis, if any, for that concurrence." In other words,
Haines claims that these dubious assertions about various threats faced by
Americans are the findings of the intelligence community when that is not
true: just like the originally false claim widely spread by the media that
"all seventeen intelligence agencies" endorsed the 2016 election findings
about Russian interference when, in fact, it was only a few which had done
so. Haines' claims have support only from a few agencies as well.
But the more substantive danger is the role played by the CIA and other
intelligence agencies in the domestic politics of the U.S., all in the name
of fighting "domestic terrorism" (similar dangers were previously created by
the Bush and Obama administrations in the name of fighting "international
terrorism"). As the committee members' letter details:
The Intelligence Committee members, citing the fact that the intelligence
community is "subject to longstanding prohibitions against domestic
activities," then demanded answers to a series of questions based on this
substantive concern:
Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of U.S.
citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and
democratic order the U.S. Government can perpetrate. It was after World War
II when the CIA, the NSA and other security state agencies that wield
immense and unlimited powers in the dark were created in the name of
fighting the Cold War. Legal and institutional prohibitions on wielding that
massive machinery against the American public were central to the
always-dubious claim that this security behemoth that operates completely in
the dark was compatible with democracy. As the ACLU noted, "in its 1947
charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part
because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in
political abuse."
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Since then, Truman's fear has been realized over and over. Some of the worst
post-WW2 civil liberties abuses have been the result of breaches by the CIA
and other agencies of this prohibition. As the ACLU documents, the CIA in
the 1960s was caught infiltrating and manipulating numerous domestic
political activist groups. Under the auspices of the War on Terror, entire
new bureaucracies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) and new
legal regimes (such as the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act) were
designed to erode these long-standing limitations by dramatically increasing
surveillance powers aimed at U.S. citizens. And by design, the infiltration
of these security state agencies in U.S. domestic politics has dramatically
escalated.
As the first War on Terror was escalating, The Washington Post - under the
headline "CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations" - reported in October, 2002,
that "The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence,
placing agents with nearly all of the FBI's 56 terrorism task forces in U.S.
cities." The Post added that in the name of that War on Terror:
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as
his answer to MI5, Britain's internal security service. Unlike the CIA, MI5
is empowered to collect intelligence within Britain and to act to disrupt
domestic threats to British national security. "It goes some distance to
accomplishing what the MI5 does," Mueller told a House-Senate intelligence
panel last week in describing the new CIA role in the FBI task forces.
In the years following, two NSA whistleblowers - William Binney and Edward
Snowden - both cited their horror over the turning of the surveillance
machinery against American citizens as the reason for their decision to
denounce their agency. One of the aspects that most disturbed me about the
Russiagate conspiracy theory from the start was that it was created and
disseminated by the CIA and related agencies with the intent, first, to
alter the outcome of the 2016 election, and then to undermine the elected
president with whom they were at war. Shortly before Trump's inauguration,
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) went on The Rachel Maddow Show to warn - or more
accurately: threaten - Trump that the CIA would destroy his presidency if he
continued to criticize or otherwise oppose them:
It is encouraging to see Republican members of the House Intelligence
Committee starting to express serious concerns over the dangers of
intelligence community involvement in domestic politics. That is underscored
by their approving citation to the mild mid-1970s reforms of the
intelligence community ushered in by the Senate's Church Committee, once
primarily a liberal cause. Indeed, many of the same House Republicans who
wrote this important letter to the DNI have in the past supported laws that
allow greater involvement of the CIA, NSA and other agencies in activities
on U.S. soil - including the Patriot Act.
The head of the Church Committee, Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), made clear in
his iconic quote on Meet the Press in 1975 that those reforms were primarily
motivated by fears that the U.S. Government would one day turn its vast
intelligence powers onto the American people, rendering core civil liberties
an illusion:
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing,
the United States government has perfected a technological capability that
enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (...) We must
know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around
on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is
the capability to monitor everything-telephone conversations, telegrams, it
doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
(That quote from Sen. Church was the first one that appeared in my 2014 book
on the NSA reporting I did with Edward Snowden, and the title of that book,
No Place to Hide, was a nod toward Church's chilling warning, now come
true).
As I have been repeatedly noting over the last two months, the Biden
administration, along with leading Democrats such as Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-CA), have been stating explicitly that one of their top priorities is the
adoption of new laws designed to import the Bush/Cheney/Obama War on Terror
onto U.S. soil for domestic purposes. As recently as February 14, The
Washington Post - under the headline: "The agency founded because of 9/11 is
shifting to face the threat of domestic terrorism" - noted that Rep. Bennie
Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is
now demanding that homeland security resources be re-directed toward
domestic extremists, and "lawmakers of both parties spoke favorably of new
legislation to specifically address domestic terrorism."
Nobody from the Biden administration or Congressional members demanding
enactment of Schiff's proposed new "domestic terrorism" law can identify any
activities that are not now criminal that they believe ought to be. Unless
it is to permit intelligence agencies to start policing constitutionally
protected speech and associational activities among U.S. citizens, why are
any new laws needed? Unless it is to empower them to escalate their
already-aggressive use of War on Terror tactics against U.S. citizens, what
do they want security state agencies to be able to do on U.S. soil that they
cannot now do?
But just as the fear of international terrorism was constantly inflated to
place such questions off limits when it came to the War on Terror, and just
as critics of the excesses of the first War on Terror were constantly
accused of downplaying the threat of Islamic extremism if not harboring
outright sympathy for it, the same tactics are being used now. Anyone
raising civil liberties concerns about what is being done in the name of
combating "domestic extremism" is vilified as ignoring and even supporting
such domestic extremism.
No matter: there are few dangers more acute than the weaponization of these
security state instruments against U.S. citizens for political ends. The DNI
should provide full, complete and truthful answers to the important
questions posed by these Intelligence Committee members, and should do so
promptly. The evidence of growing incursions by the intelligence community
in U.S. domestic politics is already strong and ample, and further
incursions would be both dangerous and illegal.