Glenn Greenwald has a great breakdown of a letter submitted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) about the political weaponization of the intelligence community. For those who have tracked this issue Greenwald’s article is well worth the read.
GREENWALD – […] “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.” (read more)