The U.S. government long considered its collection of Americans’ call records to be a state secret. Now the Director of National Intelligence admits it would have been better if Washington had acknowledged the surveillance in the first place.
Even the head of the U.S. intelligence community now believes that its collection and storage of millions of call records was kept too secret for too long.
By any ordinary standard, James Clapper committed perjury before Congress when he was asked about this. But, we’ve been here before. I’ve discussed it many times. The Intelligence Community used to open all mail sent between the United States and the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc. There is no record that they had any presidential authority to do this, and the CIA considered it to work precisely because the privacy of the U.S. mail was considered so sacrosanct that even the Communists believed it was real.
When Senator Walter Mondale questioned CIA Counterintelligence chief James Angleton about what authority he had to open mail, he responded that the authority came from the Deputy Director of Plans, which would have been Frank Wisner at the outset of the program. Look at how he rationalized breaking the law:
Here is some more testimony from James Angelton.
The first segment has Curtis R. Smothers, Church Committee Counsel to the Minority (Republicans), questioning Angleton about why the CIA would open the people’s mail and who would authorize such an operation.
Mr. SMOTHERS. All right. With respect to the question then of mail opening, is it your experience that this kind of operation by the CIA
would have been discussed in interagency working group meetings among persons who would otherwise have been uninformed of such operations?Mr. ANGLETON. No, we would not raise such an operation.
Mr. SMOTHERS. In the normal course of things, would there have been an approval channel other than such interagency groups for securing
Presidential advice and consent to such operations?Mr. ANGLETON. I am not aware of any other channel.
Mr. SMOTHERS. Would such channels as the Special Group or the Intelligence Board have been a proper place for such matters to be raised?
Mr. ANGLETON. I do not believe that an operation of this sensitivity would have been raised in any body. It would have been-if there was going to be submission for Presidential approval, it would have been raised either by the Director of the FBI or the Director of Central Intelligence.
Mr. SMOTHERS. But in any event, it would not have been raised with this working group involved with the Huston plan?
Mr. ANGLETON. That is correct. That is correct.
Here is the Chairman, Senator Frank Church asking Angleton why the CIA would open people’s mail without any Presidential authority to do so. It should be kept in mind that the CIA might have actually had Presidential approval at one time (originating with Eisenhower) but their official story was that they did not. The CIA might have felt that if they ratted out prior Presidents no future Presidents would trust them. Or they might have been, as Senator Frank Church called them, acting like rogue elephants. In any case, here’s Angleton’s response.
The CHAIRMAN. But the CIA was the agency principally involved in the mail openings.
Mr. ANGLETON. That is correct for all foreign mail, not for domestic.
The CHAIRMAN. Yes; and we will explore the whole breadth of that program in due course. Did not the CIA have an affirmative duty to inform the President about such a program?
Mr. ANGLETON. I believe so, without any question.
The CHAIRMAN. But it apparently was not done. You did not inform the President. Director Helms did not inform the President?
Mr. ANGLETON. I would say, sir, not by way of any excuse, but those were very turbulent periods for the intelligence community and particularly for the FBI, and I think that all of us had enormous
respect for Mr. Hoover and understood the problems which he had in sustaining the reputation of the FBI.The CHAIRMAN. But the fact that the times were turbulent, the fact that illegal operations were being conducted by the very agencies we entrust to uphold and enforce the law makes it all the more incumbent that the President be informed of what is going on, does it not? It is really not an excuse.
Mr. ANGLETON. I do not think there was ever the forum in which these matters could be raised at that level. I think that has been one of the troubles in domestic counterintelligence and foreign counterintelligence that the issues never do get beyond the parochial circle of those engaged in that activity.
The CHAIRMAN. But you have said that there was an affirmative duty on the CIA to inform the President.
Mr. ANGLETON. I don’t dispute that.
The CHAIRMAN. And he was not informed, so that was a failure of duty to the Commander in Chief; is that correct?
Mr. ANOLETON. Mr. Chairman, I don’t think anyone would have hesitated to inform the President if he had at any moment asked for a review of intelligence operations.
The CHAIRMAN. That is what he did do. That is the very thing he asked Huston to do. That is the very reason that these agencies got together to make recommendations to him, and when they made their
recommendations, they misrepresented the facts.Mr. AXGLETON. I was referring, sir, to a much more restricted forum.
The CHAIRMAN. I am referring to the mail, and what I have said is solidly based upon the evidence. The President wanted to be informed. He wanted recommendations. He wanted to decide what
should be done, and he was misinformed. Not only was he misinformed, but when he reconsidered authorizing the opening of the mail 5 days later and revoked it, the CIA did not pay the slightest bit of attention to him, the Commander in Chief, as you say. Is that so?Mr. ANGLETON. I have no satisfactory answer for that.
The CHAIRMAN. You have no satisfactory answer?
Mr. ANGLETON. No, I do not.
Back in the 1970’s, the public was outraged about this and Congress was emboldened to enact real reforms. Those reforms went mostly to the wayside after the 9/11 attacks.
At first, the Intelligence Community had the blessing of the Bush-Cheney administration. Then it fell to the Obama administration to decide how much could be rolled back without angering the Intelligence Community or risking national security.
But the culture had been reestablished. The Intelligence Community thinks it can lie to Congress and the American people, and may even believe they can lie to the president. If they can collect intelligence, they feel like they are justified in doing so, regardless of the law. In some cases, they want us to believe we have privacy because our expectation of privacy is the very thing that makes collection of our communications worthwhile.
Well, there’s nothing pathological about that sort of power now is there?
I think it is basically their job to figure out how to collect all information, and it’s our job to tell them what they shouldn’t collect (even though they can).
I think about a situation like World War Two where we’re literally fighting for survival. It’s too late then to figure out how to collect. We ought to have that capability already. That’s how the NSA and the Defense Department think, and it’s reasonable up to a point.
But they need restraints imposed on them or it just becomes lawless.
This is what infuriates me about the lack of nuance Greenwald has infected this debate with. Too many people aren’t arguing for restraint or oversight, they’re arguing for the complete eradication of the NSA (or thereabouts) which is just hopelessly, ridiculously naive and harmful.
I’m pretty sure Greenwald argues the opposite: that we need restraint and oversight, not complete eradication. (Though perhaps you have a link proving me wrong.)
What infuriates me about your comment is how the lack of nuance leads too many people to argue that Greenwald, Snowden, Drake, and Ellsberg are a traitors who should be hanged.
(In other words, I’m not sure we should assign people responsibility for arguments they don’t actually make.)
The only person who fits that description is, perhaps, Assange. No one else argues this.
And as I’m sure many around here can attest, I don’t even like Greenwald’s work, think he’s a poor journalist, and is personally profiting from these documents and should not be personally praised for his work. IMO there should be demands for accountability from him. I wasn’t impressed with his first piece at his new digs, either.
Andrew Sullivan, surprisingly, stated it well:
My one reservation is that the site inherently leverages vital public information – the NSA docs – to help fund and launch a website. If your sole goal is to responsibly air the documents you have, then you simply release them (with rigorous redactions) as soon as possibe and let the web do its best. You don’t withhold them, threaten to embarrass governments with them, and then reveal them in stages, while launching a new website based on their news-worthiness. And if you do, you’re running the risk of appearing too much like the NSA itself. You’re withholding critical information from the public and releasing it in a way that benefits you financially. That’s not exactly entirely public interest journalism.
This is asinine:
Considering that the “critiques” of Wikileaks was that it didn’t withhold and did data dumps instead of reviewing and selectively releasing documents — and then when the official heat got too hot, Wikileaks was more or less put out of business.
Glenn’s latest [for those not sufficiently brainwashed with NSA/USA propaganda that Greenwald/Snowden/Assange are terrorist/traitor]: Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters
It reminds of nothing so much as ‘If Al Gore is right about climate change, how come he flies in airplanes, huh? Huh? Huh?”
Be perfect or begone.
So tiresome that so many people fall so easily for the shoot the messenger smears. Apparently with no recognition that it makes them look stupid.
I’m not shooting the messenger. I’m criticizing the messenger’s methods. I’ve never said, “None of this matters because Greenwald is doing it wrong.” Nor have I done, said, or agreed with any of the bullshit that New Republic and the Sean Wilentz’s of the world. I’m saying, “He’s doing it in a way that is self-aggrandizing, and he should rectify it.”
“He’s doing it in a way that is self-aggrandizing, …”
A charge that always gets leveled at messengers that get heard — and a whole lot of messengers that don’t get heard. Honestly don’t get those that take it upon themselves to criticize style over substance. The only relevant criteria is the work itself. Everything else is fluff and distraction. It works well to either discredit or elevate the actor/messenger. For example, Bob Woodward was part of the team that did good work once — and has been a hack in the service of the elite ever since.
Glenn adds another “Merry Prankster” — Matt Taibbi to Lead First Look’s Next Digital Magazine: “Former Rolling Stone journalist and best-selling author will build a team to report on financial and political corruption”
And if you noticed I’ve not criticized Gellman, or Snowden for that matter.
You seriously think that Gellman isn’t out to make a name for himself with this scoop? However, as a WAPO employee he’s shackled (if he even does possess adequate reportorial chops) and not so much from the NSA documentation that Snowden copied would have been released.
Gellman isn’t in sole possession like Greenwald. Of course he’s trying to make a name for himself. He’s also not dishonest in his reporting, or setting up shop funded by a sole billionaire by which would not be possible without said documents.
Speaking of which, I hate having to agree with Bob Cesca, but here we go again with Glenn’s Gang of Merry Pranksters and their shoddy reporting:
The Latest Snowden Revelation is Another Clear Example of Reporters Misleading the Public
Since the ASD was the agency doing all the spying in this instance, you’d think we’d see the ASD mentioned not just in the lede but throughout the article. Instead, it appears just once in the roughly 2,000 word piece. How many times did Risen and Poitras mention NSA? 32 times. To repeat, the spy agency in question was mentioned by name only once, while the NSA was mentioned 32 times.
Why is this significant? Farhad Manjoo wrote a fascinating and troubling post for Slate last year that showed how online readers hardly ever read through an entire article. Most readers, in fact, only read half, while many readers don’t even bother to scroll (on my computer, I had to scroll down to read the sole mention of the ASD). Anyone skimming the article would naturally see “NSA” all over the place. It appears three times before the ASD or Australia is ever mentioned.
The only involvement by NSA in the entire operation came when the ASD informed NSA’s Canberra liaison about the data collected about the law firm. In response, NSA’s general counsel office “provided clear guidance” for the ASD.
James Risen is now one of Glenn’s “Merry Pranksters?” How incredibly dishonest of you to link to an article criticizing the dishonesty of Risen and Poitras to advance your disgust with Glenn Greenwald. Personally, I don’t agree with Cesca on this because anyone that’s followed the Snowden NSA revelations appreciates that there’s about as much ASD independence from the NSA as the Port Authority Christie appointees were independent from the NJ Governor’s Christie’s office.
Who owns WAPO these days?
What do you mean by this:
As Gellman has Snowden supplied documents, Greenwald can’t be in “sole possession.” If Gellman didn’t get the full treasure trove of documents and if Greenwald did, who’s fault is that? Not that either you nor I know who got what.
btw – Jeremy Scahill is no “merry prankster” for Glenn or anybody else. Nor would I call any of the others at The Intercept that either — disagree if you wish, but for future reference, how about how about you identify the members of “Glenn’s Merry Pranksters?”
(Odd that such a big-fat-self-aggrandizer like Greenwald didn’t demand that he be the sole editor like the humble folks at other publications such at WAPO and NYTimes.)
After that, you can tell me/us what’s wrong with this:
You write:
Very nice, Booman.
Only…who are the people that you refer to as “our” in this sentence?
Who is “us?”
In a representative democracy, theoretically the elected representatives of the people are “our” spokesmen. Good so far, but…they have not done their job. Neither at the legislative level nor at the executive level have they done their job.
The usual liberal/conservative/centrist excuse for such lack of action? (The PermaGov is an equal opportunity controller, don’tcha know.)
I call bullshit.
I “knew” about it…at least to the level that I was quite sure it was happening and had been happening on one level of another since the early ’60s…and so did you and hundreds of thousands of others, plus…at the present time, after Mr.Snowden successfully performed his morality-based job at the serious risk of his own mortal ass…so do millions and millions of other Americans.
And yet you have called for Snowden’s punishment.
On top of which you still support the Obama administration and the political party to which it belongs.
Did Obama ‘know” about it? The same way that you and I and so many others knew? You are always praising his intelligence. I agree. He is highly intelligent. Intelligent enough to indeed know what was going on. Plus…I personally do not believe that he was not on some deniable level thoroughly appraised of the situation. he certainly “knows about it” now. Do you really believe his lame, ass-covering pronouncements are going to result in any appreciable improvements in the situation? I don’t.
How about the members of the House and Senate? Are they all so stupid as to not have a clue about what has been happening in this wonderful security state of ours? I mean…granted, the IQ level of those august assemblies is probably only a tick above the average intelligence of the entire country, but still…are none of them as smart as are you, me and thousands of of Americans? I don’t believe it. So all of the presidents since maybe Eisenhower, the members of their cabinets, the heads of the armed forces/intelligence forces and the entire 50 + years of federal legislature are all guilty of various levels of stupidity and/or sheer criminality regarding what has going on here.
And yet despite the fact that Rand Paul has actually had the courage to file a lawsuit against the NSA, you and your leftiness followers continue to support the lockstep “Anybody but Paul” movement and you will no doubt fall obediently into place when and if Hillary Clinton…herself a Senator and later Secretary of State whose native intelligence (let alone her position and connections) flat-out guarantees that she was a witting co-conspirator in this ongoing plot to keep the American public in the dark about this sort of criminality…you will fall obediently into line with the party line.
Disgusting.
On the face of it.
Thoroughly disgusting.
Sleep well.
You gonna need it.
Or…
Wake the fuck up.
The plot thickens like a slowly cooked soup, and we all included in its ingredients whether we want to be or not.
Nasty.
Remember Pastor Niemöller’s poem.
Remember.
And then WTFU.
AG
Even if I agreed with you about their job-which I don’t, since it’s sort of like arguing that it’s the job of the DOD to have cutting edge tech in every sort of WMD ready to go, international treaties de damned-there is very little evidence that the post WW2 intelligence community has ever been bound by any kind of restraint, ever. Which suggests that the system is fundamentally flawed and we need to start over.
It never went away. For the simple reason that secret NatSec operations have been endorsed by elites and rubes alike as necessary to “keep us safe” from some boogieman or other.
Mondale: It was illegal. Now are you an attorney?
Mr. Angleton: No I am not.
Mondale:Well, that me be an asset.
Made me spill my drink.
Seriously, though, the real danger is some of these programs is that a low level clerk can get spy on people without impunity, and without ever telling anyone else they were doing it.
The real danger of these programs is not from some low level clerk, but from someone much higher up who cannot see the difference between the constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression and “terrorism” or “treason” or “sedition.” Once you get a J. Edgar Hoover, say, who thinks that support for civil rights for African-Americans, say, marks you out as a traitor, and you then give that person the means to find out what ALL of us think, then we might as well repeal the First Amendment. There are undoubtedly plenty of higher-ups in our security state right now who think that anyone with political views to the left of Attila the Hun is a potential jihadi. It wouldn’t take much from where things stand now for those folks to start acting on that opinion.
Great, great stuff. Here in all its glory is our nation of laws, not men—and this is upwards of 40 years ago. As Marie pretty directly states, the idea that the Intelligence community was in any way “reined in” either by these revelations or the ensuing reforms turns out to be pretty much wishful thinking.
We now know (thanks mostly to Snowden and other whistle-blowers, certainly not members of Congress) that the great 70s reform that came out of these proceedings—the FISA court–“authorized” the whole Cheney mass data vacuuming operation without even issuing a substantive opinion. Some “reform”.
Although I suppose an intellectually dishonest opinion wouldn’t have really added too much to the dark comedy that is our national culture. But still, for form’s sake, they are a “court”, after all! Basically, it turns out (handpicked) judge blesses whatever activity is put in front of him (and it certainly appears to be mostly “hims”).
It’s kind of touching to read the transcripts of these Church Commission proceedings, which occurred in the pre-“Conservative” era. It actually seems as though the officials of the rogue agencies were then at least willing to admit to Congress the illegality of the operations and what was (at least partially) happening behind the curtains. Now they simply lie about it, and know there will be no consequences, let alone tepid reforms.
I have to wonder if any form of government, once set upon the path of authoritarian mass spying on the populace, has ever given up the habit without an actual revolution. The Church Commission was likely the high water mark of our “democracy” in this area. Today I wonder if a solid majority of Americans even oppose this oh-so-critical mass domestic spying. I think many think this squalid, unconstitutional abuse is keeping them “safe”. Just keep puttin’ your head in the sand on issue after issue….
It’s just a continuation of America’s post-WWII drift into fascism. When I carried mail in San Francisco the FBI used to open all mail that went to the Soviet embassy. And they routinely went through the mail of an elderly couple who’d been reds in the forties.
For decades law enforcement has had access to LUDs without a warrant, as per the Supreme Court. Having access and using that access isn’t that far a leap.
I would also point out that Oliver Stone’s latest eruptions aside, the President only leads the parade. He doesn’t draw out the parade route.
Angleton enjoyed this sort of thing immensely. You see, the entire “justification” for covert operations rests on one little clause in the section of the 1947 National Security Act that sets up the CIA, which says, after enumerating a number of specific functions, that the CIA is “to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.”
— 50 US Code 403(d)(5).
This has literally been used as a “get out of jail free” card. The CIA or the NSC do whatever the hell they like, legal or illegal, without asking anybody; and they have been following this practice for the last 60 years or more. Anything they don’t want to share with congress they will say that is classified on the basis of national security. This 25-word clause is the ENTIRE statutory basis for all of this, and it has in effect set up an secret government unaccountable to anyone.
NSC and CIA define for themselves “other functions and duties”, “related to intelligence”, “national security”– and they don’t do it “from time to time”, but ALL the time. The NSC “may direct” them, but in actual fact any time they want to do something they go to the NSC and say, we want to do x, and the NSC says fine.
Obviously something wrong here.