{"id":186308,"date":"2014-03-05T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T01:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/03\/05\/thats-mighty-white-of-you\/"},"modified":"2014-03-05T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T01:56:00","slug":"thats-mighty-white-of-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/03\/05\/thats-mighty-white-of-you\/","title":{"rendered":"That’s Mighty White of You"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>After much consideration, the CIA has admitted that it is supposed to follow the law<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The CIA has confirmed that it is obliged to follow a federal law barring the collection of financial information and hacking into government data networks.<\/span>

<\/span> But neither the agency nor its Senate overseers will say what, if any, current, recent or desired activities the law prohibits the CIA from performing \u2013 particularly since a section of the law explicitly carves out an exception for \u201clawfully authorized\u201d intelligence activities.<\/span>

<\/span> The murky episode, arising from a public Senate hearing on intelligence last week, illustrates what observers call the frustrations inherent in getting even basic information about secret agencies into public view, a difficulty recently to the fore over whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) and its surveillance partners.<\/span>

<\/span> Last Wednesday, in a brief exchange at the hearing, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, asked CIA director John Brennan if the agency is subject to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a three-decade-old law intended to protect computer systems, like those of financial and government networks, from unauthorized access.<\/span>

<\/span> Brennan demurred, citing the need to check on the legal complexities posed by Wyden\u2019s question, and pledged to give the senator an answer within a week.<\/span>

<\/span> The answer, agency spokesman Dean Boyd told the Guardian, is: \u201cYes, the statute applies to CIA.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That was about a month ago.<\/p>\n

Well, today, we discovered what this was all about.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the CIA was spying on the Congressional investigation of \u2026\u2026\u2026 wait for it \u2026\u2026\u2026 the CIA<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The CIA Inspector General\u2019s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA\u2019s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned.<\/span>

<\/span> The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency.<\/span>

<\/span> The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle over the 6,300-page report on the agency\u2019s use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons. The report is said to be a searing indictment of the program. The CIA has disputed some of the reports findings.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers \u2013 in possible violation of an agreement against doing so \u2013 that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge.<\/span>

<\/span> Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a panel member, apparently was referring to the monitoring when he asked CIA Director John Brennan at a Jan. 29 hearing if provisions of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act \u201capply to the CIA? Seems to me that\u2019s a yes or no answer.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> Brennan replied that he\u2019d have to get back to Wyden after looking into \u201cwhat the act actually calls for and it\u2019s applicability to CIA\u2019s authorities.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> The law makes it a criminal act for someone to intentionally access a computer without authorization or to go beyond what they\u2019re allowed to access.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know, even if they did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, this was a conspiracy to obstruct a Congressional investigation, so go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.<\/p>\n

What’s more, it appears that Barack Obama knew of, and thus at least tacitly approved the CIA spying on Congress<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an \u201cunprecedented action\u201d taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general\u2019s inquiry at Langley.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA\u2019s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cAs you are aware<\/span><\/b>, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee\u2019s oversight powers and for our democracy,\u201d Udall wrote to Obama on Tuesday.<\/span>

<\/span> Independent observers were unaware of a precedent for the CIA spying on the congressional committees established in the 1970s to check abuses by the intelligence agencies.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cIn the worst case, it would be a subversion of independent oversight, and a violation of separation of powers,\u201d said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. \u201cIt\u2019s potentially very serious.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

Not even Richard Nixon<\/span><\/b> had the stones to use government agencies spy on the Congressional committees that were investigate him.<\/p>\n

Worst Constitutional Law Professor ever.\u2122<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After much consideration, the CIA has admitted that it is supposed to follow the law: The CIA has confirmed that it is obliged to follow a federal law barring the collection of financial information and hacking into government data networks. But neither the agency nor its Senate overseers will say what, if any, current, recent …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,970,1062,1102,1041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-corruption","category-espionage","category-intelligence","category-law-enforcement-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}