As a teenager I participated in a number of protests against the Vietnam war. I never truly believed the (mostly older) protest organizers at the time who warned me that our actions were being monitored by the CIA. Weren’t they being just a little bit paranoid? Those were certainly paranoid times; but come on, didn’t the CIA have more important things to do, like assassinate foreign leaders and stage coups? Well, it turns out those older and wiser anti-war protesters knew what they are talking about: this week the CIA released to the public the family jewels – secret papers that document its own illegal activities over several decades. You can download the 700+ pages of documents at this New York Times Web page.
"Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, the research group that filed the Freedom of Information request in 1992 that led to the documents’ becoming public, said he was initially underwhelmed by them because they contained little about the agency’s foreign operations.
But Mr. Blanton said what was striking was the scope of the C.I.A’s domestic spying efforts — what he called the “C.I.A. doing its Stasi imitation"…
What is truly breathtaking is the shear number of American citizens who opposed the war that were spied on by the CIA:
"The C.I.A. undertook a domestic surveillance operation code-named Chaos that went on for almost seven years under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Mr. Helms created a Special Operations Group to conduct the spying. A squad of C.I.A. officers grew their hair long, learned the jargon of the New Left, and went off to infiltrate peace groups in the United States and Europe. The agency compiled a computer index of 300,000 names of American people and organizations, and extensive files on 7,200 citizens. It began working in secret with police departments all over the United States."
This is not a situation of an out-of-control rogue agency breaking the law at will. Rather, these illegal operations were expressly ordered by the President(s).
Releasing these documents at this time was supposed to wipe the slate clean. The CIA’s current director wants to draw a line between the bad old days, and the a new day, where the CIA acts legally:
"General Hayden drew a contrast between the illegal activities of the past and current C.I.A. practices, which he insists are lawful."
But, as at least one German journalist has pointed out, the CIA today may be operating "legally", only because the Bush administration has gutted the constitution, by "legalizing" torture, extraordinary rendition, and the extensive wiretapping of American citizens:
"Laut Agency-Direktor Michael Hayden ist die Veröffentlichung Teil des »sozialen Kontraktes« der CIA mit der Öffentlichkeit. Sie ermögliche einen Blick »in eine ganz andere Ära mit einer ganz anderen Agency«, womit gesagt werden soll, daß der US-Geheimdienst mittlerweile nur noch legal operiert. Das tut die CIA auch: Folter, Entführung und Verschleppung in Geheimgefängnisse sind laut US-Präsident George W. Bush und dem US-Justizministerium heute legal."
