Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, February 18, 2024
In “Neutering the CIA: Why US Intelligence versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences“, former CIA analyst John A. Gentry details how the entire Intelligence Community (IC) failed to prevent the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, and for this failure was rewarded with bigger budgets. Now that it has become active in domestic politics, he noted, failures become even more likely, with many more American lives at stake.
This is from an agency tasked with providing intelligence on foreign adversaries.
Gentry details how the uber-woke agency is fully deployed against “another serious candidacy by Trump,” with operatives ready for reactivation “if even a traditional Republican again becomes president.”
The CIA, Gentry notes, like the FBI, has become a law unto itself.
“The real question for federal lawmakers is whether the CIA and FBI are even reformable, and how the people’s representatives might hold them accountable. Instead they seek to prolong surveillance measures that, as critics rightly contend, have no place in a free and democratic society,” Lloyd Billingsley wrote for The American Spectator on Feb. 16.
Late last year, Congress extended Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and, in doing so, secured “the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers” until April 2024. House Republicans have unveiled a new package to reauthorize those same powers, but with some limitations.
The Hill reported that the new FISA package “focus[es] on more reforms at the FBI to address misuse of the powerful spy tool,” but the deal does not include requirements for a warrant, which is “deemed a red line for the intelligence community but nonetheless a top priority for privacy advocates in Congress.”
The new measure “would severely limit the number of FBI personnel who can query the database, forcing more oversight from some 550 supervisors or lawyers before agents can tap into the database to gain information on Americans.” The bill aims to “protect members of Congress or other high-profile officials” by requiring consent before a “defensive briefing.”
The FBI will be required to “notify a member of Congress, with some limitation, if they have been queried in the 702 database.”
As many have noticed, that is where the FBI as a law unto itself comes in.
In August 2023, an FBI squad gunned down Craig Robertson, a 75-year-old woodworker, for things he had allegedly posted online. The killing was reportedly under review by the FBI’s Inspection Division, but as of this writing there has been no investigation by Congress.
Related: FBI tactics questioned in shooting death of elderly Utah man, August 11, 2023
As Newsweek headlined last Oct. 4, “Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears.” According to the report, the FBI has “quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.”
A “senior FBI official” told Newsweek: “We cannot and do not investigate ideology. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence or criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.”
The bureau, critics say, had before making that comment, and many times since, given Americans many reasons to question it.
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