Domestic spying

Ronald Bailey | From the December 2024 issue

Citizens surely expect the government to be on watch against terrorist attacks like 9/11, against destabilizing aggression like Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and against clandestine efforts to steal military secrets or undermine our elections. Those are the explicit goals of the 18 secret intelligence agencies in the federal government, but the leading ones are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). The mission statement of the CIA "is to preempt threats and further U.S. national security objectives," while the NSA's motto is: "Defending Our Nation. Securing the Future."

So far, so good.

But secret agencies are fundamentally resistant to oversight, especially by the very governments that create them. The Roman poet Juvenal famously asked, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" That is usually translated as "Who will watch the watchers?" A more accurate translation is "Who will keep me safe from my watchers?"

In his 2020 book The Spymasters, journalist Chris Whipple quotes one former agency director as saying, "A president would never abolish the CIA because then he would have no one to blame." And the agency is........

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