
The most dangerous domestic threat which President Trump will face when he comes into office is the Deep State bureaucracy which has long controlled much of the federal government. And, the CIA, operating with near-unlimited funds and behind a wall of secrecy, is directing the most dangerous Deep State operations designed to thwart President Trump’s second term, just as it did his first.
The Trump Administration may be tempted to try to make peace with the Agency or to go slow in achieving reform. It may be tempted to allow the CIA’s high command to remain in place in the hope that his few new appointees will prevent abuses. Or, the Administration may be tempted to appoint yet another Blue Ribbon panel to investigate CIA abuses and make recommendations. However, history demonstrates that if change is not swift and sure, the Agency will find a way to impede, or even destroy, the Trump presidency using all the techniques it developed in toppling foreign governments. Consider how decades of gradual efforts to achieve reform have failed miserably.
Rockefeller Commission: January 4, 1975 — June 11, 1975
President Gerald Ford appointed his (unelected, chosen by Congress) Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller to head “The President’s Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States.” It issued a report in 1975 which exposed some CIA abuses including opening Americans’ mail and surveillance of domestic dissident groups. It also reviewed some narrow issues related to the JFK assassination — specifically JFK’s backward head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown publicly in 1975), and the possible presence of CIA personnel E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas. The Commission also found evidence of CIA plans to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, Dominican Republic President Rafael Trujillo, and mentions of plots against Congolese President Patrice Lumumba and Indonesia’s President Sukarno.
Did it accomplish anything? Internal White House and Commission documents later revealed that the final report was radically edited by Ford’s Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, deleting an 86-page section on CIA Assassination Plots. Even then, the Rockefeller Report was viewed as such a “white wash” that the National Security Council recommended that President Ford take even stronger action against the CIA than the Report recommended, to prevent “giv[ing] a mandate to Senator [Frank] Church to come up with a ‘final solution’ to the CIA problem.”
The Church Committee: January 27, 1975 — April 1976
During this same period, and in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the Senate began its own investigation: the “Select Committee of the Senate to Conduct an Investigation and Study with Respect to Intelligence Activities Carried out by or on Behalf of the Federal Government.” Known as the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D-ID), it was the most serious effort to date to rein in the exploding growth of the federal intelligence agencies into a surveillance state, but it accomplished little of consequence.
The Committee did reveal the CIA’s “Operation Shamrock,” under which the government monitored 150,000 telegrams sent and received by Americans monthly. It revealed Operation MKUltra, a program in which the CIA conducted mind control experiments, often on unwitting subjects, using electroshock therapy, hypnosis, and mind-altering drugs such as LSD. Subjects included soldiers and mentally impaired boys in state homes. The story is told in a book by Stephen Kinzer: Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. An interim report was issued by the Church Committee on November 20, 1975 entitled “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.” It revealed multiple CIA attempts to assassinate foreign leaders — some successful and some not — often without even informing the President. In its “Operation Minaret,” the CIA was heavily involved in spying on Americans — including members of the Church Committee itself, including Senators Church, Mondale, and Baker.
As Church remarked about the abuses uncovered by his Committee: “Hiding evil is the trademark of a totalitarian government.” He added: |
[T]here is no more pernicious threat to a free society than a secret police which is operating beyond the law.… If these abuses had not been uncovered and had the agencies gone unchecked, we might well have seen a secret police develop in the United States. Once that begins, the Constitution itself is in very real danger. [Emphasis added.] |
Sadly, the Church Committee not only failed to change the CIA – the CIA was able to manipulate Congress to strengthen the Deep State.
The Church Committee issued 96 policy recommendations, including the creation of standing Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress to introduce some accountability to the legislative branch and the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”), designed to introduce judicial branch accountability.
Many view the creation of House and Senate Intelligence Committees as being ineffective or counterproductive, as the members are carefully selected to include only those most deferential to the CIA. When the CIA discloses to those Committees, it fulfils its duties, but most agree there has been no meaningful oversight. Actually, the existence of these committees may facilitate withholding information from the rest of Congress. The CIA won on that “reform.”
The second “reform” was to enact the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) which created the FISA Court (“FISC”). Though FISA was designed to require federal agencies like the FBI and CIA to have to obtain a judicial warrant before beginning a surveillance, the FISC system has enhanced government power. |
[U]nlike the court system for regular police warrants, the judicial system for the NSA is far more secretive. In order to give judicial scrutiny to preserve the secrecy of NSA activities, the FISA court meets in secret with only government representatives present at its proceedings. The hearings are closed to the public and the rulings of the judges are classified, and rarely released after the fact. |
The FISA Court gives near-total deference to intelligence agencies to determine whether its opinions will ever be made public. FISA Court operations are largely exempt from public scrutiny on the ground that it deals with national security matters. Despite the Church Commission’s good intentions, FISA Court review of intelligence agencies’ domestic spying continues to be more of a theory than actual practice. Shockingly, “[i]n the 33,949 [FISA search warrant] applications that were resolved from 1979-2012, only 11 were rejected (0.0324%).” Again, the reform was implemented, and the CIA won.
House Select Committee on Assassinations Charter Legislation Proposal Fails
In 1976, the House created the “Select Committee on Assassinations” to review the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Warren Commission had previously reviewed the Kennedy assassination and released its finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone, but it became known that “federal agencies had not disclosed important information to the Warren Commission.” Two books published in 1966, Rush to Judgment by attorney Mark Lane, and Inquest by Edward Jay Epstein, revealed other glaring failings of the Warren Commission, including a rushed timetable, failure to interview crucial witnesses, inadequate staffing, and a huge number of Commission hearings where only Commission attorneys were present and none of the members of the Commission.
The Assassination Committee’s report, released in 1979, found that the Warren Commission had “failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.” The Committee noted that “[t]he Central Intelligence Agency was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination.” The Committee determined that Kennedy’s death was in fact the result of a conspiracy and that at least two gunmen were involved.
The Committee recommended the creation of “charter legislation” for the FBI and CIA (presumably to update or replace the original CIA charter of 1947), establishing the responsibilities of the agencies and placing limits on their authority. But in an attempt to address agency failure leading to Kennedy’s death, the Committee recommended that such “charter legislation” should also include “[i]nstitutionalizing efforts to coordinate the gathering, sharing, and analysis of intelligence information [and] [i]mplementing mechanisms that would permit inter-agency tasking of particular functions.” Again, in their attempt to make federal intelligence-gathering more efficient, the Committee’s recommendations perhaps inadvertently strengthened the hand of the CIA against American targets of domestic spying.
Charter legislation for the FBI was introduced in the House in 1979 and the Senate in 1980. The legislation in the House closely mirrored the Senate bill and included aspirational language directing the Attorney General to “take all reasonable steps to insure that FBI investigations conform with statutory and constitutional law,” and directing the FBI not to “conduct an investigation solely on the basis of the lawful exercise of Constitutional or statutory rights, including the expression of a religious or political view or the right to peacefully assemble and petition the Government.” Even with such weak language, neither bill escaped the Judiciary Committees.
CIA Spies on Senate Staff During Torture Investigation
If any additional reasons not to study the matter further were required, it would be the CIA’s penetration of the Senate Intelligence Committee computer system to stifle its investigation of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program in March 2014. When Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) accused the CIA of spying on the Committee during its investigation into the torture of prisoners, CIA Director John Brennan denied it flatly: “Nothing could be further from the truth…. We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do.” Later, it was proven that the CIA spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Brennan lied through his teeth in denying it. Brennan’s track record of lies is well established.
The Lesson to Be Learned
The Rockefeller Commission accomplished literally nothing. The CIA spied on the members of the Church Committee, and although that Committee revealed a great deal, its reforms actually enhanced the power of the Deep State. The House Committee on Assassinations accomplished nothing as the CIA stopped proposed Congressional reforms, and the CIA is still hiding its records on the events of November 22, 1963. The CIA both spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating torture and then lied about it.
This historical record demonstrates why President Trump should not be tempted to follow The Calf-Path described in poetry by Sam Foss, |
For men are prone to go it blind; Along the calf-paths of the mind, |
Now is the time to get off the calf path to end the threat posed by the CIA to President Trump’s second term as well as to our Constitutional Republic. It is time for the type of decisive action that President Donald Trump has demonstrated repeatedly in becoming President of the United States not just once, but twice. |