{"id":58041,"date":"2021-03-27T17:43:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T21:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=58041"},"modified":"2021-03-27T20:55:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T00:55:30","slug":"not-quite-the-us-intel-community-has-been-deeply-involved-in-domestic-politics-practically-forever-didnt-the-cia-assassinate-jfk-in-63","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=58041","title":{"rendered":"Not quite—the US Intel Community has been deeply involved in domestic politics practically forever—didn’t the CIA assassinate JFK in ’63?!?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A letter from House Intelligence Committee members demands answers from the DNI about illegal breaches of the wall guarding against CIA and NSA domestic activity.<\/h3>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/p>\n

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Then-Vice President Joseph Biden (L) with former Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta (R) at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. (Photo by Alex Wong\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

A report declassified last\u00a0<\/strong>Wednesday\u00a0by the<\/a>\u00a0Department of Homeland Security is raising serious concerns about the possibly illegal involvement by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic political affairs.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Entitled \u201cDomestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021,\u201d the March 1\u00a0Report<\/a> from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared \u201cin consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security\u2014and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).\u201d<\/p>\n

Its primary point is this: \u201cThe IC [intelligence community] assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.\u201d While asserting that \u201cthe most lethal\u201d of these threats is posed by \u201cracially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs),\u201d it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: \u201cthose who oppose capitalism and all forms of globalization\u201d) to the right (sovereign citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic hatreds).<\/p>\n

The U.S. security state apparatus regards the agenda of \u201cdomestic violent extremists\u201d as \u201cderived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,\u201d which includes \u201copposition to perceived economic, racial or social hierarchies.\u201d In sum, to the Department of Homeland Security, an \u201cextremist\u201d is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a \u201cdomestic violent extremist,\u201d subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and other forms of legal restrictions:<\/p>\n

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Department of Homeland Security report, Mar.1, 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It goes without saying that violence of any kind \u2014 including that which is politically motivated \u2014 is a serious crime under U.S. law, and it is the proper role of the U.S. Government to investigate and prevent it. But there are real and important legal and institutional limits on the authority of the intelligence community to involve itself in domestic law enforcement, or other forms of domestic political activity, that seem threatened here, if not outright violated.<\/p>\n

In particular, the Report\u2019s acknowledgement that it was compiled by institutions including \u201cthe Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)\u201d has alarmed numerous members of the House Intelligence Committee. On Thursday, all ten minority members of that Committee wrote a previously unreported letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines \u201cto raise serious concerns about the production of this document by the Intelligence Community (IC) and to seek clarification of the facts related to its production.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the issues raised was that the DHS Report was not subject to the standard rigors of an intelligence community finding, yet continually makes sweeping claims that it prefixes with the authoritative phrase \u201cthe IC assesses.\u201d The Committee members found this \u201cto be misleading,\u201d adding: we \u201curge you to clarify which elements in the IC concurred with this judgement and the intelligence basis, if any, for that concurrence.\u201d In other words, Haines claims that these dubious assertions about various threats faced by Americans are the findings of the intelligence community when that is not true: just like the\u00a0originally false claim<\/a>\u00a0widely\u00a0spread by the media<\/a>\u00a0that \u201call seventeen intelligence agencies\u201d endorsed the 2016 election findings about Russian interference when, in fact, it was only a few which had done so. Haines\u2019 claims have support only from a few agencies as well.<\/p>\n

But the more substantive danger is the role played by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the domestic politics of the U.S., all in the name of fighting \u201cdomestic terrorism\u201d (similar dangers were previously created by the Bush and Obama administrations in the name of fighting \u201cinternational terrorism\u201d). As the committee members\u2019 letter details:st domestic activities,\u201d then demanded answers to a series of questions based on this substantive concern:<\/p>\n

Continue reading at:
\nhttps:\/\/greenwald.substack.com\/p\/the-us-intelligence-community-flouting<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics A letter from House Intelligence Committee members demands answers from the DNI about illegal breaches of the wall guarding against CIA and NSA domestic activity. Glenn Greenwald … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}