Here's what I believe. I believe that gov't agencies like the CIA, the NSA
the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the 12 other National Security Agencies are largely unchecked. From their budgets to their activities, they operate largely in secrecy and not just from the American people but from Congress and to some degree from whatever administration is in power.
You want to talk about too big to.... be controlled, then let's talk about the National Security Community.
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The U.S. intelligence budget (excluding the Military Intelligence Program) in fiscal year 2010 was $53.1 billion,[7] according to a disclosure required under a recent law implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This figure is up from $49.8 billion in 2009,[8] $47.5 billion in 2008,[9] $43.5 billion in 2007,[10] and $40.9 billion in 2006.[11]
In a statement on the release of new declassified figures, DNI Mike McConnell said there would be no additional disclosures of classified budget information beyond the overall spending figure because "such disclosures could harm national security." How the money is divided among the 16 intelligence agencies and what it is spent on is classified. It includes salaries for about 100,000 people, multi-billion dollar satellite programs, aircraft, weapons, electronic sensors, intelligence analysis, spies, computers, and software.
About 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors for the procurement of technology and services (including analysis), according to a May 2007 chart from the Office of the DNI. Intelligence spending has increased by a third over ten years ago, in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.[citation needed]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._intelligence_community
Do I believe the NSA phone record grab is the tip of the iceberg? Of course. Do I believe that some of these agencies actively spy on Americans? Given their history, one would have to be blind or a fool not to.
I believe that over the years, these agencies have done more to harm U.S. Security than to protect it. I believe that they operate with near impunity (actually, make that clear impunity).
For those of you who think my beliefs about this are nothing but paranoid delusion, I give you endless evidence:
From 2007:
Long-secret documents released Tuesday provide new details about how the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on Americans decades ago, from trying to bug a Las Vegas hotel room for evidence of infidelity to tracking down an expert lock picker for a Watergate conspirator.
Known inside the agency as the �family jewels,� the 702 pages of documents released Tuesday catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A.�s existence.
The papers provide evidence of paranoia and occasional incompetence as the agency began a string of illegal spying operations during the 1960s and 1970s, often to hunt links between Communist governments and the domestic protests that roiled the nation during that period. Yet the long-awaited documents leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet. And many activities about overseas operations disclosed years ago by journalists, Congressional investigators and a presidential commission are not detailed in the papers.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27cnd-cia.html?_r=0
Do you actually think that with an ever increasing budget, the CIA and other agencies are operating any differently than they have in the past? Mark Mazzetti, who wrote the above, doesn't.
Over the last couple of years, numerous authors have reported on specific aspects of America’s counterterrorism effort, including the Navy SEAL team operations, the bin Laden raid, other targeted killings and the drone strikes.
The virtue of Mark Mazzetti’s new book, “The Way of the Knife,” is the way in which it perceptively ties all these events together and paints the larger picture: Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America has gradually developed a new way of war, one that thoroughly relies on secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. It “is now easier,” Mr. Mazzetti writes, “for the United States to carry out killing operations at the ends of the earth than at any time in its history.”
Such actions are not unprecedented, as Mr. Mazzetti, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, acknowledges in his book. The C.I.A. carried out large-scale paramilitary operations in Vietnam and supported them in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Pentagon has long engaged in spying.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/books/the-way-of-the-knife-by-mark-mazzetti.html?pagewanted=all
Get back our country? We haven't had it since the U.S. created this massive web of intelligence agencies after WWII. And as long as they still operate, unrestrained, with enormous budgets, we won't.
That's what I believe.
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that will betray the Democratic Party's platform to support their neo-liberal agenda.
