White House Was Aware Of CIA's Attempt To File Criminal Complaint Against Senate Staffers; Did Nothing To Stop It
from the disgraceful dept
As the scandal over the CIA spying on Senate staffers charged with oversight of the CIA deepens, it's now come out that the White House was fully aware that the CIA was pushing forward with a criminal complaint against those very same staffers and did nothing to stop it. It's been reported that the White House is standing strongly behind the CIA on this one, and that report confirms some of the serious Constitutional/separation of powers questions that have been raised over this incident.Having the White House be supportive of the CIA not only spying on its overseers, but then (even more ridiculously) filing a criminal complaint against those same staffers for doing their job speaks volumes about how this White House views Congressional oversight of its giant spying machine. It views it with contempt. It only reinforces how the claims that have been stated repeatedly over the past few months that there is plenty of oversight of the intelligence community are completely hogwash.
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Filed Under: cia, senate intelligence committee, spying scandal, torture, white house
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Respectfully submitted
Impeachment proceedings.
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Re: Respectfully submitted
It says a lot that most Republicans in the House and Senate haven't been on Obama like a pack of rabid wolverines over the NSA scandal, indefinite detention, trial-free assassination of American citizens (you know, fucking murder), or anything that actually matters to rights.
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Re: Re: Respectfully submitted
They cannot very well impeach him for stuff they are itching to do themselves once he is gone.
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Uh, guys, we can't. He'd bring his Republican colleagues down with him and they know it. All that stuff about Benghazi, etc., was really all about "Look over there!" while they wasted our money on spying on us.
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Re: Re: Respectfully submitted
Make up your mind, is the executive branch exceeding the authority granted then by congressional statute a problem or not?
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And so what? The only thing the IRS hasn't done right is to target all the politically active 'church' organisations that are welfare-mooching takers and tax-avoiders!
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The Reps are as guilty as the Dems for this crap and while they've been busy with Benghazi and emoting over Obamacare they're not interested in calling them out for the drone attacks, etc., because they actually approve of them.
That's why, despite the wailing against the surveillance state, they're not really doing much about it.
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-Oz
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Obama's bad, there's no doubt about that at this point, but his replacement...
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I used to think Biden would be worse. I'm not so sure anymore.
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But seriously, Obama would probably be out of office long before an impeachment process could happen.
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It is their responsibility to look out for the public. It is their responsibility to hold the executive accountable. It is their responsibility to demand further information, and if necessary, investigate suspected wrongdoing.
REmember that this didn't just happen - this has been going on in some form since the mid-2000s, whilst Bush was still in power. By all means, call Obama to account on this issue; but don't just call Obama to account.
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You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them!
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1 - He was outright corrupt from the start.
2 - He was corrupted when he took office.
3 - Worst of all is that he wasn't corrupted but he was blackmailed. Normally I'd dismiss it but given the track record of conspiracy theories being right on the spooks I'll consider it. I hope I'm wrong here. The implications of a shadow coup reducing the president to a mere figurehead is downright terrifying.
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If we work off the assumption it's true, then that raises a whole lot of other questions. Like when did it start? I'm willing to bet it goes farther back than you'd expect, all the way back to the Kennedy assassination. Especially when you read some of what he said about this exact type of thing. He knew something was awry, tried to warn us, and was murdered for it. I wonder if President Clinton was just another example of what happens if you get into office and refuse to play ball?
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Oh, it's a combination of bribery, corruption and blackmail. And they know it going in. Why would you go broke on campaigning for the presidency if not for the chance to make back a fortune by becoming a well-greased cog in the machinery?
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Please, just stop.
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The "intelligence" agencies have gone rouge.
Congress better wake up and realize that no one is off limits, and all this is happening under the cloak of terror... a self induced perceived "terror" to hijack the Constitution.
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We have done more damage to ourselves than any amount of planes could achieve. It's sad.
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I wonder if the general populace know what we know here if things would be different.
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Well, CIA and NSA are certainly one gay marriage not made in heaven.
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It's worse than that. We're actually doing the terrorist's work for them.
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The freedom of the U.S. was a pushover.
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A comment
What is next, re-education camps?
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In other words, yes.
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The Gestapo had a special bureau in charge of murders with pistols of caliber larger than 9mm, justified by used of such a weapon was an unusually horrible crime. They were armed with.... 11 mm pistols. They functioned as Hitler's assassination squad. If any of their victims were discovered, it was immediately assigned to them to investigate. That is how "the Night of the Long Knives" could take place with impunity. A simple administrative formality, rather like an executive order, and the asassins became immune.
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Words are cheap, it's actions that matter, and while his words may say that he's not happy with the out of control spying, his actions make plain the fact that he's got no problem with it as long as he can shift the blame away from himself.
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Feinstein's outrage
Congresscritters are addicted to power in a literal sense, they don't object to Tyranny. They only object to someone else having unfettered power.
And make no mistake, the USA has become a Tyranny ( Some refer to it as a Kakistocracy, but when the president can order what were once citizens to be killed without charge or trial, he is a Tyrant)
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You have no idea how the internal politics between the executive and the spy agencies of this are breaking. You have no idea if POTUS is in league with Feinstein, sympathetic, withholding judgement or opposing her. I know it's hard to take a wait and watch approach, but that's what responsible journalist and citizens DO until the details can be ascertained, then they ACT.
Reading the comments here and it's clear you've convinced a large part of your commentators that Obama is "with" the CIA on this issue. The evidence YOU CITE YOURSELF does not support this conclusion, and neither does that evidence support your headline.
In this instance, you're not better than the people and organizations you criticize. You should learn to take yourself more seriously. You should learn what taking things seriously entails.
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How so? I stand by it as 100% accurate. Upon informing the WH of what the CIA was going to do, it would have been entirely appropriate for the WH to say that's *crazy* to file criminal charges against your overseers. But it did not. Thus, it did nothing to stop it.
You have no idea how the internal politics between the executive and the spy agencies of this are breaking. You have no idea if POTUS is in league with Feinstein, sympathetic, withholding judgement or opposing her. I know it's hard to take a wait and watch approach, but that's what responsible journalist and citizens DO until the details can be ascertained, then they ACT.
The FACT is that the WH knew about these plans and did not stop it. As we reported.
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It is within their rights to file a complaint. What legal grounds does Obama have to prevent them? Absolutely none.
One interpretation of the known facts is Obama elected to disassociate himself from any investigation of the post 911 Bush/CIA actions and handed it off to Feinstein, herself a bullet proof supporter of the nsa/cia programs. If half of what your readers are hypothesizing is half true then if he wanted to rein them in and not have the long knives of 'politically disastrous world events' pulled out on his watch then he would have to, of necessity, appear to be supporting one thing, while enabling its opposite.
I am not saying this is the case, although I wish it were, I am saying that in this instance, with respect to this headline, in this article, as it corresponds to reality, it's a deceptive failure.
You're not without insight or industry. You should take yourself more seriously and a part of that means resisting rushing into the arms of your preferred narrative on every occasion. Another part of that is learning to generate alternative hypotheses for a given set of facts and withholding judgement until all facts are known. We don't even know what the cia is alleging in terms of specific laws having been broken. Sure, the whole reeks of certain cia officials trying to thwart an investigation. We know with 100% certainty that Clapper lied, and that the cia has gone completely rouge before, so these agencies are prone, then and now, to conceive of themselves and their mission as above Congressional oversight.
But none of that means Obama could have legally or politically had the leeway to stop the cia from filing a complaint in this specific instance.
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But until responsible journalists and citizens ACT, the details will never be ascertained.
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Over-sight - to pull the wool over the adversary's vision
Not exactly. There really is lots of "over-sight" going on.
In fact, many, many millions of tax payer dollars are spent on the people in charge of "over-sight" every year.
With semantics in the mix, the admin and its cheerleaders are telling the truth when they claim there is a shit load of very effective "over-sight" going on.
The problem is that in this case "oversight" means insuring that the crimes of the tri-letter agencies are not easily discovered by the "adversary", (often referred to as the American Public), and that leaks are covered up as quickly as possible.
Other aspects of federal "over-sight" include the rewriting of news reports to eliminate incriminating evidence, the harassment and blackmail of anyone who might be able to inform the public of the facts, and of course, financing TV and hollywood movies and series that depict spies as the good guys, to name only a few.
In the new Federal Dictionary, Over-sight means Preemptive and Hind-sight Cover-up.
So you see, they are telling the truth after all. There is lots of "over-sight" going on.
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MONITERED STALKED EXPLOITED
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Monitered HIPPA RIGHTS VIOLATED/ TORT PRIVACEY RIGHTS
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MONITERED EXPLOITED HIPPA RIGHTS TORT PRIVACEY RIGHTS VIOLATED
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