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Just Revealed - Obama-era CIA Spied on Congressional Staff Emails

by Kerri Lear, staff writer (with editor comments)

Editor's note: The fact that this was allowed to happen, and the fact that the CIA accepted this as a mission is an existential threat to our nation. When I was with the CIA, no one would have dared come near anything like this. In fact, the FBI (who has the domestic counter-intelligence mission) would not have dared collect against members of Congress without a detailed and specific court order. Times have certainly changed. Sponsored Ad Brennan should be in jail. Those of my former colleagues who participated in this should be immediately fired and considered for prosecution. An intelligence agency that spies on the people it is supposed to protect is not an agency of protection, its an agency of repression. And when it spies on democratically elected officials, it is an agency of treason. ------------------------------------ According to previously classified documents, the CIA under President Obama surveilled emails of some congressional staffers in an effort to "protect" the agency from whistleblowers. Apparently, the CIA claims that the spying was part of "routine counterintelligence (CI) monitoring of government computer systems." The CIA inspector general Charles McCullough at the time said that the surveillance was "lawful and justified." However, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) saw this as an abuse of power and violation of privacy. "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly. I have been asking the same question for years: what sources or methods would be jeopardized by the declassification of these notifications?" said Grassley. "After four and a half years of bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Directors Brennan and Clapper, we finally have the answer: none. The CIA has a vitally important function, especially when it comes to their critical counterintelligence work, but nothing--nothing--should inhibit or interfere with Congress' constitutional job and protecting whistleblowers." For two years, Grassley has been trying to get the memos detailing the CIA's surveillance activity during this time released to the public. Obama vowed to protect the government from whistleblowers and prosecuted eight people under the 1917 Espionage Act, which is more than double the number prosecuted by all previous presidents combined. "Critics further alleged that the administration displayed a double standard in aggressively prosecuting low-level whistleblowers while allowing high-profile, senior officials to go...More