The report of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has had a big impact on Congress. For the first time in twenty years, lawmakers are considering fundamental reforms to laws authorizing the surveillance of millions of Americans. Once sacrosanct on Capitol Hill, the 2002 Patriot Act and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are...
Category: United States
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Washington Post: Keep Intelligence Briefings Open to the Public
A stinging tweet from President Trump about the intelligence community’s Capitol Hill public briefing on Iran a year ago has the intel chiefs ducking. According to Politico, U.S. officials have suggested to the House and Senate they testify only behind closed doors. The editors of the Washington Post object. The change would undermine the public...
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How Late DCI William Colby Saved the CIA, and What That Can Teach Us Today
The back story to President Trump’s feud with the CIA dates back to the 1970s when CIA director William Colby navigated the aftermath of Watergate. That’s when the House and Senate Intelligence Committee’s were created, as well as the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Colby’s efforts to rehabilitate the CIA were not popular in the...
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The ‘Deep State’ Isn’t a Conspiracy. It’s a Political Faction
[This story was first published in The New Republic as “‘The Deep State’ Is a Political Party,” November 8, 2019)] It was, in the eyes of Trump World, the very clubhouse of the Deep State: the plush, blue-carpeted, wood-paneled 13th floor auditorium of the National Press Club, located in the heart of the Washington swamp,...
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The ADL Smeared Me. So I Complained to the Anti-Defamation League.
A Jewish friend from Queens emailed me last week, “Oh look, you, Phil Weiss and Max Blumenthal are being called anti-semitic by ADL” I checked out the link. Our reportage and commentary was included in an ADL blog post on “anti-semitic responses” to the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. How was my alleged anti-semitism...