I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies.
It is illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans and an affront to our Republic to spy on the Senate.
Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.
Well look, CIA is an agency that has to collect intelligence, do operations. We have to take risks and it's important that we take risks and that we know that we have the support of the government and we have the support of the American people in what we're doing.
For some, the very act of intelligence gathering seems illegitimate when applied to the crime of terrorism.
If we are going to conduct espionage in the future, we are going to have to make some changes in the relationship between the intelligence community and the public it serves.
There's been intelligence that terrorists would look to programs such as the visa waiver program to exploit.
CIA officers aren't idiots. They knew they were heading into deep water - legally and morally - when they signed up for the interrogation program. That's part of the agency's ethos - doing the hard jobs that other departments prudently avoid.
I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing.
In much of the world, there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense.
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