This week marks 41 years since revelations about illegal government spying activities hit the New York Times. A refresher:
In December, 1974 Seymour Hersh wrote a lengthy article in the New York Times detailing the domestic spying activities of the CIA. He alleged that the CIA engaged in a pattern of break ins, wiretaps and mail intercepts targeting American citizens.
At the time that the article was written, the National Security Agency (NSA) was so secret that its name was rarely mentioned and its mission and capabilities went undescribed. It is likely that the CIA, as end user of NSA products, took the hit for NSA activities. This is speculation, on my part.
Hersh described how members of Congress were placed under CIA surveillance and that files were amassed on 10,000 citizens. CIA operatives worked directly for the White House and were responsible for some of the domestic spying activity. For more see: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/238963/huge-c-i-a-operation-reported-in-u-s-against.pdf
Hersh’s revelations led to an uproar in Congress that resulted in multiple committees being formed, the most famous of which was the so called Church Committee, named after Frank Church the Senator from Idaho. What followed was a two year investigation of U.S. intelligence operations going back through six Presidencies. (All were guilty of some transgressions).
The committee looked into such practices as targeted killings, domestic spying operations, mail intercepts and wiretaps. What resulted were new rules regarding the collection and sharing of intelligence information between law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies. Congress increased oversight into the intelligence.
Fast forward to 2015, add NSA to Hersh’s 1974 story, take out Nixon and substitute Obama. Once one accounts for changes in technology, out with mail cover, in with Internet and email monitoring. Mr. Hersh’s story is timely and ready for publication. I don’t think the New York Times or Congress would be interested.