The reaction of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to last week's revelations that
the CIA secretly searched Senate Intelligence Committee computers reveals much
about what the elites in government think about the rest of us. "Spy on thee,
but not on me!"
The hypocrisy of Sen. Feinstein is astounding. She is the biggest backer of
the NSA spying on the rest of us, but when the tables are turned and her staff
is the target she becomes irate. But there is more to it than that. There is
an attitude in Washington that the laws Congress passes do not apply to Members.
They can trample our civil liberties, they believe, but it should never affect
their own freedom.
Remember that much of this started when politicians rushed to past the PATRIOT
Act after 9/11. Those of us who warned that such new powers granted to the
state would be used against us someday were criticized as alarmist and worse.
The violations happened just as we warned, but when political leaders discovered
the breach of our civil liberties they did nothing about it. It was not until
whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and others informed us of the abuses that
the "debate" over surveillance that President Obama claimed to welcome could
even begin to take place! Left to politicians like Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers,
and President Obama, we would never have that debate because we would not know.
Washington does not care about our privacy. When serious violations are discovered
they most often rush to protect the status quo instead of defending the Constitution.
Senator Feinstein did just that as the NSA spying revelations began to create
pressure on the Intelligence Community. Her NSA reform legislation was nothing
but a smokescreen: under the guise of "reform" it would have codified in law
the violations already taking place. When that fact became too obvious to deny,
the Senate was forced to let the legislation die in the committee.
What is interesting, and buried in the accusations and denials, is that the
alleged CIA monitoring was over an expected 6,000 page Senate Intelligence
Committee report on the shameful and un-American recent CIA history of torture
at the "gulag archipelago" of secret prisons it set up across the world after
the attacks of 9/11. We can understand why the CIA might have been afraid of
that information getting out.
When CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou exposed the CIA's role in torturing prisoners
he was sent to prison for nearly three years. But Senator Feinstein and her
colleagues didn't lift a finger to support him. So again you have the double
standards and hypocrisy.
The essence of this problem has to do with the difficulty in managing the
US empire. When the government behaves as an empire rather than as a republic,
lying to the rest of us is permissible. They spy on everybody because they
don't trust anybody. The answer is obvious: rein in the CIA; remove its authority
to conduct these kinds of covert actions. Rein in government. Lawmakers should
not defend Fourth Amendment rights only when their staffs have been violated.
They should do it all the time for all of us. The people's branch of government
must stand up for the people. Let's hope that Sen. Feinstein has had her wake-up
call and will now finally start defending the rest of us against a government
that increasingly sees us as the enemy.
