Massive election interference by the U.S. Intelligence Community to benefit the Democratic Party over the past decade is an actual threat to liberal democracy. Drastic reform is needed to keep our liberties from vanishing behind a veil of secrecy.
The community, which is tasked with protecting the homeland from foreign adversaries, reportedly interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections on the side of the Democrats. It should serve neither party.
Its job shouldn’t be copying the nefarious activities of notorious spy agencies of the past, such as Germany’s Gestapo, East Germany’s STASI, or the Soviet KGB. Nor should it be like that of Russia’s GRU or SVR or like China’s all-pervasive Ministry of State Security. This isn’t hyperbole.
The top appointees seem to forget that they serve the United States of America, not the Democratic Party. The Gestapo served the Nazis, not the German nation. The STASI served the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic, not that nation. The KGB was the sword and shield of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CIA and the FBI seem to have morphed into the sword and shield of the Democratic Party.
“American intelligence agencies are trained and equipped to use all kinds of capabilities against our enemies and in defense of the republic. That includes deceiving our adversaries, demoralizing them, and convincing them of things that are not true,” former CIA station chief Sam Faddis told The Epoch Times. “These capabilities, like those of our armed forces, should never be used against the American people, must never be used against the American people.
“And, yet, the Durham report and mountains of other evidence make clear that certain individuals within the Intelligence Community did just that. This is quite literally criminal, and people need to go to jail for it.”
When the Intelligence Community becomes a source of disinformation to the American people, it serves to undermine our republic. A democratic system requires an informed and educated populace. A misinformed populace that’s manipulated by propaganda can’t be a free people. A key function of intelligence is deception. That deception should be used against enemies, not against the candidates of the political party that isn’t in power.
Civil servants in the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and so forth have an obligation to check their politics at the door when they’re doing their jobs.
The FBI launched the devastating Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged collusion between Donald Trump, his campaign, and the Russian government based on an unsourced and uncorroborated dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele. The bureau failed to interview the sources behind the dossier, such as Igor Danchenko, an individual who years earlier had been the subject of an FBI counterintelligence operation. The Durham Report noted that Danchenko’s information could have been actual “Russian disinformation.”
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok allowed their personal partisan animus against Trump to cloud their judgment. That resulted in the violation of practically every important bureau rule when it came to the need to vet allegations. That didn’t happen.
Consequently, the bureau stooped to the level of the STASI, Gestapo, and other totalitarian agencies that fabricate crimes against political opponents. Strzok acted as a political propagandist, sowing unfounded rumors that the president and his team were Russian agents.
The lives of Trump campaign aides, including George Papadopoulos, J.D. Gordon, and Walid Phares, were ruined by the FBI’s unethical witch hunt and the Mueller investigation that followed Trump’s inauguration.
I had an inkling that something was up during the 2020 campaign because a high-ranking Green Beret officer told me that Twitter direct messages weren’t a safe means of communication. After Musk bought Twitter, it came out publicly that government agencies could allegedly access direct messages without a warrant.
Framing Trump as a traitor and using the phony Steele dossier as a piece of black propaganda to do so served this same purpose.
Many of the signatories also were donors to the Biden campaign and Biden Victory Fund.
Using psychological warfare tactics should be reserved for the nation’s enemies, such as Iran, China, or Russia, not the American people. Using such tactics against Americans should be a criminal offense that should carry a hefty fine in the millions of dollars to deter high-level spooks from doing these things again.
Congress must take steps to criminalize such activities. The PATRIOT Act opened the door to many of these abuses. It should be repealed root and branch. The act’s critics who said security and liberty can’t coexist were right 20 years ago.
Warrantless searches of social media should be criminalized. Due process of law must be restored along with the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise by a court of law.
We need solid legislation from the Republican House to address this, not just talk and hand-wringing.
