CIA: No Big Deal That We Trained NYPD to Conduct Domestic Spying

The CIA announced in September it was going to review a narrow aspect of the way CIA officers set up NYPD’s domestic spying agency in the wake of 9/11. As I pointed out then, the investigation was scoped to ignore key parts of the NYPD’s program.

The NYPD program is, by all appearances, a massive ethnic profiling operation that hasn’t been all that effectiveat finding potential terrorists. DOJ ought to be conducting this investigation as a potential civil rights violation.

But instead, CIA will conduct the investigation, meaning the chances the public will know the result are slimmer even than if DOJ conducted it.

[snip]

So is CIA particularly worried? Both James Clapper and the CIA flack appear to be narrowly parsing the potential problem: whether or not there are CIA officers on the streets of NY, whether they are investigating domestically as opposed to overseas (remember, the NYPD is sticking its nose into overseas investigations, too).

And, surprise surprise! CIA’s Inspector General just announced that it found no problem in its narrowly scoped investigation.

The agency’s inspector general concluded that no laws were broken and there was “no evidence that any part of the agency’s support to the NYPD constituted ‘domestic spying’,” CIA spokesman Preston Golson said.

[snip]

David Buckley, the CIA’s inspector general, completed his review in late October. It’s not clear if his report opens the door for other municipal police departments nationwide to work closely with the CIA in the war on terror.

Let the ineffective, wasteful domestic spying continue then, I guess!

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8 replies
  1. bmaz says:

    Remember boys and girls, the CIA IG has the unusual set-up of reporting directly to the CIA director, an arrangement made after former IG John Helgerson actually slipped out a few truths here and there.

  2. P J Evans says:

    If the PTB had wanted a real investigation, it would have been done by DoJ. And they would have discovered that the CIA has been merrily violating laws intended to keep it from doing exactly what they’re doing in NYC.

  3. P J Evans says:

    @jo6pac:
    It might not be much of an improvement, but tat would depend some on what they were told to investigate. Letting someone investigate their own actions, however, is always a bad idea.

  4. nomolos says:

    The question is what are they really spying on.

    Are they, in reality, looking for those that would disturb the status quo of USA Corp, are they looking for DFHs that might disrupt the cozy arrangement between corrupt politicians and corrupt bankers, are they looking for the un and under employed that might heckle the privileged riding in their stretch limos, are they trying to weed out those that would try and bring daylight to the brutality of the Bloomberg private army? They surely cannot be looking for “terrorists” because, as we all know, the terrorists that would bring down America live and work in DC and can be found at any fundraiser.

  5. matt carmody says:

    It doesn’t hurt that David Cohen, one of Bobby Gates’ butt boys at the CIA, was named Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence right after 9/11 and began filling the Intelligence Division with cops who had top secret and above security clearances in addition to cops who were active reservists.
    Who knows how many cops are now secretly on active duty reporting to DIA, military intel, or CIA, just another violation of the National Security Act that prohibits CIA from operating on American soil.

  6. rugger9 says:

    This was very bad news, in that the CIA, et al., fail to understand what “protecting the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic” means.

    “We had to burn the village to save it” brings back memories we don’t need to relive.

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