Secret Surveillance Gives CIA Power to Subvert US Domestic Political Process
Local Editor
According to analysts, the secret warrantless surveillance program operated under Executive Order 12333 gives the CIA and other US intelligence services the potential power to subvert the political process in the United States just as they have done in many other countries.
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said it had obtained documents documenting the policy on authorizing warrantless monitoring of US citizens and green-card holders considered to be "homegrown violent extremists."
The huge scale of the secret surveillance program posed clear dangers to undermine and manipulate democratic political processes within the United States, cyberwar and data collection expert and author William Blunden told Sputnik.
"With decades of experience in manipulating affairs abroad there's a very concrete threat of the CIA wielding its tools inside American borders," he said.
"The perils of domestic covert operations are obvious given the nature of the CIA."
Blunden said the CIA had repeatedly carried out successful political coups and otherwise manipulated elections and political processes in countries around the world over the 70 years of its existence.
He described the system of surveillance as "a vast secret organization accountable only to the President which has since the end of World War II conspired to infiltrate and influence political systems in countries like Australia, Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Japan, Italy and more recently Syria."
Many Americans still believed that the CIA was prohibited by law from operating within its own country, but that had not been the case in at least 36 years since President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 in December 1981, Blunden recalled.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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