Is this a defense of the CIA? The first half of the article catalogs decades of failures ranging from comical to catastrophic.
"There was a time when the C.I.A.’s existential fear was of losing its adversary. In Al Qaeda, it found a new one; in Iraq, it created others. In Trump, it faces an adversary of a different kind."
Further, calling the Commander in Chief its "adversary" is terrible framing.. if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?
> if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?
The various executive branch departments were created by Congress and are supposed to follow the instructions given by Congress. Various theorists disagree as to the extent to which the President is permitted to override the instructions from Congress.
> The various executive branch departments were created by Congress
Yes
> and are supposed to follow the instructions given by Congress.
Well, yes, but also no. Executive agencies must adhere to the law, but Congress cannot fully set the Executive's policy. Congress has very limited powers to force policy on the Executive, mainly advice and consent (for appointments and treaty ratification) and impeachment.
Past Presidents have wielded vastly more power relative to Congress than the current one. You should see the things that Lincoln did! Lincoln: suspended Habeas Corpus even though the Constitution says only Congress can, he abrogated treaties against the will of the Senate even though the Senate believed that since ratification requires their advice and consent then so much abrogation (but the Constitution is silent on the matter of abrogation) and as a result modern treaties have abrogation clauses to try to hem in heads of state but obviously those clauses can only go so far, and many other things. President Jefferson denied Adams' 18 lame duck federal judge appointees their commissions (and Marbury had something to say about that, namely that it was unconstitutional but also that he couldn't do anything about it). And that's just some of the notable things that Presidents have done that Congress (or in Jefferson's case, the preceding Congress) didn't like.
It hardly matters what various theorists think while 6 justices on the Supreme Court are dedicated to giving the President as much power to override Congress as he pleases.
Which cases do you mean specifically?
I think immibis's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44639370) has a couple great examples of what I'm talking about. To add on, the Court has also allowed the executive branch to essentially shutter federal departments that were created by Congress, such as the Department of Education. They also ruled that lower federal courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions to stop executive action, thereby ending a check on presidential power that has vexed both parties when in office.
> To add on, the Court has also allowed the executive branch to essentially shutter federal departments that were created by Congress, such as the Department of Education.
The Dept of Ed had ~4200 employees and they laid of ~1400. It is not "essentially shuttered" currently regardless of the goal.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...
The important question is: "Can they fulfill their legally mandated obligations with the smaller staff?"
If the answer is "yes" then we saved money and still did the job. If the answer is "no" then we have a problem.
So far I haven't seen anyone identify "here are the legally mandated obligations that won't be fulfilled any longer" which would be useful and could be compelling.
When do you think he will shut the entire DOE down?
Can you elaborate on this? This past term, in the Loper Bright case[1] the Supreme Court took away a massive amount of power from the executive in interpreting statutes beyond what Congress specified.
[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
Uh, that was the past term. Have you also paid attention to the current term?
The current supreme court (which was also the supreme court past term) has a very consistent pattern of taking away power from Democrats and granting power to Republicans. Since the president is a Republican, they've been consistently granting power to the president; since the last president was a Democrat, they were consistently taking away his power. You can watch the pattern continue in 2029.
They ruled the president has unlimited power to do anything at all, without punishment, if it can be justified as a presidential duty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States - during the last term, but in relation to Trump.
Very soon after Trump took power, they ruled that courts cannot challenge the constitutionality of Trump's orders: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf?...
Notice all of these sorts of decisions are always 6-3: the 6 conservative justices forming a voting bloc in support of expanding Trump's power (specifically Trump, not just any president), and all 3 non-conservative ones voting against.
> "Very soon after Trump took power, they ruled that courts cannot challenge the constitutionality of Trump's orders"
No, specifically they said district judges couldn't write rulings that applied to other districts.
Your local city council would hit the same limitation if they attempted to write laws for other cities.
Which, is a mixed bag. Judge shopping was a huge problem from universal injunctions. But at the same time, what branch of government is the loss of the steadfast check-and-balance known as "universal injunctions" in favor of – and will now require for ANY AND ALL parties to ONLY be recognized for their loss and damages from actions of the Executive ONLY IF they have the means to sue for it and prevail – in a 1:1 cardinality? Could it be the Executive, who OP said this supported Kingsmanship for?
If a executive action is so unjust, so grotesque, and you need to round up parties damaged by it – outside of the absurdly long time most courts take to make things whole – can't that also be a way to round up people being directly targeted by 1 of 3 branches?
Example: EO-1 quietly builds a “voluntary” federal digital ID, so no one is harmed and nobody has standing for their own injunctions. Then, EO-2 later makes that ID mandatory to file taxes, get Social Security, renew a passport, etc. Real injury finally appears, but each citizen must sue alone and any victory helps only that plaintiff while everyone else stays locked out. The first order sinks the foundations; the second flips the switch.
Sometimes, there should be things that should have avenues to be quickly stricken down before more parties fall victim to them
This seems like a very ominous-sounding way of saying that Democrats have been losing in the Supreme Court lately and Republicans have been winning.
This framing torments me. Political parties "win" and "lose"... It's the quality of life of our parents, children, neighbors, and alike that waxes and wanes by the judgment of these far-removed decision makers.
By Republicans you mean the party hijacked by an authoritarian cult of personality.
You say "Stalin took over as dictator of USSR" and I say "This seems like a very ominous-sounding way of saying that Trotsky lost an election." That response would make sense if you'd said it about Arsenal vs Manchester, but when it's Stalin vs Trotsky it has real consequences, like the Holodomor, and shouldn't be trivialized.
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The President is chosen during an election for this very job. We can't discard democracy in order to save it if sovereignty is meant to be popular. We're not lucky like theocracies or kingdoms, where everything boils down to expert sages or raw power; the vote is the only thing that justifies our country. The only thing that makes people from the US a nation is their commitment to popular rule, one which inspired the world.
The Executive was made to serve the country and the law, not Congress. Congress is meant to serve the country and make the law. The Judiciary is meant to serve the country and rule on the Executive's service to Congress's written law, when asked. At any time and for any reason, Congress can impeach the President, and refer his case to the courts if they think it appropriate.
If law (as regulation) is made from arbitrary agencies, denying people access to the courts when disputing that law is not helpful for democracy, it is anti-democratic, because it denies access to the judicial interpretation of Congress's intent. Congress, however, is free to make itself clear at any time, if it has the votes.
This all comes down to complaining about not having the votes. And in democracies, we shouldn't be sympathetic to people who don't have the votes.
>"The only thing that makes people from the US a nation is their commitment to popular rule, one which inspired the world."
What's this even mean?
Sherman compromise (2 states per state in one chamber of the bicameral legislature) isn't popular rule,
the electoral college doesn't have to operate by popular role,
voter suppression in modern times isn't popular rule,
gerrymandering isn't popular rule.
These existing systems of structure in American political institutions ARE sympathetic to those without votes. We are not a pure democracy. This is civics 101 and amateur hour.
> The Judiciary is meant to serve the country and rule on the Executive's service to Congress's written law, when asked.
The Judiciary is meant to resolve justiciable [civil] controversies, and in its more boring role to try criminal cases. In particular the judiciary cannot exceed its jurisdiction which is set by law and the Constitution. The judiciary cannot say that something the Executive is doing is unconstitutional and force a remedy if the law does not allow it. That's what Marbury v. Madison was all about! In that decision the SCOTUS says that yes, the Executive's action against Marbury was illegal, but no the Court cannot remedy the situation because the law that would have allowed it was unconstitutional! (Holy pretzel batman!) In Marbury two wrongs made a right, or perhaps two wrongs made a third -- depends on how you look at it.
Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests the entire executive power to the President, so technically it is the President who is responsible for following and implementing the laws that Congress has passed. Since recent Congresses (going back to at least the 70s and somewhat even to the 1930s) have written laws somewhat vaguely to give the executive branch a lot of discretion, there is a lot of legal uncertainty as to what actions are allowed in this discretion. This is why so many of Trump's executive actions are working their way through the courts as it isn't immediately clear what he's allowed to do with his executive authority vs where he is stepping on Congress's toes. For example, it is an open legal question whether the President and executive agencies are required to spend every dollar allocated by Congress or if they can decide they've already spent enough to meet the Congressional intent of the spending and can decide to not spend anymore.
IMO CIA is probably a state within a state with its own agenda and does not get enough oversight.
Oversight is a two edged sword. In one side of the argument, too much oversight effectively slows everything down and makes keeping secrets much hardet. On the other side, without enough oversight the intelligence agency simply has its own agenda, depending on who really control its financing.
Judging from the history of the Cold War era, it is impossible to give enough oversight when you want to fight a cunning enemy. I bet it is the same on the Russian side.
Exactly. It seems obvious the CIA works for itself.
I would think this is true of any intelligence agency.
There is just too much power involved to not form an internal cabal. Financing is a trivial hurdle for the cabal to overcome once formed.
yes, such as when schumer warned trump that "the intelligence community has six ways from sunday to get back at you" on television.
Regardless of what one thinks of trump, this should be enough to have serious consequences for the CIA and other three letter agencies
> if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?
Unironically: Either themselves, or the American people.
All institutions are supposed to work for the people no? And kind of supposed to have some amount of independence for check and balances? To make sure none of them stop working for the people?
That's what I always thought.
There's the "at the pleasure of the president" kind of thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_pleasure_of_the_preside...
These jobs are pretty big ones like CISA chief but it doesn't matter much how well you serve the people or whatever. It just matters how well you serve the president
It depends on the definition of "people" I guess.
I find it incredibly weird that people stroll into a conversation like this, basically flexing the complete lack of civic knowledge they have.
I think it was sarcasm:)
Ostensibly the CIA continues to exist through your elected congressional leadership as an agency created by the National Security Act of 1947. Voters don't have to vote consistently and can choose to have one branch of government ideologically at odds with the others. This would be the CIA working for the people but without it being aligned with the President.
If Congress decided to end the CIA then they could pass a law abolishing the agency or pass laws that refine the things they can or cannot do, but they're not inherently beholden to the President. The legislative branch being at odds with an executive branch representative isn't inherently problematic unless you think the President should be king.
>"The legislative branch being at odds with an executive branch representative isn't inherently problematic unless you think the President should be king."
There's another lens: You could think this, and have it rooted in the belief that separation of powers and the "checks and balances" against political institutions should have expanded beyond 'Executive' <-> 'Legislative' <-> 'Judiciary'.
There are more than three institutions and checks and balances between them. There's also: a) the States as a foil to the Federal government (and vice-versa), and b) the jury.
Jury is really the ontologically-vested check and balance that “The People” receive, the rest are implied through negative rights (right to guns BECAUSE congress can’t infringe, right to speech BECAUSE congress cant abridge)
Jury is a positive right within the right of due process - AND the right of citizens to participate in - and is therefore treated as a compelled responsibility on members of the populace, that exists to quell concentrated power from legal proceedings. In my opinion, we should have had more of those - and “The People” should have been an enumerated institution within the political structure that offers more comprehensive positive rights, negative rights, and compelled (and tensioned) checks and balances against the other institutions (executive, legislative, judiciary, “state”)
> This would be the CIA working for the people but without it being aligned with the President.
If the POTUS feels the CIA is not obeying legal orders then he can roll heads till they do.
Isn't the point of the previous examples that every organisation ultimately works for its own survival/growth?
The cia was basically pointless when the ussr fell (I'm not sure I agree but that's the logic). It needed a reason to exist and Al Qaeda provided that. When that wore thin, it manufactured its own reason in Iraq, a country that had no wdm and was no threat. And so on.
I'm not saying I agree but that is the logic I believe
I didn't find it to be defending the CIA's failures in any way.
The CIA didn't call Trump its adversary, the reviewer of the book did. They also said that Trump was the Agency's adversary, not the other way around. It is also possible to be adversarial against an individual while doing a good job working for them (see for example everyone with a boss they don't like).
I wouldn't read too much about the intentions of the intelligence community into that provocative sentence by an unaffiliated book reviewer.
Hopefully the rule of law and democracy since the current POTUS is undermining those. Which is kind of ironic, given it's the CIA.
> Hopefully the rule of law and democracy since the current POTUS is undermining those
The current POTUS is doing neither of those things.
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Sending in troops to LA over the objections of the mayor and governor, masked ICE agents kidnapping people off the street without identifying themselves, people sent to El Salvador prison without due process in violation of a Federal judge's orders, Congress does his every bidding, conservative majority on SCOTUS continues to cede him executive power, sues newspapers and universities he doesn't like, threatens to arrest political opponents, lies about the Epstein files being a hoax. What more evidence do you need? He's consolidating power like Putin and Orban did.
They are working for their own black budget above all else.
Legality doesn't matter as long as the money keeps flowing.
The country and the people it exists to serve.
The president is not the state. That's been established multiple times in cases like Nixon, and unfortunately recently regressed with the Trump SCOTUS decision.
But in theory all these organizations swear an oath to the constitution, not to any branch of government, and especially not their leadership.
If any of the leadership issues illegal orders or does work to undermine the constitution or the country, according to the oath sworn by CIA agents, they should be doing everything they can to work against this leadership.
Even the military expects soldiers to reject illegal orders to commit gencode.
The peak of the "the president is not the state" was when the SCOTUS approved of the special counsel law in the 80s. After the Clinton fiasco the SCOTUS has pretty much adopted Scalia's dissent in that case.
> Further, calling the Commander in Chief its "adversary" is terrible framing
Terrible, but not an unusual one. There has been a lot of talk about CIA feuding with various presidents, starting from JFK at least. And it's not exactly a secret they do this:
> New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.
> “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
And man was Schumer right about that.
> who are they working FOR?
The same all large bureaucracies work for - itself. Self-preservation and self-expansion.