Rare News Desk
Congress makes the laws – that’s the general idea in America. Sure, a few thousand overbroad executive orders get in the way of that, but generally speaking, it’s still the combined efforts of the House and Senate that gives us the laws we usually don’t want or need.
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But what about the powerful folks who are just… there? The Supreme Court ruled as part of the 1997 Auer v. Robbins decision that courts should defer to executive agencies when there is disagreement over their actions, and over how much they are abiding by the law.
The Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro reminded us in March that Auer is huge. It officially shored up the powers of the agencies to glance at the law of the land, and then keep on following their usual policies as they have done so in the past — even when laws have changed since such policies were put into place. An American Spectator piece last month agreed that “Auer deference is contrary to fundamental principles of separation of powers.”
Earlier this week, The Boston Globe interviewed Tufts University Professor Michael Glennon, who has a snappy new term for this kind of problem. Glennon has has written a new book called National Security and Double Government.
Double government is a better term for what the more conspiracy-minded call “shadow government.” Better because we know the names of the organizations which run our defense and national security industries. We just don’t seem to know how to hold them accountable for what they do to our rights.
Glennon told the Globe that “reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government.” It hasn’t yet. Not enough of it, anyway. Edward Snowden’s leaks shone a light on the NSA’s powers, but this has not yet led to much concrete reform.
And the NSA is far from being the only problem. Given the timidity of Congress, the giant muscles of the executive branch, and the lack of consequences for any government official doing anything horrible, it rather seems like the security state does what it wants freely.
On October 26, The New York Times published an excerpt from an upcoming book which details the extent to which the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) hired and protected ex-Nazis from prosecution after World War II. at least 1000 ex-Nazis or collaborators were held for intelligence reasons.
This wasn’t novel historical information, except that there was a lot more of it than previously thought. The protection of these people lasted in some cases until the 1990s.
Most disturbing are the details of the CIA assuring Adolph Eichmann lackey Otto von Bolschwing that just because Eichmann had been snatched from hiding in Argentina and brought to Israel for trial didn’t mean Bolschwing was in any danger. After all, it would be “embarrassing for the U.S.” if Bolswching’s status as a CIA worker living in America were revealed.
Perhaps some of the 1,000 Nazi assets brought back useful information to the CIA or FBI. But is protecting someone who helped plan the Final Solution for Europe’s Jewish population something that a purportedly trustworthy organization of the U.S. government ought to be doing? Shouldn’t someone have been scolded for that at some point?
The reason the CIA and FBI got away with this is because of who they are. They are secret, they have little accountability. Secretary of State John Kerry noted about the National Security Agency (NSA), many of their actions are “on autopilot.”
Or, they are simply their own animal, hidden away from public eyes, and away from most Congressional Executive oversight. For almost 50 years, J. Edgar Hoover ran the Bureau. He collected more than 400,000 files on Americans, some of which could have embarrassed anyone who tried to declaw him.
Things haven’t changed much after Hoover. In 2013, the FBI released a report that suggested that every single agent-involved shooting has been justified. Also, FBI Director James Comey has been speaking out angrily against Apple’s new default encryption on their devices. Comey wants Congress to pass a law mandating that technology always have a backdoor for law enforcement snooping.
And then there’s the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The have a presence in more than 60 countries around the world. They look up AT&T phone records with Project Hemisphere, and they use National Security Agency (NSA) tips. They have access to the more than 800 billion records in the NSA’s version of Google known as ICREACH.
There’s so much more. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has armed raids now. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is busy spying, and also raiding shops selling panties that violate the Kansas City Royals copyright protection. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) bumps from one scandal to the next, loses guns it was supposed to be tracking, and then sends more to Mexico, with no consequences.
There are 70 armed federal agencies with 120,000 persons who can carry guns. Somewhere, it seems, there should be redundancies in who kicks your door in over drugs, who arrests you for environmental issues, who wants to engage you in a sting over guns, and who is cozying up with Nazis.
Maybe we could cull it down to one domestic federal agency, and one creepy spy group that doesn’t spy on Americans. But probably not. The balance tipped long ago. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are interested in cutting away at the myriad unaccountable agencies that make up our government.
More worrying, though, is this idea that they probably couldn’t do much about it anyway.
