How Widespread Is Domestic Political Spying?

From Real Clear Politics:

It would be easy to write off these stories as overhyped (if you dislike Trump), or proof that the intelligence community is out to get Trump (if you like Trump). But the threat of political surveillance should not be a partisan matter. After all, political surveillance hit a high point with the FBI and CIA in the (Republican) Nixon era, when both agencies were deployed to conduct domestic, political spying. 

To determine whether such spying has recently occurred, our nonpartisan civil liberties group filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the prominent agencies in Washington’s intelligence community. We first asked about surveillance of members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in both parties. 

The Office of the Director National Intelligence got back to us in just four business days. As often happens with FOIA requests, we received a boilerplate non-answer called a “Glomar response.” The agency said it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to of [sic] your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of the requested records . . . could reveal intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure.” 

When we asked the same question about presidential campaigns going back to 1978, we got the same answer. Another FOIA request, about the possible targeting of members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, produced a Glomar response within two business days. 

This method of institutional stonewalling originated from one of America’s most ambitious intelligence projects. In 1968, naval observers in the Pacific noticed a flurry of Soviet naval activity that could only have been a search for a missing submarine. The U.S. Navy located the wreck of the Soviet submarine K-129, capable of carrying nuclear missiles, 16,000 feet below the surface. Enlisting billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes to create an elaborate cover story, the CIA commissioned the state-of-the-art Hughes Glomar Explorer to recover the wreck. The project quickly generated rumors. Unwilling to acknowledge its project to the media, the CIA issued the first “Glomar” response. (Read more.)

Share