At this point, there’s only one member of the United States Senate who consistently tries to keep the US Intelligence Community (USIC or IC for short) on some kind of leash. That senator is Ron Wyden (D‑OR), and yesterday he sent the shortest letter I’ve ever seen to CIA Director John Ratcliffe:
Based on what’s been in the news the past week or so, some of the possibilities could include 1) a CIA link to the Fulton County, Georgia, 2020 election center raid by the FBI; 2) a possible CIA link to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s Puerto Rican voting machine imbroglio; 3) a dubious CIA covert operation in Iran in preparation for US military action against that country, or 4) an as-yet unrevealed IC whistleblower with a credible allegation of some kind of CIA legal impropriety.
This is how Wyden signals to the privacy & civil liberties community & the press that something really, really bad is going on in secret. He’s never gone to the Senate floor to reveal stuff like Senator Mike Gravel (D‑AK) did with the Pentagon Papers. He’s also lasted longer in the Senate than Gravel did, and I’m pretty sure I know one reason why.
Wyden knows that if he ever did go to the Senate floor and read classified information into the record—even if doing so would reveal impeachable or otherwise illegal executive branch actions—he’d likely be cut off from access to any more classified information. He’d also have to fight off an attempt to get him kicked off the committee and possibly beat back a censure resolution as well.
The fact that he has to tread so carefully to try to warn the rest of us that America’s primary foreign intelligence gathering agency may be or is involved in ill-considered or even illegal acts speaks volumes about the enduring power of what Donald Trump and his supporters often call “the Deep State.” The truth is a little more complicated than that, of course.
Many of Wyden’s colleagues on both sides of the political divide frequently act as cheerleaders for the IC rather than as overseers and disciplinarians of it—yet another reason why Wyden often stands out. He understands the underlying threat to the Republic of an unaccountable IC, which is why we should all be asking what the CIA is up to in secret. In our name.
