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The Central Intelligence Agency is collecting information on Americans without supervision from Congress or any other branch of government, two Democratic senators alleged in a newly declassified letter last year.
The April 13, 2021 letter from Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns was made public with partial redactions Thursday.
In the legible portions of the letter, Wyden and Heinrich state that despite “Congress’s intent, expressed over many years and through multiple pieces of legislation, to limit and, in some cases, prohibit the warrantless collection of Americans’ records, as well as the public’s intense interest in and support for these legislative efforts … the CIA has secretly conducted its own bulk program”.
“It has done so entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes with FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] collection,” the lawmakers continue.
“This basic fact has been kept from the public and from Congress.”
Wyden and Heinrich concluded by calling on the CIA to reveal its “relationship with its sources and the legal framework for the collection; the kind of records collected [redacted] the amount of Americans’ records maintained; and the rules governing the use, storage, dissemination and queries (including U.S. person queries) of the records.
“Each of these matters has been the subject of extensive declassifications with regard to NSA’s [National Security Agency] and FBI’s FISA collection; there is no reason why CIA’s activities cannot be equally transparent,” they wrote.
In addition to the senators’ letter, the CIA also partially declassified a report and recommendations by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board related to intelligence-gathering activities conducted under an executive order first issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Additional documents revealed limited details about a program to collect financial data against the ISIS terror group. That program has incidentally snared some records held by Americans.
The recommendations from the PCLOB were also heavily redacted but noted that when CIA analysts are making queries “involving known or presumed US person information” a pop-up box will warn them that the request must require a foreign intelligence justification.
“However, analysts are not required to memorialize the justification for their queries,” the recommendation added.
“As a result, auditing or reviewing U.S. Person (USP) queries is likely to be challenging and time-consuming. Given the volume and type of information that is included [REDACTED] it is appropriate to require analysts to provide a written justification for USP queries.”
The CIA and NSA have a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or American businesses. But the spy agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign communications often snares Americans’ messages and data incidentally.
Intelligence agencies are required to take steps to protect domestic information, including redacting the names of any Americans from reports unless they are deemed relevant to an investigation. The process of removing redactions is known as “unmasking.”
The PCLOB also recommended the CIA develop a “framework” to “routinely identify, review and address issues related to USP information” under the authority of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer.
“In developing this framework, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer should consider the proportion [REDACTED] that involve USP information and the frequency with which USP information is returned in response [REDACTED].”
In a statement to the Associated Press, CIA privacy and civil liberties officer Kristi Scott affirmed that the agency is “committed to transparency.”
“CIA recognizes and takes very seriously our obligation to respect the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons in the conduct of our vital national security mission,” Scott said. “CIA is committed to transparency consistent with our obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods.”
In a statement following the declassification of the documents, Wyden and Heinrich said more information was needed to “achieve the transparency the American people deserve.”
“FISA gets all the attention because of the periodic congressional reauthorizations and the release of DOJ, ODNI and FISA Court documents,” they said. “But what these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy and civil liberties also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information under executive order and outside the FISA law.
“In particular, these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context,” they added. “While we appreciate the release of the ‘Recommendations from PCLOB Staff’ which highlights problems associated with the handling of Americans’ information, our letter also stressed that the public deserves to know more about the collection of this information.
“The DNI and the CIA Director have started this process. We intend to continue to urge them to achieve the transparency the American people deserve.”
With Post wires
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