Make Intelligence Intelligent Again
Some conservatives want to make the issue complicated when it is simple: We must ensure that people who hold our values rise up in the ranks of the intelligence community.
Sam Brown is an incoming undergraduate student at George Mason University.
Congress recently voted to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which included several provisions that pose an active threat to the civil liberties of patriotic Americans and Catholics throughout the United States. Worst of all, the bill was pushed through by House Republicans.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), is the foremost federal law governing the powers of America’s intelligence services. It grants numerous powers to these agencies that were practically considered conspiratorial concepts up until the last few years, including mass surveillance programs like “PRISM.”
One passage just renewed, known as Section 702, was added as part of its reauthorization in 2008, should be of particular concern to conservatives nationwide. This program authorizes the Attorney General to wiretap non-Americans without a warrant.
Any conservative who has been paying attention to the news lately will already be well aware of the FBI’s attacks on the civil rights of Catholics. We already know that the FBI has been spying on Catholic parishes, especially ones that partake in the traditional Latin rite. We also know that FBI has profiled Catholics as “potential terrorists,” despite the fact that there is no such thing as a “Catholic terrorist organization.” Not to mention that the FBI has raided the homes of pro-life activists such as Mark Houck for peacefully opposing the destruction of unborn life.
So too, the “intelligence” regarding the “Richmond Memo” was chiefly sourced from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leftist organization that has a history of overexaggeration and mischaracterization. What’s more, Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray have a tremendous amount of contempt for everyday Americans, with the former classifying parents who protested against gender ideology indoctrination as “domestic terrorists.” The last thing that Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray needed was an expansion of their powers, that much is clear.
However, despite the fact that the FBI and DOJ’s political bias has become obvious to the general public, both the House and the Senate still decided to renew their wiretapping powers. Included in the ranks of FISA’s supporters were many politicians who would otherwise be strong Conservatives.
In the House, Mike Johnson, a man who many on the right believed would be a strident fighter for traditional America, was one of the bill’s biggest proponents. The Senate was no different, with figures like Marco Rubio, Bill Cassidy, Ted Budd, and Jerry Moran all casting their votes in favor of such legislation.
Even when both Andy Biggs and Mike Lee tried to propose amendments that would require warrants and install protections for people of faith, both amendments wound up failing in each chamber, mainly due to conservative politicians voting against them. And so, only one question can be asked, why would so many Conservative politicians vote in favor of legislation that endangers their biggest supporters?
Speaker Johnson fell for the deceitful tactics of bad actors within the intelligence community, including the previously mentioned Christopher Wray, and Matthew Waxman, an intelligence official from the Bush Administration who penned an op-ed in the New York Times arguing for FISA’s renewal. As anyone who is aware of the works of Chris Rufo will tell you, liberal forces have been hard at work infiltrating the core institutions of the United States and other Western nations. And the American intelligence community is no different.
While the CIA was initially founded to stop the spread of militant leftist forces worldwide, and the FBI was initially founded to crack down on domestic Marxist fronts, those goals have severely erred in the decades since. For roughly thirty years, America’s intelligence community has been consumed by the ideology of liberalism, with people like James Comey and Leon Panetta leading the charge.
With that, our intelligence agencies have increasingly focused on defending said ideology, rather than defending the interests of the United States. Thus, the only way for us to counteract this current trend is by ensuring that people who hold our values rise up in the ranks of our intelligence community. It is not an admirable goal to “abolish the FBI.” We need intelligence services and government agencies to protect our country. The real question is who should be in charge.
It is important to remain confident in the face of state-sponsored despondency. While things may seem bleak at the moment, there are many snapshots from this congressional conflict that leave me hopeful for the future. For one, Donald Trump, who will most likely be elected president this coming November, has made his opposition to FISA clear. This makes sense when you consider the fact that the FBI used this exact law as an excuse to spy on him.
Another thing worth noting is the tremendous effort that members of the Freedom Caucus put into repealing this law. You would not see such a fight twenty years ago, as back then almost all congressional Republicans (except for Ron Paul and a few of his cadres) held an undying loyalty to America’s surveillance apparatus.
FISA’s demise is on the horizon. Written into the law is a two-year expiration provision, much less than the usual five. As long as, and right now it is a big “if,” we can keep the congressional GOP on the edge of their seats, then victory will be ours and America’s intelligence services stand to be “intelligent” again.
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