While some may be cheering the expiration of the Patriot Act – however temporary it may be – former presidential candidate Ron Paul notes: before Americans applaud a minor step toward transparency, they should recognize the corrosive nature of the CIA, a secret government operating far above the law.
“[The CIA] is sort of the President’s own Praetorian Guard,” Daniel McAdams, from the Institute of Peace and Prosperity, said on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. “We know…that he sent assassination squads, he sent people to monitor Martin Luther King, and all sorts of things like this.”
“This is like his own personal army which is accountable to no one,” McAdams adds.
It’s a sobering reminder as key provisions of the Patriot Act, used to justify the NSA’s bulk metadata collection, expired Sunday night. As the Senate scrambles to pass the USA Freedom Act, reinstating the agency’s ability to spy on Americans, Ron Paul points out that US intelligence organizations have always – and will continue – to operate outside the law.
And according to Paul, the CIA could be an even bigger threat to liberty than McAdams suggests. A covert army that doesn’t answer to Congress, the Supreme Court, or even the president.