Speaker 1: Welcome back to Snaffoo, ladies and gentlemen, your favorite show
Speaker 1: about history's greatest screw ups. I'm Ed Helms, and this
Speaker 1: past season we covered how Jay Edgar Hoover embroiled the
Speaker 1: FBI in one of the worst intelligence snaffoos of all time,
Speaker 1: a daring heist that exposed it all, and then the
Speaker 1: staggering fallout that sent shockwaves through America. Today, we're back
Speaker 1: with a bonus episode. I thought one of the most
Speaker 1: fascinating parts of this season was the Church Committee hearings,
Speaker 1: which investigated co intel pro but there was a lot
Speaker 1: we just couldn't get to. For example, the Church Committee
Speaker 1: hearings didn't just cover the FBI, they also covered abuses
Speaker 1: within the CIA, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies. So
Speaker 1: we thought it was worth digging in a little deeper
Speaker 1: into those hearings, some of the aftermath and where it
Speaker 1: leaves us today. To do that, we called back up
Speaker 1: our old friend and leading intelligence expert Locke Johnson, who
Speaker 1: contributed a lot throughout the season. Locke was a key
Speaker 1: player in the Church Committee hearings, working directly for Senator
Speaker 1: Frank Church through the entire sixteen month process. In this conversation.
Speaker 1: We get a fascinating insider look at the inner workings
Speaker 1: of those hearings, and then tackle some fiery questions like
Speaker 1: how do you strike the right balance between security and
Speaker 1: civil liberties, how have advances in technology like artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: affected modern day surveillance, and how much privacy do we
Speaker 1: actually have left these days? I had a lot of
Speaker 1: fun with this conversation. It was stimulating, fascinating, and maybe
Speaker 1: at times a little bit scary, but well worth it.
Speaker 1: And now here it is my extended conversation with Locke
Speaker 1: Johnson Locke, welcome back, Such a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Now our listeners will remember you from this past season,
Speaker 1: specifically episode seven, where we covered the existence of FBI
Speaker 1: abuses unveiled during the Church Committee hearings. We'll get into
Speaker 1: some of that, but before we do, remind us your
Speaker 1: background and how it is that you came to join
Speaker 1: Senator Frank Church's team.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, in a nutshell, I was born in
Speaker 2: New Zealand and my father, when I was in the womb,
Speaker 2: was an RAF pilot unfortunately killed on his twenty eighth mission,
Speaker 2: and about five years later my mother married an American
Speaker 2: soldier who was also fighting in the Pacific, and he
Speaker 2: brought us back to the States. So I'm in New
Speaker 2: Zealander by birth, but I've grown up in an American
Speaker 2: family and lived all over the place because he was
Speaker 2: a career military officer. And I've been teaching political science
Speaker 2: for a long time now and love my days at
Speaker 2: the University of Georgia. Before that, though, I had been
Speaker 2: a Congressional fellow, and it's a wonderful fellowship because you
Speaker 2: can pick any member of Congress you want out of
Speaker 2: the five hundred and thirty five to work for. So
Speaker 2: I picked Frank Church back in nineteen sixty nine in
Speaker 2: the middle of the Vietnam War, because in my view,
Speaker 2: he was the most articulate spokesman against that war and
Speaker 2: I felt the same way he did, and so it
Speaker 2: was great to spend the year with him. And by
Speaker 2: the way, during that year, we had the incursion, or
Speaker 2: what I would say was an invasion at Cambodia by
Speaker 2: the Nixon administration, and the passage of the Cooper Church Amendment,
Speaker 2: which was an effort to get those troops back into
Speaker 2: Vietnam rather than expanding the war. So that was an
Speaker 2: exciting period of time. To be with Frank Church. And
Speaker 2: then a couple of years later he telephoned me and said,
Speaker 2: I've been named to head up this investigation into the CIA,
Speaker 2: and you and I worked the other well when you
Speaker 2: were a congressional fellow. So would you come back and help?
Speaker 2: And I explained to him I knew nothing about that topic,
Speaker 2: and he said he laughed, and he said, we'll learn together.
Speaker 2: So he was something of adfi too, although he overstated
Speaker 2: the case because he had been in World War Two
Speaker 2: as an intelligence officer in China, so he knew something
Speaker 2: about intelligence, but probably not much about the CIA really,
Speaker 2: So we were learning together, and that launched a sixteen
Speaker 2: month inquiry beginning in nineteen seventy five, looking into initially
Speaker 2: that agency, but as we began to turn the stones
Speaker 2: over look at the other agencies, we found that they
Speaker 2: were doing things that were just as bad as what
Speaker 2: the CIA had done, and in fact, in case of
Speaker 2: the FBI, shockingly worse. If you can imagine.
Speaker 1: After everything we learned this season, I sadly can imagine
Speaker 1: it now. As you know, our podcast season is all
Speaker 1: about the media burglary, which ultimately revealed co intel pro,
Speaker 1: which is a code word for counter intelligence program. This
Speaker 1: program was designed by the FBI to surveil and disrupt
Speaker 1: political organizations. Locke, do you recall when you first heard
Speaker 1: about co intel Pro.
Speaker 2: I really began to focus on it when I joined
Speaker 2: the Church Committee, and then my memory was refreshed that
Speaker 2: we had heard of cointelpro already, because that was one
Speaker 2: of the set of documents revealed by those really amazingly
Speaker 2: brave people who broke into that office and found those documents.
Speaker 2: Because I really alerted as to the fact that the
Speaker 2: FBI had really straight off the reservation rather dramatically. But
Speaker 2: at the time I think we were so involved in
Speaker 2: Vietnam War that got a little bit lost. But when
Speaker 2: the Church Committee came along, the Vietnam War was over
Speaker 2: officially ended that year, and once we began our investigation,
Speaker 2: we initially looked at CIA illegal spying on a student activists,
Speaker 2: but then, as I mentioned, we began to turn over
Speaker 2: other stones, and one of the stones we turned over
Speaker 2: was the FBI, and that LEDs to Cointelpro, and that
Speaker 2: refreshed our memories about what happened in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: But I would have emphasize that of all the things
Speaker 2: we looked at on the Church Committee, and recall we
Speaker 2: looked at assassination plots and cis flying at home and
Speaker 2: a lot of other rather shocking things NSA's flying at home.
Speaker 1: So just a quick clarification for any listeners wondering why
Speaker 1: is the CIA coming up or the NSA. Well, it
Speaker 1: turns out that all of these agencies kind of had
Speaker 1: their own version of co intel pro going at the
Speaker 1: same time. For instance, the CIA's program was called Operation Chaos,
Speaker 1: which was intended to find connections between domestic political activists
Speaker 1: and foreign communist groups. But this all begs the question
Speaker 1: for you, Locke, when you joined up with Frank Church,
Speaker 1: were you somewhat aware that each of these agencies had
Speaker 1: their own surveillance operations.
Speaker 2: Well, I was Frank Church's designe as we call them.
Speaker 2: That meant I was a top assistant. So I went
Speaker 2: to every single meeting the committee held, and so I
Speaker 2: was aware not just of the CIA, which was one
Speaker 2: of the topics I was working on mainly, but really
Speaker 2: across the board of all these agencies. That was the
Speaker 2: virtue being his aid. I got to go everywhere with
Speaker 2: him and go to all the meetings. The most profoundly
Speaker 2: troubling was Cointelpro. And one of our senators we had
Speaker 2: eleven on our committee, was Philip Hart. Really an amazing man,
Speaker 2: the only man in the Senate at the time with
Speaker 2: the beard, and very seft spoken and thoughtful, and kind
Speaker 2: of a relative newcomer to the Senate. But it shows
Speaker 2: you how amazing he was to realize that one of
Speaker 2: the three Senate buildings was named after him when he
Speaker 2: passed away during the Church Committee days, that's how highly
Speaker 2: regarded he was. But I remember he was quite ill
Speaker 2: with cancer and didn't attend many of our meetings, but
Speaker 2: he came to one of our early public hearings on
Speaker 2: Cointelpro and he said, with six hundred people in the
Speaker 2: Caucaus building and all kinds of media people, he said
Speaker 2: that he had been sitting around the table a couple
Speaker 2: of years earlier with his kids who were in college.
Speaker 2: They were telling him that they thought the FBI was
Speaker 2: spying on them and maybe at the CIA too, and
Speaker 2: he told them at the time, you guys are just
Speaker 2: smoking too much pot, that those agencies don't do that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And then he paused, and there wasn't
Speaker 2: a murmur in that room. Everyone was quiet because, for
Speaker 2: one thing, his voice was soft. He was not feeling
Speaker 2: well because of the cancer, and he was in a
Speaker 2: weakened condition. But he paused and he said, they were right.
Speaker 2: They were right, and it was just probably the most
Speaker 2: moving moment at church Meny. In fact, some of the
Speaker 2: staff members believe it or not, who are pretty hardened
Speaker 2: individuals in some were sobbing. But my eyes welling up
Speaker 2: as well, because he was this man whom we respected
Speaker 2: so much, and he was so moved by the realization
Speaker 2: that the FBI, one of the organizations that he venerated
Speaker 2: as part of the backburne of America's defense against criminals
Speaker 2: and against Russian agents is on the FBI, had been
Speaker 2: involved in these efforts to destroy the lives of blacks
Speaker 2: and anti war protesters. He was astounded by that. I
Speaker 2: realized at the time that the FBI had been done
Speaker 2: some things that were, to say the least questionable. And
Speaker 2: the reason I knew about that fairly early is because
Speaker 2: Church asked me almost immediately to do some work on
Speaker 2: the Houston Plan, and we could spend a whole program
Speaker 2: to talking about that. But in a nutshell, Richard Nixon
Speaker 2: was so concerned about student protests, and so fervently believed
Speaker 2: that the KGB was supporting their activities that he called
Speaker 2: upon the top US intelligence agencies to test that proposition,
Speaker 2: to go out across the country from California to Maine
Speaker 2: to find out and to prove that the Russians were
Speaker 2: giving these student protesters money as a way of harassing
Speaker 2: the United States. So the agencies signed on to this
Speaker 2: Houston Plan. Tom Charles Houston was a White House aide
Speaker 2: who Nixon put in charge of putting together a spy
Speaker 2: plan against America's students. And the first thing Houston was
Speaker 2: to go to the FBI and said who here can
Speaker 2: help me do this? And that's where person number three,
Speaker 2: William Sullivan stepped forward and said, I'm the top operations
Speaker 2: officer here. So in a way it should be called
Speaker 2: a Sullivan plan because Houston worked with Sullivan, who was
Speaker 2: the expert on spying and espionage, to put together a package.
Speaker 2: And then when they asked the directors of the CIA,
Speaker 2: the FBI, the NSA, and military intelligence to sign on
Speaker 2: to this plan, every one of them did it. Everyone
Speaker 2: signed the plan that allowed them to violate American laws
Speaker 2: right and left to conduct surveillance against protesters and also
Speaker 2: those involved in the civil movement. So, I mean, the
Speaker 2: Houston Plan is just an amazing document. Now, once it
Speaker 2: was all signed, Hoover began to have second thoughts because
Speaker 2: he was sixty five at the time, going a little
Speaker 2: beyond the retirement age, and he was afraid if this leaked,
Speaker 2: he would have to leave office and that was his
Speaker 2: whole life to be, to be EE director. So he
Speaker 2: went to the attorney.
Speaker 1: Who was more scary to him than being exposed as
Speaker 1: the criminal.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So that's an incredible story, and it speaks to the
Speaker 1: fundamental tension between a government's responsibility to conduct secret operations
Speaker 1: for national security and its need to respect the rights
Speaker 1: of its citizens.
Speaker 2: Ed with that phrase, you just nailed the problem.
Speaker 1: That's the dilemma, and I know that you've written extensively
Speaker 1: on that exact subject. There are a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to read that situation. And I'm curious if we get
Speaker 1: into Nixon's head a little bit, do you think that
Speaker 1: he genuinely believed that Russian communist forces were supporting student
Speaker 1: protesters at the time, or was it more of a
Speaker 1: cynical ploy to just tie students to Russian propaganda mechanisms.
Speaker 1: In other words, was he coming from the right place?
Speaker 1: Can we give him any benefit of the doubt. Of course,
Speaker 1: his execution in stomping on citizens' rights was not right,
Speaker 1: but the fear. Was there any integrity to his fear
Speaker 1: or was it just paranoia?
Speaker 2: I'm unaccustomed I must say to say good things about
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon, but in this case I really have to.
Speaker 2: In a way, you'll see what I mean. Nixon could
Speaker 2: not fathom the idea that he could be unpopular across
Speaker 2: the country. Richard Nixon, he got elected to the presidency,
Speaker 2: How could I possibly be unpopular? So he had trouble
Speaker 2: understanding that, and he convinced himself, maybe with the nudging
Speaker 2: of Henry Kissinger, I wouldn't be surprised that it must
Speaker 2: be the Russians that are causing this trouble. How else
Speaker 2: could it be explained. He's such a wonderful person himself,
Speaker 2: who could love Richard Nixon? So he thought, so there
Speaker 2: had to be an explanation, and that's the one he
Speaker 2: came up with, and he wanted to prove it empirically
Speaker 2: through violating a host of US laws. Was created in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven with a foreign mandate, and it was
Speaker 2: expressly prohibited in its founding statue to conduct operations inside
Speaker 2: the United States. Yet Richard Holmes, the director of the CIA,
Speaker 2: signed on to Houston Plant anyway, So I think in
Speaker 2: a way one can understand Nixon's motives. I think they
Speaker 2: were wrong, but he really did believe that the Communists
Speaker 2: were behind all of this, and.
Speaker 1: He went into to those operations, the Houston Plan, probably
Speaker 1: with a lot of confirmation bias in place, just looking
Speaker 1: to prove a connect as opposed to looking to discover
Speaker 1: a connection.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and you know, these four agency directors I
Speaker 2: mentioned were happy to play along with us with their
Speaker 2: own motives.
Speaker 1: And why did others so readily jump on board these programs.
Speaker 2: We could start with Hoover, who was really, in some
Speaker 2: ways the key player here, and he hated student protesters,
Speaker 2: he hated civil rights activists. The person he despised above
Speaker 2: all others in the United States of America was doctor
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King. So here's the president, officially within the
Speaker 2: Oval Office, telling him to go out and spy on
Speaker 2: these people. It was wonderful news for Hoover. He was
Speaker 2: already doing some of that anyway, but this sort of
Speaker 2: gave it the upper moter of the White House. In
Speaker 2: the case of Richard Elms was a different motivation. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's play along with the President. We don't buy this
Speaker 2: Russian puppet hypothesis. That's not going on at all. We
Speaker 2: know that from tracing the Russians and what they're up to.
Speaker 2: But if the Nixon wants to us to give us money,
Speaker 2: some of that to spy on those crazy students out
Speaker 2: at Berkeley, We're going to use a big part of
Speaker 2: that money to do our own activities to see if,
Speaker 2: in fact the Russians are doing things of a malicious
Speaker 2: nature directly against the United States. And the NSA felt
Speaker 2: the same way. Here's a bag of money that will
Speaker 2: allow us to do what we want to do anyway,
Speaker 2: and we'll let Nixon think we're going along with his
Speaker 2: nutty hypothesis.
Speaker 1: So in the case of the FBI, it was, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're totally aligned on this needs to obliterate the rights
Speaker 1: of our city survail them. But in the case of
Speaker 1: the NSA and the CIA, it was, oh, sure, we'll
Speaker 1: just take some money. Yeah, it's neither one is necessarily
Speaker 1: a very noble No.
Speaker 2: And you know what I still reel in my mind
Speaker 2: when I think about is Richard Holmes a director of
Speaker 2: the CIA.
Speaker 1: No relation.
Speaker 2: By the way, No, and Noel Guilerc. We're willing to
Speaker 2: go along with this official, albeit secret plan despy on
Speaker 2: American citizens. What they should have said is, mister President,
Speaker 2: there are laws against CI in the NSA from doing this,
Speaker 2: and we're not going to do it. But that's not
Speaker 2: the position they do.
Speaker 1: So I know you've written about the shock theory of
Speaker 1: congressional oversight for intelligence. I wonder if you could just
Speaker 1: tell us what that is quickly and then tell us
Speaker 1: how that applied in that moment to the church hearings.
Speaker 1: In other words, what precipitated the church hearings, why did
Speaker 1: they happen when they did, and is that an example
Speaker 1: of your theory?
Speaker 2: Yes, I must say I'm extremely impressed that you've looked
Speaker 2: at the shock theory of intelligence, because that's pretty esoteric stuff,
Speaker 2: and I commend you and thank you for looking at that.
Speaker 1: I'm a very esoteric person.
Speaker 2: The idea is, these members of Congress have a lot
Speaker 2: going on and mainly raising money so they keep themselves
Speaker 2: getting re elected, so they don't do a lot of
Speaker 2: accountability when it comes to keeping a close eye on
Speaker 2: the executive branch, even though the genius, the magnificent center
Speaker 2: of our constitution is Madison's notion of checks and balances
Speaker 2: and how Congress would be a check against the most
Speaker 2: dangerous thing in the history of humanity, and that is
Speaker 2: political power out of control. So that was the theory
Speaker 2: of our Constitution coming mainly from the brow of James Madison,
Speaker 2: and members of Congress often don't really uphold that at all.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's rare to find someone like Frank Church
Speaker 2: who takes accountability seriously and spends the hours checking up
Speaker 2: on these agencies as he did. We have a few
Speaker 2: people like that today too, I'd say Mark Warner of Virginia,
Speaker 2: for example, but there aren't too many. So what happens
Speaker 2: is people are lackadaisical on the hill despite the ghost
Speaker 2: of Madison and looking down at them when it comes
Speaker 2: to checking the abuse of power in the executive branch,
Speaker 2: and those abuses occur, and sometimes they occur of a
Speaker 2: magnitude that it becomes a scandal, and that's when the
Speaker 2: shock comes in. The members of Congress are shocked into
Speaker 2: waking up into realizing the genius of the Madisonian checks
Speaker 2: and balances, and they're finally convinced to do their job.
Speaker 2: So you have major investigations and then often new laws
Speaker 2: or pass and new internal regulations, and then they go
Speaker 2: back to their complacency and worrying about re election again.
Speaker 2: And then unfortunately another shock comes along because they haven't
Speaker 2: been watching what these agencies are doing, and it starts
Speaker 2: over again.
Speaker 1: So it's just kind of this sine wave of ye
Speaker 1: to problematic surveillance and doing investigations, calling it out, making adjustments.
Speaker 1: And the Church Committee was maybe the first big example
Speaker 1: of that as the shock from the CIA's Operation Chaos emergers.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the way that the
Speaker 1: Church hearings played out in popular culture at that time.
Speaker 1: What did the news coverage feel like? Did Frank Church
Speaker 1: play into that? Was he participating in a kind of
Speaker 1: a public narrative of the committee hearings? And if so, how.
Speaker 2: The CI is flying on American citizens? Are you kidding?
Speaker 2: That was blockbuster news and that spread across a country
Speaker 2: like a prairie friar, and the end result was members
Speaker 2: of Congress and virtually every congressional constituency in state realized
Speaker 2: they had to look into this because people were upset.
Speaker 2: What do you mean the CI is flying honors? George
Speaker 2: Orwell was right, Only it's not nineteen eighty four, It's
Speaker 2: only nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know what it was like to be
Speaker 1: in those rooms, in those depositions, in those hearings. Did
Speaker 1: it feel like you were part of something that really
Speaker 1: might change our government for the better? And was it exhilarating?
Speaker 1: I guess is my question.
Speaker 2: I think exhilarating is a good word for it. And
Speaker 2: we worked seemed like around the clock. We worked very hard,
Speaker 2: all the staff and the senators as well, and we
Speaker 2: were all stunned. Frankly, I think the Phillip Haart moment
Speaker 2: when we were talking about cointelpro and public hearings was
Speaker 2: the pinnacle of this astonishment that we talked about in public.
Speaker 2: But throughout the hearings and throughout our depositions and so on,
Speaker 2: it was almost a daily dose of being amazed and
Speaker 2: appalled at what these agencies had done. In some cases,
Speaker 2: now I'll just keep in mind, I would say that
Speaker 2: most of the people in these agencies were doing what
Speaker 2: they were designed to do, and that is to gather
Speaker 2: information from around the world about our enemies. You began
Speaker 2: this program, Ed, I think, in a very wonderful way,
Speaker 2: by pointing out the dilemma between the need to have
Speaker 2: these agencies to help protect us by gathering information about
Speaker 2: the furious people overseas who mean to harm us. We
Speaker 2: need to have that information. But then they have these
Speaker 2: capabilities which if misuse, can be a great threat to
Speaker 2: our own democracy. And we saw that in the Houston Plan,
Speaker 2: and there are other examples today. Just very quickly, let
Speaker 2: me say that we are under threat. We have intelligence
Speaker 2: agencies with the most phenomenal technical capabilities. If a dictator
Speaker 2: were to take over America and use these agencies to
Speaker 2: maintain their power and to obliterate their opposition, that could
Speaker 2: be done. There would be no place to hide. Let's
Speaker 2: say Ed and I gathered together in some secret location
Speaker 2: because we wanted to be a resistance against the dictator.
Speaker 2: They would know about it. This would be an abyss.
Speaker 2: And what we tried to do on the Church Committee,
Speaker 2: and I think people are continuing to do if they've
Speaker 2: got their head screwed on right, is to make sure
Speaker 2: these agencies with this enormous technological surveillance power that they
Speaker 2: have are kept in check and are led by the
Speaker 2: rule of law, and are kept accountable by the few
Speaker 2: people who take accountability serious. And what, by the way,
Speaker 2: the good news here is it only takes a few, really,
Speaker 2: it takes a Frank Church and a less Asphin and
Speaker 2: some of these other people to really keep these people honus.
Speaker 2: But it's a perilous situation because these agencies have great
Speaker 2: powers and they could be misused.
Speaker 1: Again, let's go a little higher altitude now, just stepping
Speaker 1: out above the Church hearings. What are the main takeaways
Speaker 1: from the hearings, both from a practical policy standpoint and
Speaker 1: from a kind of general public disposition standpoint.
Speaker 2: I would say that the tone changed in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: From the belief and intelligence exceptionalism to an understanding as
Speaker 2: a result of cointelpro and chaos and a number of
Speaker 2: other abuses by these agencies, that that doesn't work. That
Speaker 2: we had to bring the secret agencies into the American
Speaker 2: government and subject them to the same laws and same
Speaker 2: accountability as the Department of Agriculture or any other agency
Speaker 2: in the government. So it was the difference between night
Speaker 2: and day ed when it came to controlling these agencies
Speaker 2: and supervising them and all this was leading. And I
Speaker 2: think this is the major contribution of the Church Committee
Speaker 2: to creating permanent oversight committees that would watch the activities
Speaker 2: of these agencies day in and day out. Now it's
Speaker 2: hardly been perfect, because sometimes the committees are active and
Speaker 2: aggressive and understand the Madisonian need for checks and balances,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they haven't worked too well. Richard Holmes always
Speaker 2: used to argue to me that two committees were one
Speaker 2: too many. There ought to be a joint committee so
Speaker 2: he didn't have to go to the Senate and then
Speaker 2: the House and say the same kinds of things. And
Speaker 2: I mentioned this true friend of mine. My friend said, yeah,
Speaker 2: but when you're flying in an airplane, it's better to
Speaker 2: have two engines rather than just one. And I think
Speaker 2: that's true in this case, because sometimes the Senate Committee
Speaker 2: is filled with some good people and they're active and
Speaker 2: they're keeping an eye on things, and then sometimes it's
Speaker 2: the Houses performing that duty.
Speaker 1: The sort of fallout from the Church Committee was pretty massive,
Speaker 1: a new kind of a new ethos on Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: on how to maintain integrity in these surveillance operations. I
Speaker 1: think we're really just exploring that ongoing question of where
Speaker 1: is the line, how do you find the balance between
Speaker 1: between security and citizens' rights, and when it comes to
Speaker 1: the necessary secret operations of a government and the slippery
Speaker 1: slope into compromising the rights of citizens. I'd love to
Speaker 1: get to nine to eleven and the Patriot Act and
Speaker 1: where I think a lot of these questions, a lot
Speaker 1: of that tension really came to a head. Talk to
Speaker 1: us about the aftermath of nine to eleven in terms
Speaker 1: of these Church Committee reforms and how it really threatened
Speaker 1: where things stood.
Speaker 2: I think it's been something of a roller coaster ride sometimes,
Speaker 2: these principles put in place by the Church Committee, that
Speaker 2: is an emphasis on the rule of law and a
Speaker 2: belief that no president, no intelligence agency is above the law. Now,
Speaker 2: whether or not the Supreme Court, which is looking at
Speaker 2: that question right now, has the wisdom to understand that
Speaker 2: no president is above the law is another matter. We'll
Speaker 2: find out. People have had different views on these things
Speaker 2: over the years, and in the crucible of war or
Speaker 2: a terrorist activity, the Constitution begins to take on malleable
Speaker 2: proportions for some people. So let's look at nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: Soon after nine to eleven, Bush two led around by
Speaker 2: the nose, by and large by Dick Cheney, his vice president,
Speaker 2: who is much more of a foreign policy expert than
Speaker 2: Bush two was Bush who relied on him a lot.
Speaker 2: Those two brought the director of the CIA over to
Speaker 2: the White House to them, Look, you've got to use
Speaker 2: the NSA to make sure we don't have any more
Speaker 2: nine to eleven. We've got a really big more robust
Speaker 2: in our use of surveillance, and you may even have
Speaker 2: to surveil American citizens who might have connections with Terrists.
Speaker 2: And the director of the NSA at the time, General Hayden, said,
Speaker 2: mister President, I don't have the authority to do some
Speaker 2: of the things you want me to do. And Dick
Speaker 2: Cheney basically said to him, get out of this office,
Speaker 2: go back to Fort Meade with the NSA and do
Speaker 2: what we told you to do. So he went back
Speaker 2: to the NSA, General Hayden and talked to his chief
Speaker 2: counsel and said to him, look, the President wants to
Speaker 2: go Article two. And as you know, Article two of
Speaker 2: the Constitution gives the president a lot of authority, and
Speaker 2: so what he meant by that was the President wants
Speaker 2: to forget about the laws on Capitol Hill. We had
Speaker 2: a terrorist attack, we might have new terrorist attacks, so
Speaker 2: unleash the powers of the NSA to make sure that
Speaker 2: you do them utmost you can. What should have happened
Speaker 2: is that Bush should have sent Hayden up to Capitol
Speaker 2: Hell and said, look, we need wider authorities because we've
Speaker 2: learned from nine to eleven that we're under a threat
Speaker 2: and we have to do more to surveil our potential enemies.
Speaker 2: But no, that's not what happened. The Bush to administration
Speaker 2: just decided junilaterally in the confines of the Obel Office,
Speaker 2: to tell the NSA director to forget the law, go
Speaker 2: and do whatever he needed to do. That led to
Speaker 2: as Ed Snowden eventually leaked to us, so we know
Speaker 2: about it, the indiscriminate use of NSA's electronic surveillance powers
Speaker 2: against a lot of American citizens. In fact, all of
Speaker 2: us really were examined in terms of our so called metadata,
Speaker 2: the telephone conversations we made to whom and so on, Now,
Speaker 2: not the content of them. The NSA didn't go that
Speaker 2: far for most of us at least, but it was
Speaker 2: really it really had gone beyond all expectations from the
Speaker 2: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, because remember that Act said you
Speaker 2: want to use electronic surveillance against an American citizen, you
Speaker 2: go to the Foreign Surveillance Court and get a warrant.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say that again because it's so important,
Speaker 2: get a warrant if you're going to surveil.
Speaker 1: Someone a United States citizen.
Speaker 2: And the United says citizen, yes, thank you. But that's
Speaker 2: not what the NSA decided to do with the blessing
Speaker 2: of the Bush to White House. So Snowden leaked this.
Speaker 2: What he should have done, of course, and he didn't,
Speaker 2: is to go to the Senator House Intelligence committees and
Speaker 2: tell him, look, this is what's going on. Go through
Speaker 2: official channels. But has said he leaked all this information
Speaker 2: to the Post and to the Guardian in England.
Speaker 1: Do you think he would have found a sympathetic audience
Speaker 1: had he gone through the right.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, because I know a lot of those players, I
Speaker 2: know a lot of the staff people, and they tell
Speaker 2: me that if you had come up there, they certainly
Speaker 2: would have pursued them.
Speaker 1: Well, do you think the public would have as much
Speaker 1: of an awareness of what was going on.
Speaker 2: I think so, because I think that the committees would
Speaker 2: have been so shocked by this, at least some members
Speaker 2: of the committees. Diane Finstein would be an example that
Speaker 2: there would have been public hearings and probably an inquiry,
Speaker 2: maybe not at the magnitude of Church Committee. They're an investigation.
Speaker 2: So it's too bad to snowden Wind as far as
Speaker 2: he did, because that initial instinct of his was a
Speaker 2: good one.
Speaker 1: So the metadata program is a great example of blanket
Speaker 1: surveillance where you're just like throwing this massive net out
Speaker 1: there and pulling in an incredible amount of data. What
Speaker 1: are the drawbacks of that? Just from a practical intelligence standpoint,
Speaker 1: but in the ethics aside, what are there Actually? Are
Speaker 1: there more practical reasons that is not the best way
Speaker 1: to go about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, For one thing, you get what I would call
Speaker 2: the fire hose effect. It's like calling a fire hose
Speaker 2: to your mouth and all this data is coming in
Speaker 2: because you begin to collect everything inside and discriminately. Then
Speaker 2: you store it out in these vaults in Utah that
Speaker 2: the NSA has built out there, and then people can
Speaker 2: go back and look at our conversations and whenever they
Speaker 2: want to later on without a warrant to do any
Speaker 2: of that. Well, even a few days ago, and remember
Speaker 2: the section seven oh two of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Speaker 2: Act was renewed.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify quickly for our listeners. Section seven oh
Speaker 1: two is part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA,
Speaker 1: which permits the intelligence community to conduct targeted surveillance of
Speaker 1: foreigners outside the US.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the FBI and NSA and others said, we've
Speaker 2: got to have this. It stops terrorism and if we don't,
Speaker 2: we're going to put America. That was all bologney, And
Speaker 2: yet a majority of both the houses the Senate went
Speaker 2: along with here. But in reality, the metadata program and
Speaker 2: this other related program really hasn't come up with anything
Speaker 2: of any use. Sure, people in secret agencies come to
Speaker 2: you and say, oh, listen, you've got to trust us.
Speaker 2: We know what's going on, and there's great danger out there,
Speaker 2: and if you don't trust us, it's going to be catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Fear is it a very powerful motivator, if not the
Speaker 1: most powerful human motivator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you remember Roosevelt's famous comment about fear. The
Speaker 2: only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we do it.
Speaker 1: Gets which sounds like very difficult feedback loop psychologically. But
Speaker 1: is it ever not, bolooney, Is there ever a time
Speaker 1: when the danger is so great that some of these
Speaker 1: compromises are necessary? And I think I know your answer,
Speaker 1: but it's an important question. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there who who think, Look, if I've got
Speaker 1: nothing to hide, then I've got nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: Surveillance is keeping me safe? How are they wrong? Why
Speaker 1: should I worry about massive surveillance powers on the part
Speaker 1: of my government that they're not going to come after me?
Speaker 2: Do you want your government to know everything about you
Speaker 2: inside out? Do you want them to know your sexual preferences,
Speaker 2: your religious activities, what you eat, right you spend your week.
Speaker 2: That's not the kind of society that I want to
Speaker 2: live in. I don't want big Brother hanging over my
Speaker 2: shoulder all the time. And that's what could happen.
Speaker 1: You mentioned this awesome power of technology. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that with the just unbelievably fast growth of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned the fire hose effect, blanket surveillance can
Speaker 1: just give you too much data so that it becomes
Speaker 1: impossible to analyze and impossible to actually even catch bad
Speaker 1: guys because you're just swimming in too much data. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like with artificial intelligence that may change that
Speaker 1: data analysis becomes a whole different proposition when these kind
Speaker 1: of superhuman computer forces are at work. And of course
Speaker 1: these advances in facial recognition gate recognition, which can be
Speaker 1: accomplished from great distances. That's when an artificial intelligence can
Speaker 1: actually identify you by the way that you walk, which
Speaker 1: they can do with startling accuracy. So with all of
Speaker 1: these advances and the sort of growth of power, do
Speaker 1: you think we have the right checks and balances to
Speaker 1: keep this in check or are we getting into difficult
Speaker 1: territory again.
Speaker 2: I think the truth of the matter when it comes
Speaker 2: to artificial intelligence is that we're not really sure what
Speaker 2: the end result is going to be. There are some
Speaker 2: very positive aspects of it from an intelligence point of view,
Speaker 2: because these machines can do a lot of mundane tasks
Speaker 2: at a very high speed, which would take human beings
Speaker 2: maybe months or even years to do, so that can
Speaker 2: help analysts. Intelligence analysts understand certain aspects of the world.
Speaker 2: Let's say that you're interested in where ships have been
Speaker 2: attacked by terrorists sea over the past one hundred years,
Speaker 2: so that you can begin to have a model of
Speaker 2: where you are to concentrate your defenses. That would take
Speaker 2: a lot of work for you and I to sit
Speaker 2: down and pour through all the documents and try and
Speaker 2: put that together. But if you feed that information into
Speaker 2: a computer with a certain algorithm, you can find the
Speaker 2: patterns very quickly. So that's going to be helpful, I
Speaker 2: think for some analytic problems. But then, as you suggest,
Speaker 2: what about the downside? I have to say I sometimes
Speaker 2: have nightmares about this whole notion of deep fakes, and
Speaker 2: not really eventually if you and I'm being able to
Speaker 2: understand what's true and what is is that really you
Speaker 2: I'm looking at or is it some fake thing that
Speaker 2: I'm looking at.
Speaker 1: And we're moments away from being able to perpetrate a
Speaker 1: deep fake in real time. It's one thing to present
Speaker 1: a video of a deep fake, but it's another thing
Speaker 1: to have a live conversation with somebody that's also a
Speaker 1: deep fake, right, Yeah, And that's and we're very close
Speaker 1: to that, and these are becoming what's really scary is
Speaker 1: that they're accessible to anyone in technology. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: agree with you, Mike.
Speaker 2: I can remember maybe fifteen years ago, so quite a
Speaker 2: while ago before people were talking about AI seeing a
Speaker 2: CIA video of Saddam Hussein when I was out visiting
Speaker 2: the to do some interviews, and the CIA had managed
Speaker 2: to change his lip configuration a little bit through computer
Speaker 2: manipulation and then have him saying something that he really
Speaker 2: didn't say. And then that video was distributed in certain
Speaker 2: parts of the world where we were trying to fool
Speaker 2: people into thinking that Saddam is even worse than he
Speaker 2: actually was. And that was a long time ago. Now
Speaker 2: that skill has been refined considerably. Or take autonomous weapons.
Speaker 2: We're going to use artificial intelligence to send weapons out
Speaker 2: to fight our enemies, and the instruction to the weapon.
Speaker 2: Let's be a hypothetical example, and let's use bin Laden
Speaker 2: and take it back to that time period, and the
Speaker 2: instruction to the drone would be, if you see anyone
Speaker 2: who's six ' five or taller, obliterates them. So the
Speaker 2: autonomous weapon goes flying out there and looking for someone
Speaker 2: who's six ' five or better. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are maybe not a lot, but more
Speaker 2: people than Ben Lauden's just six ' five. In the
Speaker 2: Middle East. So the autonomous weapons indicate to us I
Speaker 2: think how artificial intelligence can really get out of hand here.
Speaker 1: So tell our listeners a little bit about section seven
Speaker 1: oh two and what has brought it recently back into
Speaker 1: the news.
Speaker 2: I think the basic idea of seven oh two is
Speaker 2: that the NSA believes that it has to have special
Speaker 2: powers to protect the American people against particularly terrorists and
Speaker 2: also Russian intervention so on. And seven oh two allows
Speaker 2: the FBI to gather through electronic methods information about American
Speaker 2: citizens who may be in contact with suspected terrorists overseas.
Speaker 2: But the trouble is that definition is very fuzzy, and
Speaker 2: often these people who have been so object to electronic
Speaker 2: surveilance it turned out really had no reason to be
Speaker 2: surveiled at all. They were just a law abiding American citizens.
Speaker 2: And then all this information that has been gathered, and
Speaker 2: this has been going on for since the bush To administration,
Speaker 2: is stored in Utah and other places and now can
Speaker 2: be visited by FBI officers who dig through it and
Speaker 2: have the carte blanche to find out whatever they want
Speaker 2: about people in those files. So the essence, ed is
Speaker 2: that we are the Church meeting. And I think most
Speaker 2: of civil libertarians believe of a right and left wing
Speaker 2: persuasion and the middle that you should have a warrant
Speaker 2: if you think you need to surveil someone electronically, and
Speaker 2: the section seven oh two makes that very fuzzy. And
Speaker 2: the NSA and the FBI will say, well, look, we
Speaker 2: don't have time to get a warrant in some cases,
Speaker 2: that is boloney. That argument so many times, particularly from
Speaker 2: the CI we don't have to get a fund, but
Speaker 2: we don't want to get approval from the White House
Speaker 2: and report to Capitol Hill because we need to move quickly.
Speaker 2: The America's survival may be at stake. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's a kind of ticking bomb scenario which is maybe
Speaker 2: theoretically interesting but not actual. And so there is time
Speaker 2: to get a warrant, and there is time to get
Speaker 2: presidential approofal for COVID actions. And by the way, I've
Speaker 2: seen these approvals go just like that. Members of Congress
Speaker 2: are not ignorant of the fact that there could be emergencies.
Speaker 2: So there are procedures in which you can really get
Speaker 2: a warrant immediately if you've got a good reason for
Speaker 2: doing so. But you have to make the case. You
Speaker 2: have to show the evidence as to why you should
Speaker 2: be surveiling Ed Helms or Lork Johnson. And that's really important,
Speaker 2: and that spells the difference between the way they do
Speaker 2: business in North Korea and the way we should be
Speaker 2: doing business in a constitutional government.
Speaker 1: Is seven O two you under examination right now?
Speaker 2: Well, it was on Capitol Hill and there was a
Speaker 2: vote held in both the Senate and the House to
Speaker 2: renew seven ZH two to allow the NSA to use
Speaker 2: this fuzzy language to have wire tabs in which one
Speaker 2: of the parties might be an American citizen without really
Speaker 2: making the case before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that
Speaker 2: this American citizen is suspicious and ought to be surveiled.
Speaker 2: That is no longer necessary because both the House and
Speaker 2: the Senate by neuro majorities, but nonetheless majorities. Seven oh
Speaker 2: two is now ongoing. Very controversial though, and it makes
Speaker 2: for strange bedfellows because you get people on the far
Speaker 2: left and people on the far right saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this is threat to civil liberties and it truly is.
Speaker 2: And I was disappointed to see it happen. And the
Speaker 2: Church Committee is I think monumental in its effect because
Speaker 2: it introduced this whole new era in which these agencies
Speaker 2: now are part of the American government and expected to
Speaker 2: behave in a constitutional, law abiding fashion. That is revolutionary
Speaker 2: compared to what we had before.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: really recent surveillance going on on campuses? Now? How is
Speaker 1: surveillance being used in this contemporary context and is it responsible?
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone knows other than those people who
Speaker 2: are directly involved in those who have responsibility for maintaining accountability.
Speaker 2: So if we were able to go into the inner
Speaker 2: sanctums of the Senate and the House Intelligence committees, we
Speaker 2: could get some very up to date answers to that,
Speaker 2: if indeed they would answer them to be highly classified information.
Speaker 2: And of course in the higher reaches of the Biden
Speaker 2: administration you'd be able to find answers too. But speculating
Speaker 2: as an outsider who has been following these countries things
Speaker 2: for over forty years, and given the tenor the tone
Speaker 2: of the Biden administration, I would be willing to bet
Speaker 2: that the pies of procedures of foreign intelligence surveillance court
Speaker 2: procedures are being used if necessary, and let's use a
Speaker 2: hypothetical case. Let's say that some Hamas person has slipped
Speaker 2: across our southern border and is now trying to provoke
Speaker 2: trouble on Columbia or UCLA or someplace. My guess is
Speaker 2: there would be authorized surveillance against a person like that,
Speaker 2: done in a legal fashion of the PISA warrant. But
Speaker 2: I'm not positive. And that gets us back, as American citizens,
Speaker 2: to hoping that the people in these powerful positions on
Speaker 2: the National Security Council, with the Senate Intelligence Committee and
Speaker 2: the House Intelligence Committee understand James Madison understand the most
Speaker 2: important principle to emerge in the Church Committee that no president,
Speaker 2: no intelligence agent, is above the law. We have to
Speaker 2: hope that there are people like that in place, and
Speaker 2: I think there are, and I think usually there will be.
Speaker 2: But and now, thanks to the Church Committee, they've been
Speaker 2: armed with important laws like Hughes Ryan and the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty Intelligence Overside Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveilans Act.
Speaker 2: So it's a world of difference. Now there's no guarantee
Speaker 2: that wrong minded people might bypass all of this apparatus
Speaker 2: to keep us safe, and that's the danger. And you
Speaker 2: get someone in the White House who flips the bird
Speaker 2: at the whole notion of accountability and supervision, things go
Speaker 2: off track very rapidly.
Speaker 1: Let's hope we've learned those lessons at a very deep level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's hope.
Speaker 1: And you are a big part of that. Lock Johnson,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you for everything you've done for our country. Thanks.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, Pacific
Speaker 1: Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This season
Speaker 1: of SNAFO is based on the book The Burglary The
Speaker 1: Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by Betty Metzger.
Speaker 1: It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Valbo,
Speaker 1: Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug, Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger. Our
Speaker 1: lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer is
Speaker 1: Stephen Wood. Our associate producer Tory Smith edited this bonus episode.
Speaker 1: Nevin Calla Poly is our production assistant. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris Editing, sound
Speaker 1: design and original music by Ben Chug, Engineering and technical
Speaker 1: direction by Nick Dooley theme music by Dan Rosatto. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Rizak. Additional
Speaker 1: thanks to director Johanna Hamilton for letting us use some
Speaker 1: of the original interviews from her incredible documentary nineteen seventy one. Finally,
Speaker 1: our deepest gratitude to the courageous Citizens com Mission to
Speaker 1: Investigate the FBI Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy Finegeld, Heath Forsyth,
Speaker 1: Bonnie Rains, John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson.