CIA & Intelligence

  • US Wars Of Exploitation Iran

    By Cliff Montgomery – July 31st, 2019With Donald Trump in the White House, it’s important to remind ourselves of how previous U.S. administrations worked to overthrow foreign leaders they thought a tad too left-wing.Today, the Spark takes a look at Mohammad Mosaddeq, Iran’s pro-democracy prime minister. Mosaddeq served as Iran’s democratically-elected leader from 1951 to 1953. He could be either a powerful friend or a ferocious enemy. That issue often depended on whether you agreed with him that the Iranian people should have real power over their own lives.A lawyer, author, administrator and highly regarded member of Iran’s parliament, Mosaddeq…

  • Private Companies In War

    By Cliff Montgomery – May 29th, 2010The federal government’s reliance on private companies for its overseas operations–including war–was thesubject of a very interesting hearing conducted in February 2008 before the…

  • State Secrets Privilege

    By Cliff Montgomery – Apr. 19th, 2010The Executive Branch’s ‘state secrets’ privilege continues to be a controversial issue for U.S. legal experts and all others interested in protecting our civil…

  • DHS Hiding Records

    By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 24th, 2010When Congress passed the Privacy Act in 1974, it ruled that each person’s right to privacy is fundamental to aworking democracy and that this…

  • Declassification Does Not Work

    By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 14th, 2010Executive branch departments and agencies in recent years have spent over a billion dollars to declassifyfederal records–but have produced few tangible results.Two executive orders…

  • Feds May Kill Us Citizens

    By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 9th, 2010A Washington Post article printed on January 27th held a remarkable statement:”Both the CIA and the JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command of the Department…

  • Military Commissions

    By Cliff Montgomery – Dec. 27th, 2009The United States for the last several years has used military commissions to try suspected terroristsdetained at Guantanamo and elsewhere.In a criminal trial, the…

  • Aclu Domestic Spying

    By Cliff Montgomery – Oct. 10th, 2009 Three provisions of the Bush-era Anti-Patriot Act are set to expire on December 31st – Congress currently is debating controversial legislation to renew…

  • Anti Patriot Act

    By Cliff Montgomery – Oct. 5th, 2009The Senate Judiciary Committee last week began its debate of legislation intended to extend three provisionsof the Bush-era Anti-Patriot Act which are set to…

  • Government Secrecy

    By Cliff Montgomery – Sept. 18th, 2009The Congressional Research Service (CRS) on August 31st released a intriguing study entitled, Access to Government Information In the United States.It reminds us that…

  • FISA Lawsuit Dismissal

    By Cliff Montgomery – Aug. 30th, 2009A federal court on Aug. 20th threw out a lawsuit which challenged the legality of the FISA Amendments Act(FAA)–a controversial law that allows the…

  • Pentagon Intelligence Lacks Oversight

    By Cliff Montgomery – July 31st, 2009The House Intelligence Committee last month stated that the Pentagon has clouded the distinction betweenordinary intelligence collection–which is overseen by congressional intelligence panels–and “clandestine”military…

  • Bush Spy Program

    By Cliff Montgomery – July 15th, 2009Congress in 2008 instructed intelligence agency Inspectors General to draft an unclassified study on the BushAdministration’s domestic spying program. That report was released on…

  • Classified Information Costs

    By Cliff Montgomery- July 10th, 2009America’s post-9/11 security classification system appears to cost taxpayers around $10 billion every year,states a recent government study.Data classification activities in government and industry totaled…

  • UNesco Freedom Of Information

    By Cliff Montgomery – June 12th, 2009There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years on precisely what–if anything–the American people need to know about their government: how…

  • Abu Ghraib Guards

    By Cliff Montgomery – May 11th, 2009When photos of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison surfaced in 2004, Bush Administration officials quicklypainted Army Private Charles Graner Jr. as the de-facto…

  • Bush Renditions

    By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 21st, 2009An eye-opening Congressional Research Service report issued on January 21st, 2009, the day afterPresident Obama took office, discussed the explosive subject of rendition–which the…

  • Iran Nukes

    By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 13th, 2009Iran still does not possess the essential material needed to create a nuclear weapon, two leading U.S.intelligence officers told a Senate panel on Tuesday.…

  • CIA Torture Tapes

    By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 7th, 2009The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) destroyed twelve videotapes which may have recorded the torture ofindividuals accused of terrorist activity by the Bush Administration, reveal…

  • Intelligence Community Spying

    By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 27th, 2009New inter-agency structures supposedly meant to provide a superior intelligence response to national securitythreats were the subject of a recently-disclosed Intelligence Community (IC)Directive, one…

  • CIA Video Destruction

    By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 9th, 2009The Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of videotapes which may have shown the torture of suspectedterrorists is the topic of “an ongoing criminal investigation” which…

  • Iran Docs Us Overthrow Plot

    By Cliff Montgomery – Jan. 22nd, 2009Iran has handed down multi-year jail terms to two doctors found guilty of engaging in a US-sponsored plot tooverthrow its Islamic government, reported French…