How can Americans now trust the intelligence agencies shown to be corrupt in the very recent past? By Victor Davis Hanson.
In sum, many within the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the NSC, and the State Department may have been involved in the greatest scandal in American electoral history, by directing agents, informants, and employees to help one campaign to harm another — and then, even after the election, to work to undermine a sitting president. In addition, these rogue agencies spent two years fighting congressional requests to release incriminating information. And then, when they were forced against their will to cough up some documents, they redacted them so heavily that they’re almost undecipherable.
Former FBI director Comey spent months on a book tour, punctuated by daily back-and-forth feuding with the president of the United States. Former CIA director John Brennan is a current paid CNN analyst who devotes much of his commentary to calling the president treasonous and unfit. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper is a paid MSNBC consultant who has alleged that the president is a Russian intelligence asset. …
Once you tell a lie…
Our current agency directors and cabinet are rightly calling universal attention to the ongoing threat of Russian espionage efforts. … Such concern for the national security is fine and necessary.
But somewhere, somehow, someone must also explain and rectify the past. …
Those who are warning of Russian collusion efforts to warp an election now work for agencies that in the recent past were doing precisely what they now rightly accuse the Russians of doing. …
The public will not be able to square such a circle — believe that the intelligence agencies are trustworthy now, while knowing they were deeply corrupt in the very recent past — unless there is some accountability for U.S.-government misdeeds. …
We always expect Russian skullduggery, but we never anticipated election interference from those entrusted with protecting us and our institutions from our enemies.
When the secret police get involved in politics, it’s always a disaster.
Organizations infected with leftism rarely recover, because leftists only hire people who are ideologically aligned with them. Either burn it down and start again, or make a lot of appointments from outside.
