The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been running a secret program collecting information on US citizens for decades. The program was not known about by the US courts or Congress, the two branches of government responsible for oversight of the surveillance activity of the agency.
On Wednesday, a partially declassified letter from Democratic Party Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico to CIA Director William Burns dated April 13, 2021, was released, showing that the secret surveillance program has been operated by the CIA under the authority of an executive order originally issued in 1981 during the Reagan Administration.
The letter from the two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee states that the CIA program has been conducted in defiance of
— source wsws.org | Kevin Reed | 12 Feb 2022