Nation Topics - Covert Ops | The Nation

The history of American intelligence-gathering is rife with incompetence, dysfunction and contempt toward legislative oversight.

House Democrats capitulate to pass a surveillance bill that further compromises our privacy and limits accountability of the government and telecoms. Will the Senate fight back?

The GOP nominee favors unilateralism and "rogue state rollback."

The House stalemate with the White House over electronic surveillance creates a rare moment to reconsider an array of unconstitutional post-9/11 laws.

Democratic leaders are poised to validate Bush's illegal surveillance, giving up even more ground than their Republican colleagues did. Why?

Long before a top bureaucrat was exposed for destroying secret interrogation tapes, the CIA shrouded his identity, making the press corps complicit in practices that would offend the nation's conscience.

The agency's secret destruction of tapes is a parable of the futility of oversight.

The CIA tapes' destruction and violation of anti-torture statutes they recorded require a special prosecutor.

Why did four key members of Congress failed to inform the public and the 9/11 Commission about the use of torture on terror suspects?

CIA, Department of Justice, White House--and members of Congress--ran through every legal and procedural red light designed to prevent criminal conduct and its cover-up.