ACLU Spies on U.S. Covert Intelligence Officers

Michelle Malkin was on Fox & Friends just now. She was talking about the ACLU's "John Adams Project," which is a spying operation on America's spies. ACLU heavies have been following CIA officials, taking pictures of them at their homes, and then showing them to Guantanamo detainees to get information on prisoner treatment at the facility.

Michelle's piece on this yesterday is here, "ACLU: Spying for America’s Enemies."

But check out Investor's Business Daily's editorial as well, "Picturing The Enemy":

Security: The ACLU sneakily photographing CIA officers near their homes, then showing the shots to the imprisoned planners of the 9/11 attacks. A fruitcake fantasy? The government is looking into exactly this.

When the Washington Post three and a half years ago uncovered the CIA's "black prisons" program, in which enhanced interrogation was used against terrorist detainees to foil future atrocities, we forcefully argued that such secret wartime operations ought never be outed.

The Post may have won a Pulitzer for its revelation, but we feel more strongly than ever today. And a new story in that same newspaper gives new facts about the harm it did, and continues to do.

A Justice Department investigation is now apparently investigating whether photos of covert CIA officials surreptitiously taken by the American Civil Liberties Union's "John Adams Project" were unlawfully shown to terrorist detainees charged with organizing the attacks of 9/11.

It's all supposedly part of military lawyers' aggressive defense of their terrorist defendants, on whom enhanced interrogation may have been used. But the Justice probe seems to have given quite a scare to ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. Refusing to comment on the specifics of his organization's photo activities on behalf of "our clients," Romero complained that the government was not investigating "the CIA officials who undertook the torture."

Has there ever been a more outrageous trading of places? Those behind the attacks that murdered thousands are now the victims? And the courageous U.S. government officials who grilled them for the purpose of preventing further terrorist attacks are now the villains?

Instead of receiving the protection they deserve, they and their family members have apparently been spied on by the ACLU and have had their likenesses displayed to al-Qaida members.

What if these detainees get released — which the ACLU obviously wouldn't mind seeing happen? Will descriptions of those CIA officers be relayed up the al-Qaida food chain? Will there be "future ops" files on these interrogators and their families somewhere in the mountainous caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

The Post story notes that leftist groups here and abroad, European investigators and others "have compiled lists of people thought to have been involved in the CIA's program, including CIA station chiefs, agency interrogators and medical personnel who accompanied detainees on planes as they were moved from one secret location to another."

It says that "working from these lists, some of which include up to 45 names, researchers photographed agency workers and obtained other photos from public records." The ACLU's Romero shrugs his shoulders and calls all that "normal" lawyerly research.

It may be normal for a group that throughout its history has provided aid and comfort to America's adversaries, but compiling a long enemies list and attaching pictures to go with the names should be the least-normal thing imaginable in a free society.

The Washington Post's initial article is here.