Government employees swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Intelligence workers are no different …

And yet former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kiriakou writes:

One of the things that most observers don’t understand is that the CIA will do anything – anything – to survive. All CIA officers are taught to lie. They lie all the time, about everything, to everybody. And they justify it by trying to convince themselves that they are doing it in the national interest, for national security. From my very first day in the CIA, it was drilled into me, as it is into every other employee, that “the primary mission is to protect the Agency.” That was the mantra.

Indeed, the CIA is a rogue agency.

So is the NSA.