“Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WiiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named ‘Vault 7’ by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” Thus begins the press release on the Wikileaks website.
In light of the “Vault 7” release, and in light of the many other revelations from WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and others, it seemed good to evaluate the covert activities of the US federal government in light of the Word of God.
This is a pressing issue, because more and more it is becoming obvious that we’re living Orwell’s 1984 in real time. What once was the stuff of dystopian fiction is now our day to day experience. According to the Vault 7 release,
- “Weeping Angel” a hack developed by the CIA and the UK’s MI5/BTSS is targeted at Samsung Smart TVs, placing “the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode” while recording conversations in the room.
- The CIA can hack your Android or Apple smart phone. According to WikiLeaks, “Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.”
- The CIA can make their hacks appear as the work of foreign intelligence agencies.
- The CIA has hoarded, rather than disclosing, knowledge of serious vulnerabilities to US-based tech manufacturers as was agreed upon in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations.
- “The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware.
- The U.S. consulate in Frankfurt Germany is a covert CIA hacker base.
For my part, none of this seems terribly surprising. There long have been rumors that the CIA and other government agencies had capabilities of this sort. But now we have reliable confirmation of it.
But Government spying doesn’t end here. For example, in 2013 Glenn Greenwald penned an article that appeared in the Guardian, in which it was revealed that the US government is capturing “every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant.”
In that same article, Greenwald quoted a 2010 Washington Post piece stating, “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency [NSA] intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.”
Greenwald also quotes former NSA official William Binney to the effect that the US government has “assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens” and that “the data that’s being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can target anyone they want.”
Ah, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The Root Cause of the Problem
The temptation of many upon hearing about governmental abuses of power is to call for new laws. But we’re already choking on the laws on the books now. And it appears they have done little to stop the abuse.
The problem is not that we don’t have enough laws. The problem is that Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone that once was widely preached and believed in the US and other Western nations has nearly disappeared from them. The Western world has largely rejected Christ and embraced secular philosophy. And one of the results of this is increasingly oppressive government, in which the rulers more and more “lord it over” the people. Freedom shrinks, the scope of the state grows.
Commenting on the Bible’s view on espionage, John Robbins wrote,
A related foreign policy question is the matter of spies, for perhaps the predominant function of embassies today (and perhaps whenever they have been used) is espionage [as noted above, the US consulate in Frankfurt, Germany is a covert CIA hacker base]. Ancient Israel used spies, but only during war and for short periods of time. Just as there were no standing army, so there were no standing armies of spies and diplomats…
Spying on other nations was not a normal, peacetime practice of either the Hebrew republic or the monarchy. It seems clear that spying on one’s neighboring governments during peacetime, even more than maintaining embassies that harbor spies, is a form of prohibited foreign intervention…
The absence of both resident ambassadors and spies is the norm (The Sine Qua Non of Enduring Freedom).
Most Americans, even most American Christians, would likely be surprised to learn that the Bible has anything to say about espionage. But as the Apostle Paul teaches us, the Word of God thoroughly equips the man for every good work, including the good work of politics.
And when examined in the light of Scripture, we see that much, in not nearly all, of the day-to-day activities of the CIA and other US government intelligence agencies are immoral, falling outside the scope of what the Bible authorizes civil governments to do.
Catholics In Action, The CIA’s Ties to Rome
In what would come as a surprise to many Americans, the CIA has garnered the nicknames Catholics In Action and the Catholic Intelligence Agency as a result of the many Roman Catholics who have held senior positions in the agency.
By the way, this is not something the Romanists are embarrassed about. In fact, some of them seen quite proud of the fact. Take, for example, this article in the Catholic Herald, a publication from the UK. According to “Why Catholics thrive in the CIA,”
[T]hree out of the last five CIA directors have been Catholic: Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta [BA and Law degree from Jesuit Santa Clara University], and the current director, John Brennan [BA from Jesuit Fordham University]…
Some of the most influential directors in CIA history have been Catholic – men such as Walter Bedell Smith, John McCone, William Colby, and William Casey [graduate of Jesuit Fordham University]. They were not just casual Catholics. They were devout Mass-goers – in many cases, members of groups like the Knights of Malta.
The close connection between the Jesuits and the CIA is seen in this revealing quote from an article written about the 2011 documentary film on the life of William Colby.
“It had to do with his [William Colby’s] Jesuit upbringing,” explains Carl Colby. “It’s about questioning the moral imperatives.” The Papal shock troops, organized by the Jesuits, known colloquially as “The Company,” were a tool to be used whenever needed to thwart the Reformation, but also to reform the Church. The CIA, also known as “The Company,” was a tool to be used by the president to thwart the Communists.
William Casey, CIA Director under Ronald Reagan showed his Jesuitical love of deception and contempt for the American people in his very first staff meeting in 1981, where he was quoted as saying, “Well know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
Conclusion
When viewed in light of Scripture, the cloak and dagger activities of the CIA and the other 16 intelligence agencies of the US federal government are seen to be sinful and antithetical to the principles of sound republican government. They are a source of great danger, to Americans at home and foreigners abroad.
Things have gotten so absurd that there are reliable reports that CIA backed rebels in Syria have battled rebels backed by the pentagon. The US government has literally been at war with itself in part due to the activities of the CIA.
Harry Truman, who signed the bill that created the CIA, later in life had serious regrets about his decision. When asked how he felt about his role in creating the CIA, Truman responded, ” I think it was a mistake. And if I’d know (sic) what was going to happen, I never would have done it.”
Perhaps the time has come to bring Truman’s mistake to an end.
Lux Lucet 
That’s interesting about the large number of Catholics int he CIA – I had never heard that. I actually I always heard that it was Mormons who heavily permeated the CIA. In the end they are both mettlesome, gospel-hating Pharisees so I supposed it doesn’t make much difference.
Yeah. That whole thing about the Catholics and the CIA is new to me. But the Jesuit angle is even more striking. I had no idea until last week how many CIA directors had Jesuit connections.
As to the Mormons, they seem to be gaining strength in the GOP. Ronna Romney McDaniel was just named as the new head of the RNC. I’ve tried to find confirmation that she’s Mormon, but there’s nothing out there on the internet that I’ve been able to find that clearly identifies her as such.
But the fact that she’s Mitt Romney’s niece and went to Brigham Young make it almost certain that she’s a Mormon. I guess the reason her Mormonism is being kept under wraps is that many people are still rightfully uncomfortable with the false LDS church.
So we now have a Mormon as head of the RNC and a Jesuit running the DNC. What a mess this country is in!