In 2011, the Associated Press published an article detailing the ways the CIA assists the NYPD in its surveillance of the local Muslim community–a practice that’s now being challenged in several high-profile lawsuits. This prompted the CIA’s inspector general, who oversees Agency operations, to begin an investigation into the collaboration, as CIA agents are not legally allowed to surveil Americans. When that investigation concluded, the CIA reported it found no violations of the law.
Two years later, The New York Times has obtained a copy of the Inspector General David Buckley’s report via a third-party Freedom of Information Act suit, and the results are considerably more complicated than originally reported. One agent working with the NYPD after 9/11 was on unpaid leave from the CIA, and told the inspector general he believed there were “‘no limitations’ as far as what he could or could not do.” Another, still on agency payroll, said the NYPD provided him with daily briefings, which he did not believe were filtered to include only foreign intelligence information, meaning in all likelihood he was receiving information about New Yorkers.
“The revelation of these issues,” wrote Buckley, “leads me to conclude that the risks associated with the Agency’s relationship with the N.Y.P.D. were not fully considered and that there was inadequate direction and control by the agency managers responsible for the relationship.”
