They figured out how to immunize themselves during the Bush administration. Get a compliant lawyer to write a memo saying whatever you want to do is legal. Then you are relying on advice of counsel which tends to defeat the mens rea necessary to convict of a crime. The lawyer is also not liable because it's not a crime to give bad legal advice.
This technique is how everyone at the CIA got the hook for destroying video evidence of torture which had already been requested by a congressional committee and a federal court in 2005. It's also explains Yoo's farcical torture memos -- they may not pass the straight face test but they still were a major barrier to criminal liability for those who procured them.
Nope. Because they have dirt on everyone; and because politics is a messy business, there's plenty of dirt to be found if you have the kind of resources that they do.
Heck, Clapper lied _openly_ and admitted it later, only to get away scot free. (Yes, I have read the entire account in detail. He lied. There's no doubt about it.)
Of course they won't. It would take a politically suicidal president or congressperson to try to rein them in, in any way other than as a token gesture.
> It would take a politically suicidal president or congressperson to try to rein them in
And any such person was filtered out long before reaching the position of power. No one will let you take the presidential chair if you're a danger to their interests.
This technique is how everyone at the CIA got the hook for destroying video evidence of torture which had already been requested by a congressional committee and a federal court in 2005. It's also explains Yoo's farcical torture memos -- they may not pass the straight face test but they still were a major barrier to criminal liability for those who procured them.