[Zigurd]

> makes me wonder what kind of leverage the US secret services have.

Don't wonder. Throughout the Cold War it was patriotic to sacrifice some of your nation's sovereignty to secret agreements and relationships to make your country safer from the very real Soviet threat.

Now all those agreements and relationships have been repurposed in the Global War on Terror. So first you have to decide how much sovereignty you, as an insider who took part in those agreements, want, and how much alienation from your voters you can stand.