In October of 2000, the FBI was deployed to the port city of Aden, Yemen to investigate
the bombing of the U.S.S.
Cole—this was one of Al Qaeda's first attacks against the United States, and, at the time,
very little was known about the organization or who might be involved.
The investigation turned up one name—Khallad—and also a phone number, which rang a seemingly
random payphone outside of a condo building in Kuala Lumpur.
The FBI forwarded the information to the CIA and asked if they knew anything about that
name or number, the CIA said they had nothing, and that was that.
But was that… that?
Because that… was a lie.
The CIA, in fact, knew who Khallad was—and that that wasn’t his real name—and they
knew exactly what that phone number was, too; they had even sent Malaysian authorities to
take photos of the condo building earlier that year.
That building, it turns out, was the location where Al Qaeda was putting together the plans
for the attacks of September 11th; the CIA knew who attended those meetings, where they
went, and when they entered the United States early the following year: legally-speaking,
that is when they became the FBI’s problem—the CIA can’t operate on American soil—but
the FBI didn’t know any of this.
The CIA refused to tell them anything, even when they explicitly asked for it.
So… you know, what the hell, right?
These agencies are both part of the same federal government; what are they doing keeping secrets
from each other?
Well, it sounds like it’s time for another exciting episode of “That Seems Bad.
How Did That Happen?
Subtitle: Let’s Learn Facts That Undermine Our Faith In The Executive Branch Of The American
Government!”
Here’s the thing: that story wasn’t the first time that the CIA kept secrets from
the FBI, and it certainly wasn’t the last.
They failed to work together on the JFK assassination, Watergate, the Wen Ho Lee investigations—all
the hits.
But to understand why, we need to cover a little bit of history.
First, there was light.
Next, America writes the constitution.
Then they write an amendment.
Then they write two more amendments, and then finally the fourth time they write the fourth
amendment, which says “we can’t break into your house and look at your stuff to
see if you’re being bad, which is the only way for us to spy on you because it’s 1791
and no one has invented electricity yet.”
Then someone invents electricity, and then someone else invents the telegraph, and then
bad people use it to say “we’re being bad” to each other from far away, and then
the government invents wiretapping.
“Hey, what the hell,” says everyone.
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes we can,” says the government.
“That wire isn’t in your house.”
“Yes they can,” says the Supreme Court, “America #1.”
And now everyone’s really mad, so it’s time to pass some laws.
Specifically, this law and this law.
The first law—“Title III”—defined how the government could collect information
on people within the US: the sort of surveillance that’s done by the FBI.
The second law—“FISA”—defined how the government could collect information on
people outside the US: that’s the CIA’s jam.
So now there are two kinds of warrants you can get to spy on someone—a Title III warrant
or a FISA warrant—but here’s where things get tricky: both of them have completely different
requirements, standards, and levels of secrecy.
Now, I’m not going to make you read through the hundreds of pages of relevant statutes
here—that’s what my writers are for—but I’ll give you the general vibe: the FBI
has to do a library of paperwork anytime they take a photo of someone, and the CIA is not
bound by worldly laws and are more or less sanctioned to kill God.
There is a reason for this, and it comes down to the fundamental kind of information each
agency collects.
At the end of the day, the FBI is a law enforcement agency: they’re collecting information to
bring to court in order to get criminal prosecutions, which means that in addition to not violating
peoples’ 4th amendment rights, they also need their information to be verifiable, well-sourced,
and ultimately hold up in court.
The CIA, on the other hand, can’t actually enforce laws at all—they just collect information
on things that might end up being a problem for the United States, like Chile being a
democracy or JFK’s head being in one piece.
The standard for what their information is and how they obtained it is way lower, because
it’s not being used as hard evidence in court… and they want to keep it that way.
How do we know that?
Bam.
Declassified internal Justice Department memo.
I didn’t read it, but you know who did?
Whatever my writer’s name is.
Here’s the deal.
Basically, after these two laws were passed, the Justice Department started getting really
sweaty because they realized that FISA kind of just looked like a way for the government
to do illegal wiretapping by saying something was a foreign intelligence investigation when
it wasn’t—which they were, by the way, definitely doing—so they decided to put
up a wall between the CIA and US law enforcement—if the CIA wanted to hand over information to
the FBI, they would have to get approval from the Attorney General and follow a whole new
set of rules, which they decided to do… almost never.
So then 9/11 happened, obviously, and everyone got really mad at the CIA, and there were
a bunch of hearings, and ultimately they settled on changing exactly one word, which was “the.”
Did that fix the problem?
I don’t know, maybe, I guess we’ll find out the next time they fail to stop us from
all getting killed.
Anyway, there’s like a decent shot that this video gets demonetized, because YouTube
doesn’t like it when I coyly suggest that a government agency assassinated a sitting
US president.
But you know who does like it when I coyly suggest that a government agency assassinated
a sitting US president?
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It was the incubator for Jet Lag: The Game, where we developed an exclusive pilot season
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