The Cia's covert spying extravaganza or "How we stopped worrying about civil rights and learned to love wiretaps".

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The lesson here is to strike when everybody is hiding under their beds.

Bush has never publicly confirmed the existence of a covert program, but he was recently forced to defend the approach in general terms, citing his wartime responsibilities to protect the nation. In November, responding to questions about the CIA's clandestine prisons, he said the nation must defend against an enemy that "lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again."

Here let me translate, "The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming! Run! Flee! Only I can keep you safe! You must never question me or the terrorists will kill you in your sleep!"

But just what has our cuddly little spy agency been up to all of this time?

Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreign governments to whisk terrorism suspects off the streets or out of police custody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA's black sites and facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries.

The presidential finding also permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world, according to a dozen current and former intelligence officials and congressional and executive branch sources.

In four years, the GST has become larger than the CIA's covert action programs in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s, according to current and former intelligence officials. Indeed, the CIA, working with foreign counterparts, has been responsible for virtually all of the success the United States has had in capturing or killing al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001.

Well that is good right? We killed some bad guys, awesome! So where is the bad?

One way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtually shut out Congress during the early years. Congress, for its part, raised only weak and sporadic protests. The administration sometimes refused to give the committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the details they requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinely briefed on these matters, usually to four members -- the chairmen and ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.

John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained in a 2003 letter to Vice President Cheney that his briefing on the NSA eavesdropping was unsatisfactory. "Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities," he wrote.

Rockefeller made similar complaints about the CIA's refusal to allow the full committee to see the backup material supporting a skeptical report by the CIA inspector general in 2004 on detentions and interrogations that questioned the legal basis for renditions.

Well wait a minute! Why would the Administration not want to inform congress fully about what they were doing? Does the White House assume that Congress does not support fighting terror? What other reason can there be? Unless the White House knew it was overstepping its authority. Is that a cynical thought?

But a former CIA officer said the agency "lost its way" after Sept. 11, rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodox measures "have got to be flushed out of the system," the former officer said. "That's how it works in this country."

I guess it is not so cynical.