Shackles loosened on U.S. intelligence

WASHINGTON — One by one, barriers erected in the post-Watergate era to prevent abuses and excesses by U.S. intelligence agencies are yielding to pressure to protect the nation from another terrorist attack.

Spying on Americans, toppling adversary regimes, even eliminating certain foreign leaders — all actions long regarded as forbidden for the CIA and other agencies — are back as policy options in the wake of Sept. 11. The shift has taken place with little public debate or formal government action.

Many of the restrictions being eased today were imposed in the wake of the so-called Church Committee investigations of the 1970s. Named after Idaho Sen. Frank Church, a special Senate committee and a House counterpart investigated disclosures in 1975 and 1976 about CIA and NSA bugging of anti-war activists, assassination plots against Cuba's Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders, routine surveillance of civilian telegraph cables, and the agencies' failure to keep Congress informed. The limits set after the committee's investigation include an executive order barring assassination as a tool of foreign policy.

Now the Bush administration is using classified intelligence findings and other below-the-radar actions to empower the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other agencies. (An intelligence finding is essentially a presidential authorization to carry out a secret operation.) To sidestep legal protections that might benefit terror suspects, the Pentagon and Justice Department have developed rules of detention and trial separate from the U.S. court system.