Elastic Clause Quotes

The new National Security Act contained a tantalizing clause worded to allow endlessly elastic interpretation. It authorized the CIA to perform not only duties spelled out by law, but also “such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.” This gave it the legal right to take any action, anywhere in the world, as long as the president approved. “The fear generated by competition with a nation like the USSR, which had elevated control of every aspect of society to a science, encouraged the belief in the United States that it desperately needed military might and counterespionage by agencies that could outdo the Soviet spymasters,” the historian Robert Dallek has written.