“[Former NSA analyst] Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans.

“[Former NSA analyst] Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans. “We’re working on behalf of this country’s government, and they have specific intelligence objectives which differ from the U.S., and understandably so,” Stroud said. “You live with it.”“ It’s hard to read this and not be revulsed by the utter lack of any moral and ethical core exhibited by these former intel officers — a very different breed than the NSA of even so late as the 1990s. The IC needs to ask itself why its former officers are willing to work as the gun in the hand of authoritarian regimes looking to hunt down human rights activists and journalists — and what this does to American standing and moral authority abroad.