The CIA, then and now

In the ten years since 9/11, the Washington Post reports, the Central Intelligence Agency has experienced a massive shift in focus, from "an intelligence-collection and -analysis operation into a shadow military force," much unlike the organisation created by the National Security Act of 1947. Scott Horton writes, in response:

The Agency’s transformation points to changes in the inner dynamics of the American national security establishment and its relationship to government. Institutions grow out of their initial boundaries and assume previously forbidden functions via a process of aggressive self-assertion. Such shifts — and the hundred-billion-dollar commitments of public resources that they entail — were once subject to public discussion and congressional deliberation. Not so in the unconstrained national-security state that is one of the most deeply entrenched legacies of 9/11. 

The Post piece here; Horton's response here.