And having extensively covered the FBI’s abuses of some of its national-security authorities, having written a book in which the Russiagate abuses were central, and having proposed that the government’s foreign counterintelligence mission against threats to our homeland be transferred from the FBI to a dedicated intelligence service shorn of police powers, I don’t think I can be fairly maligned as a blind apologist for the bureau. But I will say this as someone who started working against the anti-American jihad over 30 years ago: The threat against us in this moment is profound. We cannot afford to blind ourselves to the clear and present peril.

We don’t endow the U.S. armed forces with an arsenal of unprecedented power because we trust that they will never make mistakes (and worse). We do it because it is essential to our national defense and the liberty that we cherish. And we don’t disarm the military when, inevitably, it engages in misfeasance or even malfeasance. Instead, we seek discipline and, where appropriate, significant punishment for wrongdoers. We don’t suicidally strip ourselves of the means to defend ourselves.

The government’s capacity to monitor non-Americans (who don’t have Constitutional rights) outside the United States (where American law does not apply) must not be gutted, especially in a time of high threat, for no better reason than that Americans may be incidentally monitored.