How is that pressure supposed to happen when the referenced case, Nixon's "plumbers," shows them directly interfering with politics? No matter how vital you view an organization able to control foreign states, what you're building is an organization to control your state.
It is a legitimately a difficult problem, perhaps among the most difficult problems in governing. How do you create and maintain a government for centuries which keeps its primary goal of serving the people. The US founders thought about this very much drawing on philosophers modern and ancient and they did a pretty good job setting up checks and balances, or more bluntly, competition.
How do you keep the CIA and its like in check? Create opposing government entities specifically immune to its actions and allow them to compete for prestige. This is why we have three branches of government, two houses of congress with different election strategies, etc. Set up separation of powers, imbue the population to value and cherish that separation, and honestly, hope for the best.
Sulla already existed, the idea that "tradition" will keep us safe from ambition has been disproved.
>How do you keep the CIA and its like in check? Create opposing government entities specifically immune to its actions and allow them to compete for prestige
What kind of organization is immune to an intelligence agency?
>honestly, hope for the best
Again, we have conclusive proof that this failed with the Nixon plumbers.
There isn't anything else besides tradition. Government in all of its forms ultimate exists and runs in a manner compatible with the consent of the people. Documents, laws, institutions, policy, what have you... they all derive out of that consent, that tradition, that mythology. You have to maintain the mythology as it grows and transforms over time. Tradition can't rule with a dead hand, it is alive with each citizen, each generation. Nothing is forever.
>What kind of organization is immune to an intelligence agency?
Nothing is perfect. Intelligence agencies aren't all-powerful, and the legislators, judges, executives, and population aren't hopeless. An independent judiciary, senators with long election cycles, and a population with freedom of the press are all resistant to the influence an intelligence agency has.
>Again, we have conclusive proof that this failed with the Nixon plumbers.
Did it? Nixon was forced out of office, he didn't win. Checks and balances aren't about preventing misbehavior, they're about fixing it when it happens. How it worked with Nixon was, as far as I can determine, satisfactory.
It takes one person ignoring tradition to make it worthless.
>An independent judiciary, senators with long election cycles, and a population with freedom of the press are all resistant to the influence an intelligence agency has.
Intelligence agencies are made to control countries even if they have all those things. They aren't a meaningful resistance. Plus, the best resistance listed, a free press, is directly under attack in the Assange case.
>Did it? Nixon was forced out of office, he didn't win. Checks and balances aren't about preventing misbehavior, they're about fixing it when it happens. How it worked with Nixon was, as far as I can determine, satisfactory.
The CIA however had one of their own elected vice president in 1980, and the spying they did to get elected then was completely overlooked. Oh, and Nixon was only caught as part of a power struggle in the FBI. If that's "satisfactory" I don't think you care what the CIA does.