" What about the role of the CIA in a democratic society? Is that an oxymoron? You could imagine a democratic society with an organization that carries out intelligence-gathering functions. But that’s a very minor part of what the CIA does. Its main purpose is to carry out secret and usually illegal activities for the executive branch, which wants to keep these activities secret because it knows that the public won’t accept them. So even inside the US, it’s highly undemocratic. The activities that it carries out are quite commonly efforts to undermine democracy, as in Chile through the 1960s into the early 1970s. That’s far from the only example. By the way, although most people focus on Nixon’s and Kissinger’s involvement with the CIA, Kennedy and Johnson carried out similar policies. "

― Noam Chomsky , How the World Works