> They're supposed to spy on the most important people in the world, and make sure that the important people don't plan anything the agency's employers may consider ... untoward.
Except of course for the part where the CIA is explicitly legally barred from domestic US spying, and where they were spying on their employers.
Am I surprised? No, not at all. I'm from Norway. Most people would probably consider Norway less likely to be involved in sinister surveillance activity than a country like the US.
Yet 20 years ago, an investigation into the Police Security Service finally got underway, and everyone were shocked - shocked, I say - to find out that the several decades of illegal surveillance of left wing groups that any member of either of the communist parties or socialist groups had known, and publicly alleged, were happening had actually been happening (they knew, because members of the security service made it abundantly clear, by e.g. occasionally stopping people on the street and making fun of them over details of conversations they'd had in the privacy of their own home).
When the establishment finally accepted that the security service had to be reigned in, a parliamentary commission was established. During the investigation into the security service, it quickly became clear that they were still engaged in the illegal surveillance while the commission was investigating them. Not only that, but it was revealed that they were illegally spying on the chairman - a well respected member of parliament - of the commission investigating their illegal spying.
So I'm not the least bit surprised. But that does not mean it is legal, or what they are "supposed" to do.