People working in intelligence feel that violations of law resulting from intelligence activities should not be discussed; rather, they are state secrets that could injure the national security of the United States. Halperin has found that the information that is supposed to be kept secret is available to foreign governments and is only being kept from the American people. He contends that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies engage in deliberate and systematic violations of our Constitutional rights. The FBI had a program of infiltration and surveillance of political organizations in the U.S., such as the Women's Liberation Movement. They also watched Martin Luther King Jr. The CIA worked in Chile to prevent Allende from gaining power, and planned to assassinate Lumumba in the Congo. Halperin advocates making the budgets and functions of the intelligence agencies public and establishing a special prosecutor to deal with the crimes of these agencies.

A transcript of the talk is in the book "Each a Mighty Voice" (Heyday Books, 2004).