Political hopefuls and career officials were vetted through prosecutorial files to identify those deemed toxic to the new administration, a process kept hidden for decades.
Kept internal for years, a February 1998 memorandum outlines a scheme to strip agency autonomy and hand climate control to a small circle of political operatives.
For decades, the American public lived under indefinite emergency declarations that left civil liberties to the Oval Office and allowed intelligence agencies to operate without a leash.