So define legal CIA activities, seems the very heart of the CIA operations is stuff we don't want to be held accountable for. Authorized, unauthorized, plausible deniability... part and parcel of covert ops.
You attended the briefings given the SoS? How is Iran/Contra not valid? The CIA and National security team ran guns, men, cash and supposedly drugs through the countries bordering Nicaragua and the Ambassadors didn't know? if the State coordinates all foreign policy then State had to know something, your logic is flawed.
More like the Ambassador knew a CIA OP was going on but the details were not divulged. Diplomats have to at least maintain an appearance of clean hands in the foreign relations community. Just as every embassy has a 'cultural attache' or 'communications consultant' with diplomatic immunity the State dept is an umbrella for CIA ops, but the diplomats are not privy to what all the CIA does on station.
I'm sure Hillary knew Benghazi was a CIA op, that is why she was very careful in how she answered a few questions about weapons, Syria, Turkey- but I don't think she knew any details nor was privy to any specific threats toward the CIA op center.
One detail I have wondered about- IF the State dept was actually running the weapons clean-up then who was the Head Fred, the man/woman in-charge on the ground?
What Department of State official was running Benghazi?
So bottomline who controls what, who is responsible for what-
State runs the above board foreign relations, the CIA the under the table stuff.
Hillary knows of most major operations the CIA conducts but not day to day activities, CIA in house threat evaluations concerning those ops, nor what measures are in place in case of a major incident. Benghazi was CIA from start to finish- they dropped their own hot potato, the Ambassador wandered into something he should have stayed out of.
State supports the CIA station Chiefs but does not coordinate nor in any way dictate the CIA operations.
I liken it to a hotel owner renting a room to a whore. Yes the owner knows she is a whore but as long as she doesn't parade around naked infront of the hotel he looks the other way and keeps clean sheets on the bed. but the owner doesn't stand outside the door incase a trick decides to give the whore a good beat down instead of money. The owner doesn't keep a few thugs on hand to rush to the whore's aid if she is getting a beat down. That is on the whore.
But I'll bet your 30 some years you claim in experience that NO SoS every knew ALL CIA OPS, and we will exclude the found out ones that were patently illegal from drugs out of SE Asia, Columbia, Iran/Contra, but as our dear friends on the radical right will quickly say- IF the CIA was running weapons to Syria they would call that illegal as well.
So using some 'patently illegal' label regarding CIA OPs leaves me thinking your 30 some years didn't get too close to the nitty gritty as we say....
eace