The Amerikan Cheka, better known as the Central Intelligence Agency, has abused and murdered people around the world for decades. Now we see a couple of former CIA employees getting a taste of what it feels like to live in the Police State that they helped to create:

Two former CIA employees whose Kansas home was fruitlessly searched for marijuana during a two-state drug sweep claim they were illegally targeted, possibly because they had bought indoor growing supplies to raise vegetables.

Adlynn and Robert Harte sued this week to get more information about why sheriff’s deputies searched their home in the upscale Kansas City suburb of Leawood last April 20 as part of Operation Constant Gardener — a sweep conducted by agencies in Kansas and Missouri that netted marijuana plants, processed marijuana, guns, growing paraphernalia and cash from several other locations.

April 20 long has been used by marijuana enthusiasts to celebrate the illegal drug and more recently by law enforcement for raids and crackdowns. But the Hartes’ attorney, Cheryl Pilate, said she suspects the couple’s 1,825-square-foot split level was targeted because they had bought hydroponic equipment to grow a small number of tomatoes and squash plants in their basement.

They filed a lawsuit which expressed shock that such a thing could happen in this country, and they certainly did experience the garden-variety abuse that drug squads regularly dish out to innocent people:

The couple filed the suit this week under the Kansas Open Records Act after Johnson County and Leawood denied their initial records requests, with Leawood saying it had no relevant records. The Hartes say the public has an interest in knowing whether the sheriff’s department’s participation in the raids was “based on a well-founded belief of marijuana use and cultivation at the targeted addresses, or whether the raids primarily served a publicity purpose.”

“If this can happen to us and we are educated and have reasonable resources, how does somebody who maybe hasn’t led a perfect life supposed to be free in this country?” Adlynn Harte said in an interview Friday.

The suit filed in Johnson County District Court said the couple and their two children — a 7-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son — were “shocked and frightened” when deputies armed with assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests pounded on the door of their home around 7:30 a.m. last April 20.

“It was just like on the cops TV shows,” Robert Harte told The Associated Press. “It was like ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ ready to storm the compound.”

During the sweep, the court filing said, the Hartes were told they had been under surveillance for months, but the couple “know of no basis for conducting such surveillance nor do they believe such surveillance would have produced any facts supporting the issuance of a search warrant.”

No doubt, I suspect the Hartes would feign ignorance of CIA predations abroad in the name of “fighting drugs,” and, yes, innocent people get killed sometimes, although the CIA maintains there anyone in the CIA crosshairs cannot possibly be “innocent.” Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying the family got what it deserved or that they are personally responsible for all of the Police State abuses we face daily.

What I do maintain, however, is that over time regimes tend to swallow their own. Most likely, the Hartes were low-level functionaries like the many low-level apparatchiks that populated the Cheka and KGB headquarters. Ironically, while decrying the secrecy of police agencies that raided their home, the Hartes are unable to divulge anything about their CIA backgrounds since, after all, the CIA operates under secrecy.