I'm quite torn. I feel like a dissonance in theory and practice is at play here. If you ask people about "American values" a lot of times you'll come up with things around freedom, liberty, in general individualism and protection from the "other" of tyrannical government. That's the theory. In practice, those individuals that make up U.S. intelligence agencies justify the dissonance between their tyrannical actions and their ideals by arguments such as "if it were the Russian/Chinese/Other on top things would be worse", etc. All boiling down to "necessary evils".
So, which is better, a tyrannical regime that professes values of liberty or a tyrannical regime that tacitly admits that it's tyrannical?
I feel like I may be betraying a bit too much of my lack of authority and competence on the subject, but there's something that has stuck with me as the central point of one of the sides at the end of the anime "Legends of the Galactic Heroes". SPOILER Paraphrasing: "Democracy may be just as bad for the people as autocracy, but at least in democracy the people deserve their fate".