Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ddeubel]

The CIA has just released some classified documents. I welcome this but I also think a few things should be pointed out about this "release".

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/27/opinion/edsecrets.php
I watched an interesting interview with an expert on these things, the guy who wrote "All the Shah's Men" and a few other well known books where the CIA was involved, Stephen Kinzer. He made a few very lucid points and I'll repeat them with a few of my own, just to get Gopher's goat.....

One. These documents point out that it is not only recently that Uncle Sam has become aggressive about changing foreign governments on a dime and abusing the civil rights of vast swaths of society. The country has been on a pretty steady tack, in this regard.

Two. There has been a considerable "dishonesty" regarding foreign policy. A what we say is not what we do policy.

Three. The CIA is not a fall guy. These documents show substantially that all levels of the executive branch knew what was happening and signed off on such.... The CIA has been allowed to be an agency that takes the heat, precisely because of this. A way of deflating any crisis. But the fact remains, the CIA was just doing the job of the admin. and so we must hold those of higher office accountable for torture, execution, arms / drug dealing etc.... etc...

Four. Let's not get all excited about these documents. Not much new. Further, they are only what the CIA is allowing to be seen. Big gaps, even blanket ommissions, whiteouts. Further, the CIA destroys many, many documents. So basically it is saying, here -- see how open we are!!! when infact being nothing such. They control the show. Rest assured, these documents have all been gleaned and picked over, so that none show any individual accountability. So yeah, there won't be any major trials over these horrid revelations....

Five. I don't see anything wrong with the agency working for the benefit of the national interest. Okay. But the way they do it, as these documents reveal, is just farcical and against the best interests of America for sure. Especially over the long term. That means that a rethink of American strategy is definitely in order.

Six. Oh yeah, Gopher is going to come on here and say the agency was upstanding and still is and did nothing wrong and America is the freest when it comes to disclosure of govt "secret" doings. Dust in the wind.


[quote]Breaking the code of secrecy

The Boston GlobePublished: June 27, 2007


There is no end to the magnetic attraction of secrecy on government officials. So it is a healthy sign of democratic self-correction when the code of secrecy is set aside, as it was yesterday when, at the behest of CIA Director Michael Hayden, the agency released 693 pages of declassified files on CIA abuses from the 1950s to the 1970s. Among these were a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, subjecting unwitting subjects to LSD and the wiretapping of journalists.

Making those records public is not merely a boon for historians. It may also help cure contemporary leaders of their addiction to acting secretly, outside the law. Anticipating Hayden's action, the National Security Archive at George Washington University last week released documents from 1975 in which former President Gerald Ford; his secretary of State, Henry Kissinger; and the CIA director at the time, William Colby, discuss some of what Colby called the "skeletons" in the agency's closet.

Then as now, the CIA was conducting illegal wiretaps of Americans. To uncover the source of leaks to newspapers, journalists and government officials were placed under 24-hour surveillance. CIA letter openers were reading mail to Americans from the Soviet Union and China. CIA operatives covertly monitored and inflitrated antiwar groups and conducted covert programs against "the international activities of radicals and black militants."

The parallels between those old transgressions and recent abuses countenanced by President George W. Bush and members of his administration are not always exact. Nonetheless, there are enough similarities to cast light on the enduring temptation of secrecy-obsessed officials to trample on American liberties in the name of protecting them.

Indeed, some of the contemporary excesses that have come to light are worse than the Vietnam-era opening of Jane Fonda's mail. Scores of suspected terrorists or Islamist recruiters for global jihad have been kidnapped and delivered to interrogators in countries known to practice torture. The e-mails of many more Americans than were monitored during the Vietnam War have been subjected to data mining by government snoops.


Records of those old un-American activities were kept secret so long not merely to protect the reputation of officials who have long since retired or died. The hiding of old abuses also makes it easier to forget how harmful and unnecessary they were. Secrecy about the past makes it easier for new generations of abusers to pursue new abuses.[/quote]

[dogshed]

NPR had a piece about it. They said things were blanked out in the documents that had been previously released. They said this was silly.

[Mosley]

Well, DD: Yeah, there ain't a whole lot surprisin' 'bout the CIA "revelations". Gosh! The CIA tried to kill Castro!? What a shock. Too bad that failed. Americans receiving mail from the USSR and [Red] China had their mail opened? Oh, the inhumanity! Jane Fonda had her mail opened? Horrors!

And my first sentence's style, if it rings a bell w/you, should remind you of the goof w/your sig line. The quotation doesn't come from " Samuel Clements" (whoever the hell he was) but rather the great Mark Twain a.k.a Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

For most of my life, I've slept better knowing that the CIA has been protecting my interests as a citizen of the free world.

[ddeubel]

[postfundie]

[ddeubel]

postfundie,

In literary terms, it is an infolding metaphor. Meaning, I am suggesting the thing itself by refering to something or some act like itself.... But who knows, I'm sure they were looking for ways to protect America from Romanian werewolves and spending lots of money doing so....

But the cold war, especially post 70s would qualify. Misinformation and fantasies of fear.

DD

[Gopher]

[ddeubel]

bravo for muckrakers!!!!!!!!!!!!! America has a proud heritage of this and those who would use this term disparaging are just "gestapo".

Mencken is the best of these....but of course you would detest the man if he were alive today. Since he is long dead, you probably idolize him....

[Gopher]

You must evaluate your position as weak to call me a Nazi this early in the discussion, Ddeubel.

In any case, what is usually missing from these discussions, incidentally, is context. Most, people like Ron Paul, Chalmers Johnson, Steven Kinzer, and other devotees to the antiAmerican worldview ignore it.

But Senator Frank Church did not...

[Gopher]

[Pligganease]

To DD, your friends are your enemies and your enemies are your friends. Why? Because to DD, neither exist. To DD...

[thepeel]

[Leslie Cheswyck]

[cbclark4]

[Mosley]

Yeah, DD: I really should apologize for using the term "free world."