|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
|
 Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 4:43 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare." (Sam Clemens)
"There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends." (Sam Clemens) |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Speaking of quotations...
Hey, DD: Here are a couple of assclowns who also used "free world":
"The free world must now prove itself worthy of its own past."
-Pres. Eisenhower
And welcome back from that jungle in Guam if you've never heard this one....
"There are many people in the world who really don't understand-or say they don't-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!"
-Pres. Kennedy |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Dunno bout "breaking" the code of secrecy, depending on the context would clearly stand to be quite overboard & rash.
Ought really be more an issue of criminal ACCOUNTABLITY & responsible public disclosure  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:57 pm Post subject: Re: Breaking the code of secrecy..... |
|
|
| ddeubel wrote: |
| ...CIA letter openers were reading mail to Americans from the Soviet Union and China... |
ddeubel,
Thanks for the thread, interesting read. I think I can offer one observation on the letter opening aspect, in that in the 80s I read articles by PEN and other human rights groups that mentioned that the Soviet Union regularly opened and read correspondence from overseas addressed to dissidents in the Soviet Union. I don't know which side started it - and I don't doubt that it was done in Canada and other western countries as well - but it is possible that the rationale was developed within the CIA to do this, based on the argument that if the Soviet Union is opening and reading letters sent to the USSR from the US, the CIA should do the same.
I remember reading one particularly funny story about a human rights dissident who had been expelled from Bulgaria. He came up with his own personal campaign for bringing down Soviet communism.
Once a month, he would write a letter to a prominent dissident in the Soviet Union, but before mailing it, he would take it to the post office and insure it against it being opened in transit. I think he was living in Holland, and the maximum you could insure the letter for at the time was $400. The security organs in Russia would open and read the letters, but as a result they were liable for paying the insurance claim, which the USSR was treaty-bound to follow. If they didn't, they would be kicked out of the International Postal Union.
So once a month, this guy would send off his letter, and a few weeks later he would get a cheque from the Soviet government for $400, regular as clockwork. Guy was a genius.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
loose_ends
Joined: 23 Jul 2007
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Gopher wrote: |
| Quote: |
| ...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. |
This ought not go unclarified. Nixon and then later Carter purged CIA, especially the operators. They also destroyed the Board of National Estimates and replaced it with the NIOs, who were no longer independent but worked for the DCI, and therefore the President. Nixon hated the Agency, and felt it harbored liberal elites who opposed him personally, socially, politically. And he was mostly right. Carter was caught up in the far left's desire to gut Langley. "The Halloween Massacre," they called what he and Admiral Stansfield Turner did.
In any case, Nixon's hatchet-man was James Schlesinger. Sometime in 1973, Schlesinger and, at the time, DDO William Colby, learned via newsreports that E. Howard Hunt had used his former CIA connections to get listening devices and other equipment from the Agency. He used said hardware to perpetrate Watergate and Ellsberg crimes.
This angered Schlesinger and Colby for many reasons, mostly because it came to them as a surprise. In response, they issued a bizarre Agency-wide memo instructing all personnel to respond: list any and all illegal activities you may have engaged in or supported while working for CIA. They collated all responses. Colby at first called them "the skeletons." But then "the family jewels" took and stuck. CIA immediately turned them over to Justice.
Glad to see that we will now get to read the family jewels. Not happy to see so many forgetting and not caring to look into how and why they came to exist. People love to sensationalize and cast aspersions simply for the sake of doing it, I imagine. |
you seem to point to the justifications of such behavior by the CIA.
But is such behavior ever justifiable in an open society?
| Quote: |
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control.
And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Idea
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
|
| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject: Re: Breaking the code of secrecy..... |
|
|
| Quote: |
| ...CIA letter openers were reading mail to Americans from the Soviet Union and China... |
Canadians have for YEARS had their mail opened & examined by good gov't guys & girls.
Of course not that i've ever heard this discussed on CBC.
Has anyone else?
Can you believe people are actually PAID to spy on their own civilian populations? Mind-boggling.
Ssshhhh ... just don't tell anyone ...
That was a long time ago as well. Think how easy this must be now ... with the "NET"  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
