I don’t buy into the theory that “someone would have talked.” I remember just how fanatical the anti-communist world view was back then with the Birchers operating openly in government, kind of like the bigots and wingnuts serve in congress, like Bachmann, Kyl, Erbe. Do you really think people like Cheney and Addington with their tunnel vision and their Manichean view of the world would talk about what they are involved in?

And who was brought in to make sure that Congress was stonewalled by the agency? George H. W. Bush, the man who supposedly had no connections with the CIA. We’d be better off in this country if it was the last member of the Bush family who had just passed away instead of Ted Kennedy. I wonder how much champagne was consumed celebrating Kennedy’s death in that circle.

But presumably the thinking goes something like this: the president has a limited amount of political capital, and he can spend it on major, once-in-a-generation reforms of the American social contract–universal healthcare and cap and trade–or he can spend it pursuing justice for the perpetrators of the previous administration’s crimes. As morally worthy as the latter might be, it won’t get anyone healthcare or stop the planet from melting; it won’t provide a new foundation for progressive governance.

Then, as Hayes continues in the really sharp part, the inevitable revelations about the bad old backward days get automatically defined as “distractions” when they come out, and therefore the mention of them, not the content of them, becomes the focus of condemnation.

To which I’d add that meanwhile the bad old ways pretty much just go on autopilot, since there’s no way adequately to flush them out, or for Congress to see to it that that has been done, without making some distracting fuss. That is the biggest reason why some people, like maybe me, think that forward-backward stuff is a pile of bullshit, and certainly unworthy of our President.

I’ll stop for now.

Regarding the existence of a Colby-Helms axis, I happen to have glanced at the Three Days of the Condor (1975) page the other day (the movie ran on cable Sun or Mon) and noticed that Helms served as a personal consultant to Robert Redford, who played the Condor (Joe Turner; I don’t know which name is more resonant). And what was the Condor’s role? He describes it:

I work for the CIA. I’m not a spy.

I just read books.

We read everything that’s published in the world,

and we– we feed the plots–

dirty tricks, codes into a computer,

and the computer…

checks against actual CIA plans and operations.

I look for leaks, new ideas.

We read adventures and novels and… journals.

Forthwith a brief excerpt ,regarding the Church committee -from Walter Mondale-one of the Senatorial members who actually sat on the Committee.

….it quickly became apparent that agency personnel called before the Church Committee were thankful for the chance to get the truth out, get a heavy burden off their shoulders, and put the scandal behind them.

More important, the truth that was brought to light made it possible for the country to resolve how several key national security structural and legal issues were to be addressed in the future. Much of that wisdom and many of the legal protections introduced at that time were blithely disregarded by the Bush administration. It is time to get back on the track of legality.

As for the need for holding people to account, Mondale had this to say:

“Holding people responsible in some way for what happened is very important. If the verdict here is that you can do these kinds of things and there are no consequences, then that leaves a precedent. I’ve been around the federal government long enough to know that if there is a bad precedent, it’s like leaving a loaded pistol on the kitchen table. You don’t know who is going to pick it up and pull the trigger. There need to be consequences for violating the law.”

“Closing in on the Torturers”,Ray McGovern 8/26/06 OpEdNews.com

Executives have the illusion that they set policy and can hold people accountable, but anyone who has ever worked in a large organization knows exactly how that really works out. Actions in the field might be exactly 180-degrees from the policy handed down.

One can imagine that the cloak of security and secrecy and compartmentalization only makes it easier to play out these internal games.

It is now crucial that the US national security establishment be reviewed and be restructured as broadly as was done in 1947. Except, in this case, contraction of agencies instead of expansion might be warranted.