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COMMENTARY:Next Generation of 'Family Jewels'?The CIA’s belated release of its infamous “Family Jewels” sheds light on U.S. intelligence abuses during the CIA’s first quarter century, but this openness may actually obscure a darker reality – that the subsequent three-plus decades have witnessed worse national-security crimes committed under the cloak of greater secrecy and deception.
Today’s reality, however, is far less reassuring. The start of routine congressional oversight in 1977 only caused intelligence hardliners and their political allies to shift operations off-books while simultaneously building a right-wing media infrastructure to harass journalists, investigators and whistleblowers who still exposed wrongdoing. The combination of these two factors – the semi-privatizing of covert operations and the emergence of right-wing media defenders – has made it harder, not easier, to uncover and expose intelligence crimes. Plus, the culture of deception has only deepened in Washington over the past few decades. Looking back on the Family Jewels documents, it’s almost quaint that CIA officers would comply with an order from CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973 to confess acts that may have violated the CIA’s charter. Since then, the pattern – reaching from the CIA to the White House – has been to keep on stonewalling and lying, while right-wing media operatives lay down covering fire of angry talking points against any accusers. Many career-minded mainstream journalists then join in “debunking” the potential scandal until it fades away, often amid derision. In this environment, it would take very tough investigators willing to absorb withering media attacks to pry loose a new generation of Family Jewels. Indeed, it’s next to impossible to envision the current batch of U.S. government officials or this era’s journalists showing the tenacity and courage to do that. Questions to Ask However, if CIA Director Michael Hayden wanted to go further than just accepting plaudits for releasing some ancient history, he would demand that CIA personnel answer questions about the following events from the 1970s and 1980s that collectively make the old Family Jewels look like child’s play:
Moon’s Operation
[For more on the evidence of these intelligence scandals, see Robert Parry’s Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege, available at Amazon.com, or look for our upcoming book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.] ‘War on Terror’ There are many other possible Family Jewels-style questions, including current ones that bear on the “war on terror” – torture, rendition flights, secret prisons, assassinations, etc. – but the CIA would surely throw a cloak of operational secrecy over those activities.
The same should not hold true for questions relating to intelligence crimes of the 1970s and 1980s. The obstacle there is that those abuses remain politically radioactive because they implicate President George W. Bush’s father, current Defense Secretary Robert Gates and several Republican icons, including Colin Powell and Ronald Reagan. However, if Gen. Hayden were to repeat the practice of CIA Director Schlesinger in calling for confessions about past crimes – and if this generation of CIA officers would obey the order – the legitimacy of the entire Reagan-Bush era could be put into question. Rather than a glorious period of conservative rule, the Reagan and Bush I administrations would stand exposed as a criminal enterprise, having secured power through illegal subterfuge and conducting foreign policy by violating a host of American laws. That, in turn, would put the current Bush administration in a very harsh light, as the political spawn of criminal and possibly even treasonous acts. So the chances of ever reading a second generation of Family Jewels does not seem bright. Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.' This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on June 28, 2007. |
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