One of the biggest problems that we face as a nation is doing something to keep the claims for secrecy by our government, at every level, under control. As former Nixon Solicitor General, Erwin Griswold, who had argued against the release of Daniel Ellsberg's The Pentagon Papers, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post (February 15, 1989), "It quickly became apparent to any person who had considerable experience with classified material that there is massive over-classification, and that the principal concern of the classifiers is not with national security, but with governmental embarrassment of one sort or another."
To the category of "embarrassment cover," Professor Wills adds three more: "Congress deceiver," "policy disabler," "crime concealer."
"Congress deceiver" is about keeping Congress satisfied with a bare minimum of oversight, telling the appropriate committees in the House and the Senate enough information so they won't investigate the Agency's actions, while keeping the truth of what is going on from Congress.
"Policy disabler" is about preventing or undermining the execution of operations by other members of the Executive Branch, because it runs contrary to the Agency's best interests. I believe--but cannot prove--that this is what happened to Jimmy Carter when he attempted to negotiate the release of hostages in Iran. The "Old Guard" at the CIA hated President Carter's choice to head the CIA, Stansfield Turner, who had been very busy during Carter's four years trying to reform the agency in light of the findings of the Church and Pike Committees in Congress. With "Old Guard" CIA prominent in Ronald Reagan's campaign (George H.W. Bush and William Casey), the "Old Guard" knew if they could ensure Carter's defeat, everything would go back to the way it was pre-Carter. So deals were made (to be known later as Iran-Contra) that kept the U.S. hostages in limbo until Reagan's inauguration.
The final one is "crime concealer." Sometimes, the National Security State's actions aren't just embarrassing, they are down right criminal. Iran-Contra is probably the best known, together with control of the drug trade in Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle in the Seventies, and the tapping of Martin Luther King, Jr's telephone. But the murders of Patrick Lumumba in the Congo, Salvador Allende in Chile, the Diem brothers in South Vietnam, and Fred Hampton in Chicago, while perhaps less well known, are among the most heinous. (The most heinous is the coup against President Kennedy. For more on this, see my OpEdNews articles "Pacem in Terra," "Into a Thousand Pieces," and "The Great Enemy of Truth.")
The last section of the book concentrates on the Presidency itself, and the inadequate manner in which the Constitution provides for a check to the power of a President who can essentially press a button and destroy the world.
The first chapter in this section is titled "War Powers," and discusses the Congress' Constitutional mandate for declaring war, as well as maintaining forces in the field; versus the President's powers as Commander-in-Chief. Professor Wills discusses Dick Cheney's 2001 bid to claim sole power for the Executive Branch in all matters of war. Professor Wills takes what seems to be great glee in demonstrating John Yoo's inferior legal scholarship in attempting to press this claim.
The second chapter is "Challenging Secrecy," where we discover that Cheney's dislike for Congressional interference goes back to when he was White House Chief of Staff in the Ford Administration. The "Glomar Explorer Incident," where the CIA tried to raise a sunken Russian nuclear submarine off the floor of the Pacific Ocean; together with the investigations by the Church and Pike Committees on Intelligence had--with the war in Vietnam--led to the War Powers Act. This Act had for the first time restricted the President's ability to perform clandestine operations without consulting Congress.
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