No New Thing Under the Sun

It's worth recalling, now and again, that the Bush administration's efforts to leverage wartime hysteria into serious abuses of civil liberties is hardly a new story in American history. Amy Zegart, for example, writes up some newly declassified documents relating to the CIA's LBJ-vintage (and then continuing into the Nixon years) "Restless Youth" initiative:

: The C.I.A.’s Restless Youth study, which appears to have been commissioned in the late 1960s to examine radical American college students. In a meticulously worded 1973 memo, the C.I.A.’s deputy director for intelligence details exactly which version of that study went to whom. Notably, the president, his national security adviser and the deputy secretary of defense got the fully loaded version that included the agency’s highly sensitive investigations of American students. Other Cabinet members got versions without the U.S. student radicals section. And Attorney General John Mitchell got an even more abbreviated edition in March 1969. There’s more: an unsigned 1968 memo on the next page explicitly notes that Restless Youth violated the C.I.A.’s charter AND that it was conducted at the behest of the national security adviser at the time, Walt Rostow.

I suppose the difference is that these days David Addington would have written a memo about how the CIA was under no obligation to abide by the CIA's charter because the CIA's not part of the executive branch or something. Back then the mentality seems to have been more, "we want to do X, but X is illegal, so let's keep things quiet."

Comments

It's been said that blasphemy is a backhanded form of belief. After all, nobody takes Zeus's name in vain. I'd be tempted to find a big distinction between Addington's and Rostow's sensibilities, but they both obviously know that they're trying to keep their bosses out of the slammer. Their attempts acknowledge the illegality of their acts. Rostow simply by hiding. Addington by providing a bit of documentation to speak to intent. (Every crime but jaywalking has an intent component.) I think Addington's a far bigger slimeball, but that could simply be because he's closer to us in time, but mostly it's because of the violence done to the continuity of our traditions. He's scum alrighty.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 27, 2007 9:31 AM

Providing administrative cover through memos is the new practice. Hiding is the old practice. Lying is epidemic, and George Orwell is prophetic in both cases. Condemnation of both is righteous.

On the other hand, losing perspective and pushing the envelope when one comes to believe (always erroneously) that the future of the cosmic order is in one's hands is understandable.

What is truly frightening with the GWOT is the extent to which our reps have legitimized contravention of fundamental constitutional rights through legislation. Significant numbers of Democrats voted, for instance, for the Military Commissions Act, which limited habeas, gave the go-ahead to torture, and provided retroactive cover for torturers.

Who will tell the people? Glenn Greenwald, Digby, Charlie Savage, and others. Thank god for them.

Posted by Adams | June 27, 2007 10:26 AM

Also a certain amount of surveillance law had yet to be written, so things were more ambiguous (more true in the early '60s than late '70s).

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | June 27, 2007 10:33 AM

"I suppose the difference is that these days David Addington would have written a memo about how the CIA was under no obligation to abide by the CIA's charter because the CIA's not part of the executive branch or something."

EXACTLY. The lack of respect for the rule of law by people like Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Robert Delahunty and David Addington is very disturbing. At least the guys back then had a sense of right and wrong.

Posted by Chris_ | June 27, 2007 11:10 AM