Howard Zinn: After the FBI and CIA Secrets Come Out, Very Little Will Change

[Truth2Tell]

So I read on DU that the CIA was planning to release decades of its dirty laundry:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2889893

This brought to mind a column I remembered by Howard Zinn that appeared in the Boston Globe back in 1975. You see, after Vietnam & Watergate, The House and Senate set up committees to investigate both the FBI & the CIA in an effort to assuage the general distrust that had developed among Americans for their government. Both agencies had broken the laws they were sworn to uphold, and valuable information about both came out in the congressional investigations. But the revelations only went so far... and got only limited play. It seemed to me that Professor Zinn's take on the situation in '75 was extremely apropos of our situation today (funny how that works).

After a fruitless search for the text online, I did some sleuthing and tracked down the publisher with rights to Zinn's old column. Earlier today I emailed them asking permission to post his column on DU. To my great joy I received a response within hours granting me permission to post his piece!

So here it is - straight from the Professor's pen (with props to Seven Stories Press and Fred Courtright, http://www.sevenstories.com/)- as timely and brilliant as ever:

"After the FBI and CIA Secrets Come Out, Very Little Will Change"
By Howard Zinn
Boston Globe
December 2, 1975

Secrets are coming out of the Senate committee probing the FBI and CIA. But the biggest secrets, I suspect will remain untouched.

Yes, we learn that the FBI tapped wires illegally, kept lists of people to be put in concentration camps, wrote fake letters to destroy personal lives and used dirty tricks to disrupt organizations it didn't like. The CIA opened mail illegally, plotted the murder of foreign leaders and conspired to overthrow a democratically elected government in Chile.

It is the habit of government everywhere, including ours, when caught lying, stealing or murdering, to murmur a few words of confession, find a scapegoat to punish and go right on doing its dirty work in more subtle ways.

Recall: Families were burned to death in Vietnam, babies were shot in their mother's arms. Cambodia was bombed secretly and Laos openly, the land and culture of 40 million people in Southeast Asia were laid waste. And then what? Instead of trying Mr. Nixon and Kissenger for mass murder by terror bombing, we scolded their flunkies for breaking-and-entering and gave them a little time in jail. Instead of trying the generals for the massacre at My Lai, we tried Calley and put him under house arrest.

What will happen now with these revelations on the CIA and FBI? The usual. A few changes in personnel, a few new laws. But the same exclusive club of corporate billionaires, with their teams of lawyers, accountants, politicians and intellectual advisors hoping to become Secretary of State, will remain in power.

For profound changes to come about in this country, we will have to start revealing to the American public, and especially to the school kids of the coming generation, the really big secrets, which no congressional committee will touch.

First, that there is little difference between Them (the enemy-Communism) and Us (the West, American, "democracy") when it comes to a reckless disregard for human lives in pursuit of something called "national interest". That "national interest," it usually turns out, is the interest, over there, of the Kremlin bureaucracy, and here, the interest of the oil companies, the banks, the military-industrial-political complex. When we were told in grade school that the difference between Them and Us is "they believe in any means to gain their ends and we don't" - we were lied to.

People are beginning to catch on. The Spy who Came in From the Cold was the first best selling novel to boldly make that point: "Our side" would use ex-Nazis, would sacrifice the lives of its own people, to score points in a game whose concern was not humanity but power.

The current movie, Three Days of the Condor, is even more explicit. The CIA is portrayed as a group of sophisticated men using dazzling scientific techniques to ruthlessly exterminate anyone, including their own employees, who stood in the way of control of oil in the Middle East and Venezuela.

Even the fantasies of movie scripts can't match the reality. There is evidence now that the FBI was involved in the planned murder of two black leaders in Chicago on December 4, 1969. A gang of police, armed with shotguns, pistols, rifles and submachine guns, and a plan of the house furnished by an FBI informant, attacked an apartment occupied by Black Panthers, at four in the morning, and executed Fred Hampton as he lay asleep in his bed.

The biggest secret of all is beginning to emerge: That "the enemy" of this government is anyone, here or abroad who won't put up with control of the world by Chase Manhattan, Exxon, General Motors, I.T. & T. It is chilling but suddenly believable that a government willing to kill Vietnamese peasants and put Asian protesters in tiger cages will also assassinate native Americans and put citizens here in concentration camps.

That's a heavy secret for us to carry in our heads. But we need to know it, if we are going to figure out how to defend our lives and our liberties from those who have occupied America.

(Note: Mods - if you'd like to see my emails w/ Seven Stories Press, let me know)
Edit: spelling and clarity

[Make7]

1. I suspect you are correct...

... that Mr. Zinn's assessment could also be applied to the present situation. Hopefully more will come of it, but I'm not holding my breath.

Thanks for making the extra effort to dig up this old article and post it.

- Make7

[ikojo]

9. With the bunch we now how in the house and senate?

Pu-leeze! They have yet to realize that the boney thing down the middle of the back of their body is a SPINE. The Democrats will not say anything as long as all of this crap is wrapped up in the flag and "security."

Now, IF a Democrat wins the white house in 2008 (and that is a big if, particularly if Hillary is the nominee), the Republicans will be far more cantankerous than the Democrats are, even if they don't have the magical 60.

[ConsAreLiars]

2. Speaking truth to power, and timeless.

Somehow, the lackeys of fascism/corporatism change their lies like psychopaths on steroids whenever they find it convenient, but the truths told by Zinn 30 years ago remain equally true and important today - and even more important to hear, since we (the generic we) didn't listen well enough then.

[magellan]

3. Prescient, or so it seems to me

I was only 12 years old in 1975, I knew not of corporate government control and domination.

Thank you for sharing Zinn's old article. I grieve that it's timely again and have no hope anything will change this time around either.

edit: left out 'old'

[John Q. Citizen]

4. Yep, same as it ever was.

[Tom Joad]

5. We would need a opposition political party for their to be a big stink, unfortunately the US has yet

to create a major opposition political party.
If you listen to the "debates" of the foreign policy during Presidential Campaigns, you see nothing but "I agree with you" (Gore did this with Bush a couple dozen times) We got a crop of corporate-loving, war-making, torture-excusin', we "need troops in Iraq for years but better-managed and maybe redeployed", supporters of enforced by the barrel of the gun oil laws for Iraqis, rich folks runnin for office... and they promise, from the bottom of their little hearts, not to change much of anything, just make slight adjustments and fine-tuning of the US killing machine that has wrought such horrors across the globe.

We need to shake off this imperialist racist ruling-class, and that is not going to happen from the leadership of the status quo, it has to come from below. For Zinn, and people like me, it aint the Presidents and the Generals and the corporate heads that change things for the better, it is people like us, workin' together to fight tooth and nail against the powers that be.
How will this change happen?
Not from the generals... but the war resisters
Not the Presidents and Senators... but from the people who organize protests in their offices, who catch them in the hallways... the people arrested at the School of the America, the human rights activists standing in front of Caterpillar bulldozers in Gaza demanding an end to the demolition of people's homes, like the people who walked onto Guantanamo Bay and demanded an end to torture. ( http://www.witnesstorture.org/node/74 )
Not the corporate heads who give big donations to both Parties... but the people who organize sit-ins & boycotts and organize workers.

It's people like that who will make a difference, not the talkin' heads on tv... not even next years Presidential candidates. We really need to reject this filthy rotten system that grinds so many of our fellow humans into the ground.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Actually, some very important changes did take place.

Rules were applied to both agencies to try to prevent either agency from gathering too much power. I believe some rules were quite sensible. But, men have a way of screwing over even the most sensible things. Two things happened over time: First, the agencies stopped talking to each other in order to protect their terrorities. <intentional spelling error>. They became competitive and in the early 90s, the FBI was winning. They almost did away with the CIA altogether because of the Ames scandal. Never mind that the FBI had a little Hanson ticking time bomb of their own.

The second thing was, that after 9/11, all those sensible rules were considered hindrances in the war on terror. In fact, now that I think about it, all the prior rules that Congress meticulously put together post 70s to protect our privacy from over-zealous intelligence agencies, were summarily dismissed. Dick Cheney must have been creaming in his pants.

So in sum, it doesn't matter what you change in regards to our intelligence agencies, because, as long as you have ruthless men in the office of the presidency who have their own networks emerging from those agencies, they can change the rules as they like; and they will, because chaos provides a screen for them.

Nothing remains stabile in this country. Not even the grounds for impeachment. During one presidency, 70 million dollars of public money were spent to buy a perjury trap on a matter that had no public interest; and in another, a president who has proven to be beyond incompetent and who has delegated all power to the most corrupt man this country has ever seen, has already been told that he can complete his term in office without fear of impeachment.

There really is no U.S. Constitution. There is only politics.

[Disturbed]

7. This airing of dirty laundry by the CIA is only a distraction

from what this Protectorate of Capitalism is doing now that are gross violations of the US Constitution. The CIA Chief, Gen Hayden, now in charge was from NSA and didn't even know what the Constitutional Law against Illegal Spying stated. I am convinced he didn't then nor does he now care about this quaint document.

[Truth2Tell]

15. I think actually he did predict that changes would be made

just that they would be superficial - which they were, relatively speaking.

A real change would be facing up to the "biggest secrets".. the deeper truths...

Sadly still not likely soon.

[Solly Mack]

8. ...

"It is the habit of government everywhere, including ours, when caught lying, stealing or murdering, to murmur a few words of confession, find a scapegoat to punish and go right on doing its dirty work in more subtle ways"

[Truth2Tell]

16. I'm partial to this line

"For profound changes to come about in this country, we will have to start revealing to the American public, and especially to the school kids of the coming generation, the really big secrets, which no congressional committee will touch."

[Solly Mack]

20. I like that line too

[the other one]

10. Kique.

[leftchick]

11. "national interest" has been replaced with: "our vital interests."

note the use over and over again by our leading dem contenders. Apparently nothing has changed and perhaps it is even worse. It is very depressing.....


http://counterpunch.com/taylor06232007.html

Notice that Obama has quietly slipped in an endorsement of preemptive war with his wording "imminently threatened." And notice also the use of the Power Elite's favorite foreign policy weasel words: "our vital interests." This is a catch-all phrase that really means the economic and imperial interests of the Fortune 500 and their political deputies. Not shying away from military imagery, Obama said, "In order to advance our national security and our common security, we must call on the full arsenal of American power and ingenuity. To constrain rogue nations, we must use effective diplomacy and muscular alliances." He evoked the names of beloved figures of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Richard Lugar, George Marshall, and Harry Truman.



http://www.npr.org/about/press/2007/011707.troops.html


CLINTON: This is the kind of rhetoric we hear from the President all the time. It's rhetoric that's meant to obscure the fundamental challenges we face in Iraq. We do face vital national security interests in the region. We have a continuing threat from the Sunni insurgents, particularly those operating those out of Al-Anbar province. We have a problem with the Shi'ites who are aligned with Iran. I certainly believe we have vital national security interests. You know, a slogan is not a strategy.





Thank you for finding this piece. It is truly appropriate for our times, sadly. I LOVE HWARD Zinn!

[leftchick]

13. Zinn kick

.

[KoKo]

12. K&R

[UTUSN]

14. kick

[Disturbed]

17. "Our vital interests"?

That couldn't be oil, could it?

[UTUSN]

18. Kick for my professor and mentor ZINN n/t

[marmar]

19. The great Howard Zinn c'est vrai, as usual....

K&R