HORTON: Crimes and Secrets, and Foggo

[L. Coyote]

February 26, 8:04 AM, 2009 · No Comment · http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004459
Crimes and Secrets, and Foggo

By Scott Horton

At the end of World War I, lawyer-sociologist Max Weber took a close look at the relationship between Germany’s defeat and its leadership’s manic attitudes about state secrecy. Government had used national security concerns to strangle the nation’s nascent democratic institutions, Weber concluded. They had used security classifications to stifle democratic debate and even discussion within the nation’s own bureaucracy. He didn’t question the need for caution about military secrets in wartime. But Weber noted that for every legitimate invocation of secrecy concerns for military purposes, there were a dozen illegitimate claims designed to cover up matters which were politically embarrassing, or actually even corrupt and criminal.

In the age of Bush, America had an opportunity to learn for itself the truth of Weber’s theory. A good example comes in the operations of the intelligence community. Under a pervasive cloak of state secrecy, politically wired senior figures were able to develop a flourishing corrupt relationship with contractors. More details emerged today from sentencing memoranda filed in the case of former CIA No. 3 Dusty Foggo (whose case has been discussed at length by my colleague Ken Silverstein):

The documents provide an unusually detailed account of his misdeeds ............