1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

national security changed. National security became a patriotic value, even if
unexamined. It was unpatriotic to question or even examine the given idea of national
security, that the tilt was now in that direction, whereas in the immediate post-Vietnam
period, the issue of national security was constantly examined: What is it? Don't sell me
bill of goods. What is it? How am I secure? What price am I paying for my security?
They were asking these kinds of questions everywhere in Congress, in universities, in the
press, in the churches. With Reagan, the questions were not asked, rather than acceptance
there was optimism: "Don't ask questions about national security. I'm telling you it's
national security. Trust me. It's sunshine, and we have to get over the syndrome of
examining ourselves. We have to value these American ideals again." That was a change
in mentality by the very people whose views on these matters were questioned, so they
came back in, they're saying, "You question our values? We're here again, we're back in
power now. Our values are now dominant."
I daresay that's been the pattern since Vietnam, back and forth, back and forth on this
issue of whether our values can be examined and still be a patriot. That's the issue now.
Q: At the time, I'm talking about really just before you left the committee staff, was there
concern about Reagan, who was coming in from pretty far right on the political
spectrum, that this is going to change what you all were doing?
MILLER: Yes, there was a concern, of course, but there was also a belief that the
statutory base could not be reversed, which proved to be largely correct, that the threshold
of required awareness had been raised irrevocably. The key to the issues that we were
contending with depended on informed awareness, and while that might vary a few
degrees in one direction or another, the threshold had been raised sufficiently to never go
back to the past where the president could say, "I know this, nobody else should know it,
trust me."
Q: During the Reagan administration, you had the Ollie North, Iran-Contra, which was
proof of this, that, in a way, by the time you were with this oversight committee, also
hadn't sort of almost a generational change – I mean, the World War II operative OSS
types and all had left? I mean, a new, more intellectual apparatchik had appeared in our
intelligence.
MILLER: Yes, I think that's the case. The first two generations of intelligence operatives,
as well as Foreign Service officers, as well as legislators, had passed from the scene. This
was the beginning of a post-Vietnam generation. And, for Reagan and Reagan's people,
confronted with the dramatic change in the Soviet Union, you were having a thorough,
radical change, where the threat disappears, and a very valuable political tool, the threat is
lost. The Reagan period is so interesting, Reagan himself, but even the neocons who came
with him were faced with this conceptual problem of how to deal with a disappeared
threat. Of course, they found more threats.
I've asked myself the question repeatedly, "If a different president had been in place on
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