In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

IN SEARCll OF ENEMIES
alter ego in foreign affairs. In the words of the Hoover Commission
report of 1954:
There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of
human conduct do not apply. If the U.S. is to survive, long-standing
American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered. We must
develop effective espionage and counterespionage services. We must
learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever,
more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against
us. It may become necessary that the American people be acquainted
with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.
It was a tragic, fallacious thesis. Our survival as a free people has
obviously not been dependent on the fumbling activities of the clandestine
services of the CIA, but on the dynamism of our economic
system and the competitive energies of our people. Nor was Hoover's
philosophy "fundamentally repugnant." Rather, it was irresistible,
for it created an exhilarating new game where all social and legal
restraints were dissolved. Cast as superpatriots, there were no rules,
no controls, no laws, no moral restraints, and no civil rights for the
CIA game-players. No individual in the world would be immune to
their depradations, friends could be shafted and enemies destroyed,
without compunction. It was an experiment in amorality, a real-life
fantasy island, to which presidents, legislators, and the American
people could escape, vicariously.
Not surprisingly, the mortals of the CIA were unable to cope with
such responsibility. Over the years, a profound, arrogant, moral
corruption set in. Incompetence became the rule. The clandestine
services, established a solid record of failure: failure to produce good
intelligence; failure to run successful covert operations; and failure
to keep its operatives covert. And its directors also failed to respect
the sacred responsibility they were given of extraconstitutional, covert
license. Eventually, like any secret police, they became abusive
of the people: they drugged American citizens; opened private mail;
infiltrated the media with secret propaganda and disinformation; lied
to our elected representatives; and set themselves above the law and
the Constitution.
But our attachment to the CIA's clandestine services nevertheless
seems to be unshaken. We still argue that, no matter what it does,