body-of-secrets-anatomy-of-the-ultra-secret-national-security-agency-2002

Robert McNamara finally lowered the boom on Major General Edwin A.Walker. Walker was charged with indoctrinating his troops with JohnBirch Society propaganda, officially admonished, and relieved of hiscommand. As a result many conservatives accused the Kennedyadministration of trying to muzzle anti-Communists.Walker resigned from the Army in protest, but even as a civilian hecontinued to warn of the dangers of Communist infiltration. Among thethemes he constantly pounded home was a distrust of civilian control ofthe military. "The traditional civilian control of the military has beenperverted and extended into a commissar-like system of control at allmajor echelons of command," he said. In September 1961 he traveled toOxford, Mississippi, to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a blackstudent, at the state university there. Robert Kennedy later issued anarrest warrant for Walker, charging him with seditious conspiracy,insurrection, and rebellion. He was jailed for five days, during which timehe claimed he was a political prisoner.Even at the stately National War College in Washington, seminarswould occasionally be reduced to "extreme right-wing, witch-hunting,mudslinging revivals" and "bigoted, one-sided presentations advocatingthat the danger to our security is internal only," according to a reportprepared by a member of Secretary of Defense McNamara's staff.The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a report on the problemof right-wing extremism in the military, warned that there was"considerable danger" in the "education and propaganda activities ofmilitary personnel" that had been uncovered. "Running through all ofthem is a central theme that the primary, if not exclusive, danger to thiscountry is internal Communist infiltration," said the report.Among the key targets of the extremists, the committee said, was theKennedy administration's domestic social program, which manyultraconservatives accused of being communistic. The "thesis of thenature of the Communist threat," the report warned, "often is developedby equating social legislation with socialism, and the latter withCommunism. . . . Much of the administration's domestic legislativeprogram, including continuation of the graduated income tax, expansionof social security (particularly medical care under social security),Federal aid to education, etc. under this philosophy would becharacterized as steps toward Communism." Thus, "This view of theCommunist menace renders foreign aid, cultural exchanges,disarmament negotiations and other international programs as extremelywasteful if not actually subversive."The chilling Senate study concluded by warning of a revolt by seniormilitary officers such as the one portrayed in Seven Days in May. Toshow the idea was not farfetched, the report cited "as an example of the75