[from the start. The investigation looked for scapegoats…]
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from the start. The investigation looked for scapegoats and purposely avoided a discussion of government policy for fear of exposing bipartisan responsibility for U.S. war plans.
This approach actually earned Lieut. Col. Oliver North, who was intended as a scapegoat, the misplaced sympathies of millions of Americans. Despite North's televised mock-heroics, however, a majority of the population holds fast in its opposition to funding the contras.
There is a strong possibility that public opinion will force the government to rein in a few individuals and undertake a few face-saving measures. But neither the government's terrorist policies nor the secret mechanisms that implement these policies will be altered.
Above the law
The CIA and the National Security Council (NSC) will continue to operate as before-above the law and without any control by the American people. Frank Carlucci, who was named by Reagan to "clean up" the NSC and to succeed John Poindexter as head of the council, has a 20year record of involvement in CIA blackbag operations.
In 1964, Carlucci participated in a plot to overthrow Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. In 1973, he helped coordinate support for the conspirators who engineered the coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende.
In the first years of the Reagan administration, Carlucci helped to cover up illegal gun-running operations by Gen. Richard Secord and other key figures in the Iran/contra arms network.
Nor is it reassuring to learn that President Reagan has devised new procedures regulating covert operations aimed in part at "making sure that the president reviews them and makes the kind of judgments that only the president should make."
It is Reagan, after all, who was compelled to admit that "keeping the contras alive" after congressional funding had been cut off, was his idea in the first place.
The hearings also left untouched the government's policy of concealing major (continued on page 7, in “Ben Linder's brother explains national tour”)