I wrote a piece about the Torricelli Amendment. That Amendment said that a field operative had to give the name of any informant who had a police to the CIA HQ in DC and get him celared or else stop using that informant.

That was AFTER the Cold War. But DURING the Cold War, you NEVER sent anything to CIA HQ DC.

But the response to the Torricelli Amendment is instructive about the decades before it.

Not one single field head of station (Yes, I am using the wrong terms, but screw it) sent in a single name to CIA HQ.

In recent times, there was a WOW! discovery. When the KGB files opened up, it turned out that McCarthy was a wimp. There were a LOT more KGB informers in the US Government than McCarthyism ever DREAMED of.

In the decades before those KGB files were opened up, we lived with that.

We DIED by that.

Instead of sending names to DC CIA HQ, it would have been simpler to send them straight to the KGB.

Better. The KGB would have lost them.

The KGB was pitiful, but that’s another story.

So here you are, trying to fight the Reds while you know all the officials who get all the money are either on their side or trust people who are on the other side.

Fun, huh?

Have you ever heard of the Church Commitee? Senator Church exposed the inner operations of the CIA.

Now the fact is that the CIA is a bureaucracy. Most of what it does is absurd.

But wht is not so easy to understand is that the CIA was a bureaucracy with a “TOP SECRET” stamp on it.

The only thing more hopeles than a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy that can hide everything it does behind TOP Secret. So Senator Church was able to uncover what, even by FEDERAL standards, was misbhavior beyond the level of lunacy.

Meanwhile there were those of us who were perfectly aware what the CIA was, but found some ways to make it do some useful things precisely because so much was covered up.

If you look at the records of the Church Committee, they never missed an opportunity to toss NAMES and INFORMERS into their legitimate list of grievances. The KGB got what it wanted, and a lot of people disappeared.

Anybody connected with the Church Committee staff did not have to make names public. They just told their buddies at a party in Georgetown and the guy or gal disappeared.

So are you going to make that connection to the media?

No way. That would be paranoia and McCarthyism. No editor would touch it.

Let’s step back a moment. This was the world we LIVED in.

I remember two lectures from two lawyers I got, years and thousands of miles apart. I remember observing that the two lectures were clones of each other.

They both said that, no matter how old I got, I must NEVER say what really happened. I was warned that leftists NEVER forget.

My boss was ranking Republican onthe House Select Intelligence Committee. I was in the direct line of clearance for ALL civilian employees of the Federeal Government.

Used correctly, these positions give you a certain access to files, including your own.

Mine is as clear as a whistle.

I was never an anti-Communist. Nobody can ever accuse me of doing those awful things.

But there are thousands of others out there who are waiting for the other shoe to fall, while the Greatest Generation brags and brags and brags and brags.

Here is a Stormfront exchange on George Wallace that leads to a point about me:

Quote:
Originally Posted by vajo jr
I’ll never forget seeing him in a black church, sitting on his wheel chair, and crying like a baby for forgiveness, for treating the negroes so bad; what a freaking disgrace to the white race.

MY REPLY ON SF:

Here’s the story.

In 1957 Governor Orville Faubus was the hero of Arkansas for defying integration and making Eisenhower call in Federal troops.

Everybody who cheered him then switched sides and he ended up as a postman, and lucky to get the job.

Wallace, like Faubus, did not have much money, and he was in a wheel chair. He knew his former backers would desert him.

If you are an old paraplegic and have to go crying to the other side, the question is whether one should blame you or the New Southerners who left you in that position?

And remeber, Wallace handled millions of dollars in campaign funds.

There was a guy named David Duke who handled large amounts of campaign funds and DIDN’T back down. They spent tens of millions of dollars to catch him on about three thousand dollars of that money and he ended up in a maximum security prison.

Our “supporters” forget us or find something to condemn us for. Our enemies NEVER forget.

It’s like the novel 1984. The minute we are out of the limelight, the enemy starts forcing us to repudidate our views publically for their own purposes.

— ADDITION FOR BLOGGERS:

The Soviet Empire collapsed and all its former supporters here switched overnight from being pro-Soviet to being environmentalists and open-border freaks (There is a book on this latter point called “Importing Revolution”).

But the left never forgets. When 9/11 happened, they began to make public statements about evil people — like me — who had supported the group that carried out the New York attack when they were fighting the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan.

There were repeated attempts to blame 9/11 on anti-Communists.

Do I need to add the following two points:

1) When leftists complained about our support of rebellion against the Soviet invaders and tried to blame 9/11 on us, not one single respectable conervative ever called them on it;

2) Since the commentators didn’t make the connection, no one understood it, ad if they had, everybody on our side would have forgotten it anyway.

3) So the left was left free to go after anti-Communists and no one would have lifted a finger to support us, any more than they helped Wallace or Faubus.

So while The Greatest Generation is in its seventh decade of senile bragging about it gave a third of the world to the Communists, the sloggers who really won the Cold War have had to carefully wipe their records clean of some of the best and bravest fighting ever done, over DECADESwhen they could, and deny them when they couldn’t.

All my life I have anticipated the time when I wold have to “admit” that I never did a thing in the Cold War, and/or declare that I renounced my evil ways and had Found the Lord, that final refuge of scoundrels looking for an excuse.

So I find Wallace blubbering in his wheelchair a little easier to understand than those who have not spent decades dreading the political realities no one remembers now.