Attorney General John Ashcroft,
one of the strangest of our officials, the man who spent $8,000 of our
money to cover the 'naked' breast of our statue of Justice, suddenly got
credibility. He got credibility because he described the 'wall' between
the CIA and the FBI as a hindrance to the government's ability to stop terrorism.
Ashcroft's description of this wall gave him credibility because it
fits nicely with the 9/11 commission's analysis that the two intelligence
agencies did not share crucial information with each other - information
which could have been sufficient to disrupt plans for the execution of 9/11
itself. The two agencies did not share this information, implied Ashcroft,
because it was forbidden by law to do so.
If you saw his testimony, you might disagree with me that he
implied
anything, since he seemed to say it outright. But a close listening
of the testimony will reveal that at some future time, he could very easily
say that he was talking in generalities, of a 'culture' of separation. This
is the excuse I would expect him to use if it becomes widely known that there
exists no law on our books which forbids the FBI and the CIA from sharing
the kind of information they had, and there never has existed such a law
- in memorandum form or any other.
There does exist a law, if you want to call the Bill of Rights a law,
which forbids government from acting against its own citizens in an unrestrained
and secretive manner. And, in fact, I am quite sure this is the wall
Mr. Ashcroft has in mind, the one he finds so constraining, the one he would
like to mischaracterize to the point at which the American citizenry would
not object to its destruction.
The nature of this Constitutional 'wall', the only impediment to unrestrained
governmental power, is easily demonstrated by the testimony of CIA director
Tenet. A commissioner asked a question which many who agreed with
Ashcroft wanted to hear: Why should we not recommend that the CIA conduct
intelligence operations within the US? Tenet's answer was careful,
with perhaps a little incredulity at the naive nature of the question. He
reminded the commissioners that, in fact, the methods of the CIA - like the
methods of all spies anywhere - are inherently illegal. He left it
there, but the implications were quite clear. The
CIA's activities in the world, what we know of them, indicate the severity
of illegality which Tenet thought rendered the issue moot.
Simply put, allowing a CIA-type organization to operate in the US would
be to repeal the Bill of Rights. It would be giving up on the very
notion of civil liberties. The Patriot Act, which Ashcroft correctly
credits for 'tearing down that wall', clearly indicates this focus. The
constitutional freedom to associate, equality before the law, the right to
face an accuser, the right to counsel, the right to a fair trial to defend
yourself and many other protections are already gone because of this act.
Ashcroft's wall turns out to be the bedrock principles upon which this
country was founded. This is the 'revolution' of which Ashcroft and
the rest speak. This is what they want. I think it is what they
have always wanted.
The Wall