First, for those who don't remember the Church hearings in the 1970s....a brief note or two. Frank Church was a Democratic Senator who came up in 1975 to run a full inquisition of the CIA. This was a full Republican and Democratic approved hearing. It's virtually impossible to find anyone in the Senate at the time....who stood up against having the open hearing.
At the end....no one really got sent off to jail. What Church and the group proved in public hearings....a number of CIA folks were running rogue, with occasional approval by Presidents (from 1945 on), and CIA directors. No one was sent to jail, but a fair number of folks were just given 'papers' and they left the CIA. Some rule changes occurred, and the directors were put on a short rope....continually hindered by the House/Senate.
All of this....a clean-up from the JFK era? Some people would argue that it should have been done in 1964, and this was just a decade late.
Second, if you get a bunch of BS by CNN or WaPo....remember, this was 1975 for the Church hearings, and you'd have to be 70 or older to remember what happened. So the bulk of experts talking to you now.....don't really know much or have marginally read maybe forty pages of material over a weekend.
Third....what the House committee is going to review....is rogue agents/bosses mostly within the FBI, and probably to a lesser degree....the CIA and NSA.
Fourth....part of the protection in the Church hearings....was that the CIA director was only supposed to brief....and NOT testify under oath. The Ford Administration demanded this. I expect the Biden Administration to do the same.....saying no one will testify under oath before the House committee.
Fifth....this ending in 2023 (by December)? No....I wouldn't bet on that. It'll continue through most of 2024, and the report will be issued by election-time in November 2024.
Results being one of the top three issues for the campaign? Yeah.
Sixth....a lot of stuff involving Twitter? Yes, and that information might lead to civil court business....putting people at jeopardy for cash fines....not jail-time.
Seventh....all of this leading to some break-up of the FBI? I'd say a 99-percent chance that the campaign of 2024 will center on this as a top five issue.
Eighth....discovery that the FBI has around 250-odd agents in undercover jobs with various left and right wing groups around the US? I might suggest that this shock will be laid out. At some point, I expect a comparison to come up....over Agent Oswald (for the CIA) and how it oddly fits the late-1950s mentality of the CIA.
I'll even suggest that one or two agents were embedded with the Trump campaign, and could possibly even be embedded with the Twitter staff (even today, after Elon bought them).
Ninth, and final....most of the 6 Jan legend stuff will dissolve, and agent-provocateurs will be a term that Americans learn about, and openly criticize.
The sad thing here? Here is probably the biggest opportunity that CNN could ever ask for....getting creditability back, and they limit their coverage daily to six minutes or less.
2 comments:
re -- 'agents provocateurs'
1960s and 70s.
I was introduced to the concept through Travus T. Hipp, Sunday evening political commentator on KZAP in Sacramento, California.
I'll just say, if you open history books prior to 1945....there are probably dozens of examples of agent provocateurs at work. Some working for the federal angle, some for political party angle, some for private enterprise. There might be well over 10,000 folks today in America...whose primary job is agent provocateur.
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