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Now THAT was bad...I'm proud of ya son... :cheeky:Son Goku said::rofl As to Clinton being a Republican, would that include President Clinton, or her husband? Sorry, just couldn't resist that one...
Now THAT was bad...I'm proud of ya son... :cheeky:Son Goku said::rofl As to Clinton being a Republican, would that include President Clinton, or her husband? Sorry, just couldn't resist that one...
Son Goku said:See, where the public is spied upon in the manner suggested (and I'm well aware of some things such as COINTELPRO, I'm of the opinion that the public should know, and should be informed... Besides, sometimes in a democracy (or actually republic) such as ours, public opinion can apply pressure where otherwise some might not care...
the reason clinton had so much success of accomplishment during his terms was that he took the best republican ideas and made them go forwardThePatriot said:LOL "Clinton was a republican, we just don't know it yet " :laugh: now that was funny!
mlakrid said:You are forgetting two very important things here:
2) and..... Need to know ... if you dont need to know something in regards to a national security issue, you WONT,
"Today, in a sense, the select committee comes home," said Tower in his introductory remarks. "For today, the select committee begins hearings designed to shed light upon the nation's domestic intelligence activities....Our to reassess current activities. To this end, the staff's presentation will touch upon such controversial topics as warrants, disruptive techniques, 'black bag' jobs, COINTELPRO, subversive activities.
..A bleak history of FBI excesses emerged from these first two days of hearings. In one appalling operation after another, the bureau had attempted to destroy various dissenting groups by discrediting their leaders and members. A primary target had been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In what was interpreted as an attempt to force King to commit suicide, the FBI had sent him (at his heatquarters in Atlanta) a tape recording and a note from an anonymous source. The tape, obtained from electronic listening devices placed by the bureau in various hotel rooms accross the country where King had stayed, apperently contained sounds of King in moments of amour outside the confines of matrimony. The package was mailed in November 1964, thirty-four days before King was to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. The note inside read: "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it...You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation." A month later, the bureau sent a copy of the tape to Mrs. King, who joined her husband in rejecting the FBI blackmail attempt.
This incredible scheme was but one of many directed against King by the bureau. As Schwarz documented, the FBI undertook a concerted program designed (in the words of one bureau document) to to knock King "off his pedestal." Bureau officials were forced by J. Edgar Hoover, at the risk of losing their jobs, to rewrite reports on the civil rights leader, falsely charging him as a national security risk. Agents traveled across the country to urgeclergymen and university officials to have nothing to do with him, spreading lies and innuendo to smear his character....
Son Goku said:I'm not forgetting anything...
I would say that people do have a need to know of this, and do have a right. Some might agree, some might not ....but my position still stands...
Classifying something to help protect the citizens from a foreign enemy is one thing. But when the enemy of our freedoms (including our civil liberties is within), and the only reason to keep something secret is to protect the career of some leader acting unethically, or illegally, then the public should no. No I'm not opposed to Deep Throat having gone to the media. And counter-balancing a claim for classifying something, of course has been (also from the era of the 1970s) the Freedom of Information Act...
mlakrid said:NO... I was saying you are forgetting 2 things because as you stated previously it is only your OPINION... did I say I disagreed with you? NO, I am merely stating the facts as they stand today.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other -- that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
I will add also: Intelligence oversight started because of mislabeling of sensitive information which has no need for classification.
Son Goku said:Well, first, we are talking about a revelation in the 1970s in this thread. Second, just because Bush passed an Executive order doesn't make it right... Yes I would say that public accountibility on the part of leadership has taken a negative decline since 9/11... This could change, though I sort of doubt it as long as the Bush admin is in office.
Finally, this is a message board, for people to discuss their views on things. People of course are free to read them or not to read them, but that's exactly what I was doing. Just because Bush passed an Executive order to establish them as such, doesn't necessarily make it the best thing for the country. I was never one to buy the argument that because a law maker, the president, or whatever says so, it must of necessity be right, or best for us as a people...
Much of what I'm saying is in reference to two things however. Without negative publicity or an impact on one's financial assets, many politicians/corporations simply don't care. Public image, and PR is important to them. The words of James Madison in Federalist 51 that in part, formed some of the foundation in thought, upon which this nation and it's government was found...
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm
What would be involved here is an external check (as opposed to an internal check within the government itself), which could come from the people themself. In the end (and especially where some seek re-election), that can be effective.
Yes it had, and the Church Committee from which that account came was a predecessor to it. But the FoiA also came out of that era...
I will say this though. I would not lightly go about just breaking the law. But under the right circumstances, and with enough at stake, I wouldn't necessarily rule it out (and willingly accepting the consequences, unless of course the Supreme Court had another idea) either. I for instance wouldn't of necessity sit around and watch a crap load of American's lives get ruined (during some kind of which hunt such as existed in the era of Joe McCarthy and the House Unamerican's committee) without so much as a word.
There's also a matter of being able to live with one's self, and a point where one couldn't face themself anymore... There are just some things I could, as well as could not do, with an easy conscience. Some things (such as the above mentione) and another case where FBI agents (in another COINTELPRO) were discussing means to try to cause a candidate they didn't want to win in Puerto Rico to to win, to have a corronary, or if they could intice him to withdrawl if they murder his son, fall in that category...
But yes, today I would try to go to Congress first, if at all feasible, which in the early 1970s, Congressional Intelligence committees didn't exist, so it then wasn't...
ThePatriot said:Without writing a book, I think the easiest explanation I could give would be to say my reasoning is exactly 180 degrees from your last paragraph. We think exactly alike, just from opposite ends of the spectrum.
mlakrid said:Ummm, I had A$$umed you were speaking of todays climate, (and we all know what that does) and you were speaking to the injustices of THEN... I humbly offer my apology and hope you accept.
I truely do agree, but I would like to clarify one thing. Issues of National security are bound by Law not executive orders. The EO's are handed out only to make small changes to fit the nature of the times, and expire after those issues are resolved, or some later date to be determined.
Sazar said:I fail to understand in light of all the evidence that condemned Nixon and his staff why you are still advocating the following of proper channels when it is abundantly clear that there was no way we would have seen the expose we did without it?
W/o deepthroat, many of the things uncovered would never have come to light, would have been sealed under some ridiculous bureaucratic seal and been locked away in an x-files-esque facility.
Great post. When the "Commander and Cheif" is involved what higher power do you go to? I think the only thing left to do is take it to the people, since this is the peoples country, not the man who happens to be staying in the white house.Sazar said:You are saying he should not have outed to the media but gone through the established channels instead. I concur that in a normal environment that would have been the right thing to do.
Seeing what was exposed wrt the corruption and abuse of power to the highest level of government, what possible inclination could he have had of being heard and the matter dealt with appropriately?
I fail to understand in light of all the evidence that condemned Nixon and his staff why you are still advocating the following of proper channels when it is abundantly clear that there was no way we would have seen the expose we did without it?
W/o deepthroat, many of the things uncovered would never have come to light, would have been sealed under some ridiculous bureaucratic seal and been locked away in an x-files-esque facility.
President Nixon and his aides suspected early on that FBI official W. Mark Felt was helping The Washington Post with its stories on the Watergate affair, according to transcripts of White House tapes.
...
"If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything," Haldeman said. "He knows everything that's to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything."
Nixon asked Haldeman, "What would you do with Felt?"
Haldeman, who served 18 months in prison for his role in Watergate, said White House counsel John Dean determined Felt could not be prosecuted
"There's all kind of devices. You let him know that you know. Then you transfer him to Ottumwa, Iowa," Haldeman said.
"You know what I'd do with him, the bastard?" Nixon replies.
The reply on the tape is inaudible and Nixon follows up by saying, "That's all I want to hear about it."
Several Nixon administration veterans have criticized Felt for leaking information to the Post.
G. Gordon Liddy, who helped plan the Watergate break-in, said Felt "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession" by talking to the newspaper rather than turning his information over to a grand jury.
Bradlee said critics like Liddy, who served four and a half years in prison for his roles in the scandal and other activities as a member of the White House Plumbers unit, have little credibility.
"Where would Felt have gone?" Bradlee said. "He saw something wrong in the government, and what should he have done?
"He couldn't really go to his superior, who was L. Patrick Gray, who was busy throwing documents into the Potomac River from the bridge. He couldn't go to the attorney general, who was on his way to jail himself."
Attorney General John Mitchell resigned in 1972 to take over the Committee to Re-elect the President.
A court later revealed that Mitchell, while still in office, approved a secret campaign fund of $250,000 for the Watergate burglary. Mitchell served 19 months in prison for his role in the scandal.
Mitchell's successor as attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, was also found guilty of not testifying accurately in his Senate confirmation hearing.
Sazar said:http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/02/felt.nixon/index.html
So much for the "he shoulda gone through the proper channels" theory.
President Nixon and his aides suspected early on that FBI official W. Mark Felt was helping The Washington Post with its stories on the Watergate affair, according to transcripts of White House tapes.
...
"If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything," Haldeman said. "He knows everything that's to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything."
Nixon asked Haldeman, "What would you do with Felt?"
Haldeman, who served 18 months in prison for his role in Watergate, said White House counsel John Dean determined Felt could not be prosecuted
Um, no, not really, he STILL should have gone thru the proper channels, of which there were many more to go thru than what was mentioned. The bottom line here really is; what else did he divulge to the press? What information, even inadvertantly, did he supply that leaked sensitive data? And how many people lost their lives because of it? You can say 'zero' all you want, but you or I just don't know...just the fact that a man in his position went to the PRESS with ANY sensitive data casts a shadow over everything. He went to the press to cover his own a$$, and he possibly put someone else's in a sling in the process.Sazar said:http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/02/felt.nixon/index.html
So much for the "he shoulda gone through the proper channels" theory.
Won't argue too much there, Nixon and Co got their just desserts.Sazar said:The seeds that were sown by the retards who abused their power and authority came to fruition and screwed their lives up. It is as it should be.
ThePatriot said:Um, no, not really, he STILL should have gone thru the proper channels, of which there were many more to go thru than what was mentioned. The bottom line here really is; what else did he divulge to the press? What information, even inadvertantly, did he supply that leaked sensitive data? And how many people lost their lives because of it? You can say 'zero' all you want, but you or I just don't know...just the fact that a man in his position went to the PRESS with ANY sensitive data casts a shadow over everything. He went to the press to cover his own a$$, and he possibly put someone else's in a sling in the process.
Won't argue too much there, Nixon and Co got their just desserts.
Sazar said:I await the day someone in the Bush White House has the balls to come forth and lead to impeachment proceedings through the proper channels or otherwise. If done through the proper channels, I will be most interested in your position at the time.