Agency of Fear, by Edward Jay Epstein

...Meaningful dialogue with such alien types, we are often told, can only be initiated when their Catholicism is shelved in some distant corner...

...One half hour a mother, And then I lost my life...

...He cannot be written off as a genre writer...

...With sweat, persistence, and plenty of commentaries, this book can be more or less understood...

...Since each of the eight parts of Agency of Fear begins with a quotation from Edward Luttwak's study, Coup d'Etat, and since Agency ofFear begins with the oft-told and still frightening tale of the Collinsville raids (where federal narcotics agents broke into a house—the wrong house—at night and terrified the inhabitants by acting in a manner we associate with police states), it is apparent that Epstein is serious...

...There was a "coup" attempt, or there was none, and in the latter case the Nixon administration was motivated by the usual Washington mix of policy goals and politics...

...Their religion weighs upon them, making them political dinosaurs in the modern age and inhibiting their drive for educational and financial success...

...Of course, not every shred of evidence that there was serious concern about crime and drugs comes from "Chapter Notes...

...Is there less crime related to the use of narcotics...

...Are there fewer addicts...

...With some few exceptions, Catholics are simply denied access to the upper levels of business, professional, and academic life...

...But have they done so as Catholics, strictly speaking...

...Smith's friend David Hume wrote to him from London soon after the publication, telling him that "the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely...

...Because of what Greeley finds to be a "cultural division of labor," Catholics are systematically excluded from key positions in society...

...Such achievement is, of course, a relatively recent development...

...Fortunately, we have Greeley to thank for demonstrating that this is all patent nonsense...

...Catholics are also considerably more successful than received opinion would suggest...

...If the struggle between the White House and the execuNow Adam Smith: The Man and His Works By E. G. West 1776 was a year of momentous events, including publication of The Wealth of Nations—the book that launched the movement for economic liberty...

...A collection of epitaphs taken from English churchyards with photographs of notable gravestones and monuments...

...That Nixon went too far is indisputable, but Epstein here evidences a view that imitation is the sincerest form of criticism, demonstrating as it does the wrongdoer's faults...

...Epstein writes of Nixon's efforts to centralize power in the White House as if they were unique and unprecedented, which is wrong, and as if they were dangerous to our liberty...

...President Nixon is quoted challenging aides who showed him graphs depicting the increasing value of narcotics seized: "Now this is very interesting, but does it have anything to do with solving the problem of narcotics...

...Finishing closely behind, Italian and German Catholics rank second and third in terms of income...

...This seemed like possibly more than a simple coincidence...

...Robert DuPont, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, writes of "the drug abuse explosion of the late 1960s...

...But what evidence sustains Agency of Fear's disturbing charge that Nixon intended, in his drug enforcement activities, a "coup d'êtat" ? Almost none...

...This is the conclusion that Andrew Greeley reaches in The American Catholic: A Social Portrait...

...He was instead a man of great philosophical and historical learning, and his literary style was widely admired...

...A 1971 Domestic Council decision paper stated that "Even if all drug abuse were eradicated, there might not be a dramatic drop in crime statistics on the national level, since much crime is not related to drug abuse...

...Drawing from 15 years of survey research on American Catholicism, Greeley offers statistical evidence which suggests that Roman Catholics are closer A. James McAdams is a graduate student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a columnist for the New Oxford Review...

...to the liberal American mainstream than many people would like to believe...

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...Here is a brisk look at the author of that epic, written for the layman and student...

...Easier to read than Gibbon and probably the best book for a writer to browse in and improve his English...

...Epstein's own view that in the Nixon lawand-order program, "one level of ideas came from urban affairs scholars, both inside and outside the Administration, who had a serious nonpolitical interest in the substantive problem of controlling crime...

...Are Catholics any different from Protestant ethnics...

...It is the story, as the book's subtitle explains, of "Opiates and Political Power in America...

...The Brothers Karamazov...

...Here, we learn that the Nixon administration used fear of drugs for political purposes, in an effort to gain popularity and to win the 1972 election...

...Nevertheless, Catholics have clearly come a long way...

...Both books are highly informative, well organized, and well written, but it seems unlikely that both can be right in their major premises...

...This book is 261 pages long...

...if we judge by the dissatisfaction with which its innumerable critics leave us, we may be confident that no one has reached its peak...

...tion (or at least drug dealers and addicts...

...Epstein was told by one of his mentors, James Q. Wilson, that "it wasn't all 'politics' or 'image making' but that serious men were sincerely interested in diminishing crime...

...For Epstein too has taken a decent argument rather a good deal too far...

...Compiled by British scriptwriter and playwright John Haggarty, edited and with an introduction by Benjamin A. Rogge...

...As a whole, Catholics are second only to Jews in educational mobility...

...Homosexuals have been shuffled in and out of their closets...

...Thus, while their jobs may pay well, most lack occupational prestige...

...One must regret that Epstein does not make clear enough the fact that concern over drug abuse was not entirely the product of hysteria or of politics...

...Here, Epstein tells a rather different story...

...One of the highest points, if not the highest, of the Annapurna range of novels of the West...

...The Wisdom of Adam Smith Adam Smith may have been the first great economist, but he was no dismal scientist...

...Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant: This is the only good novel de Maupassant ever wrote, but it is dazzling...

...Irish Catholics are not only well educated, they are also the wealthiest of American Gentile groups...

...The second book is only 53 pages long, and is entitled "Chapter Notes...

...As Nelson Polsby has recently (October 1977) argued in these pages of some of Nixon's reorganization notions: "It would be wrong to suggest that these devices for limiting the power of government departments, agencies, and bureaus were in some sense illicit...

...In "Chapter Notes" we 30 The American Spectator December 1977 learn that Mr...

...Yet politics, we learn, was not the sole motivation, for Nixon administration officials did have a legitimate and genuine concern about drug addiction...

...Lear will help the reader who reads it for what is in it and not for the optimism he brings to it to discern that which we tend to turn our eyes from: the apoira at the heart of the cosmos...

...It is worth the effort, since it is the turning point of modern philosophy—if philosophy, an absolutely indispensable activity for high civilization that is forever chasing its tail but getting nowhere, can be said to have a turning point...

...The Nixon administration attempted, that is, to bring under direct White House control a powerful investigative agency, whose ostensible task would be to fight drug addicElliott Abrams is special counsel to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan of New York...

...Epstein reports that "the White House staff itself had little confidence in the huge crime numbers that were being supplied to the press through briefing officers in the various agencies...

...In the eyes of many, Catholics are simply primitive, indeed, almost preconscious...

...The Theory of Moral Sentiments was greeted with rapturous praise in its own day...

...And Epstein would have done much better to admit that in its essential character, the struggle is not only familiar but entirely legitimate...

...Most Catholics started out at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, and their climb to the upper rungs has been plagued with hard-ship, given the historical influence of anti-Catholic sentiment in American society...

...Greeley disagrees vehemently, and much of his book is devoted to countering this argument...

...King Lear...

...Putnam's Sons I $9.95 Elliott Abrams Readers who remember the children's storybooks in which one tale began on the front cover, and another on the back cover when the book was turned over, will find Edward Jay Epstein's new work especially rewarding...

...Epstein's attempt to make it appear so is unavailing...

...are there less narcotics on the street...

...Can you show me that the problem itself is being corrected by these operational indices of success...

...Epstein has much evidence that the Nixon administration mishandled and exploited the drug abuse explosion, but is unpersuasive in implying that serious concern over drug abuse was exaggerated...

...BOOK REVIEW Agency ofFear Edward Jay Epstein / G.P...

...And Catholic Poles and Slays in northern cities tend to make more money, on the average, than Anglo-Protestants...

...Kant's Critique of Pure Reason...

...There are profoundly moving poems among those which are merely humorous or quaint: Sixteen years a maiden...

...One of the few unmitigated tragedies we are fortunate to possess, on the level with those of Aeschylus and Sophocles...

...Politically, Catholics are more likely to support New Deal-type social reforms—Medicare, government intervention in the economy, income equalization—than are Protestants...

...The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh: Wambaugh opened up the police force—as opposed to the detective—as a literary terrain...

...However, as we learn in Agency of Fear, and as is spelled out in more detail in "Chapter Notes," this "hype" of the statistics was by no means the product solely of an all-too-political White House...

...In any event, Epstein provides much evidence for the view that the Nixon administration was interested in reducing drug abuse, and much evidence that it was playing politics with the issue...

...Now, this is not to argue that the Nixon administration did not play politics with drugs, for it surely did...

...Each agency used high figures as evidence of a need for its services, indeed, for its enlargement...

...This book would havebeen strengthened by a discussion, less directed to personality and politics and more attuned to the principled claims being made, of rivalry between the White House and the executive agencies...

...For the most part they were not, yet they reflect a distinctive view of executive branch legitimacy, and its monopoly in the presidential office...

...Lawrence: The Failure and The Triumph of Art...

...Yes, with a "j" in my father's copy, which I still possess...

...While Liddy, Krogh, and Caulfield prepared to take over the drug program, they were also included in covert operations on behalf of the White House...

...from Folkestone, Kent Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (Duckworth Ltd., London, L3.95...

...The "mob of literati," Hume added, "are beginning to be very loud in its praise...

...The first, which begins on the front cover, is called Agency of Fear...

...It gets a bit crazy after that...

...Far from being racists, as some people have charged, Catholics tend to be astonishingly tolerant...

...The Diaries of Samuel Pepys in nine volumes, a new and complete edition published by Bell, London...

...As DuPont states, the nation had little understanding of drug abuse, and misinformation was widespread...

...For Greeley, Catholics are the most widely misunderstood and misrepresented of American ethnic groups...

...Polsby went on to suggest that this view was, more or less, that of President Carter, despite its contrast to our more traditional check-and-balance notions.This is all most instructive, and suggests that efforts by the Nixon administration to limit the independence of certain executive agencies were neither illegitimate nor even particularly novel...

...Unfortunately, it is not sold separately at a reduced price...

...He speaks about a Catholic personality, but many of its defining characteristics—strong family ties, anti-rationalism, skepticism about progress, and support for the local, the particular, and the informal—would seem to be common to most ethnic groups...

...BOOK REVIEW The American Catholic: A Social Portrait Andrew M. Greeley / Basic Books / $15.00 A. James McAdams America delights in its minority-consciousness...

...Rabelais' Works, in the Urquhart and Motteux translation, since few men, certainly not I, can read the old French of "the abyss of learning...

...As the newspaper ads for Agency of Fear put it, the book is an "explosive, fully documented report on Nixon's secret blueprint for seizing ultimate power...

...And, failing to acknowledge that the Nixonian view had any merits, Epstein accordingly fails to deal with that view adequately...

...While Catholics have made vast gains in terms of educational and financial achievement, they have yet to be fully accepted...

...For example, reported hepatitis cases associated with intravenous drug use rose from 6,403 in 1967 to a peak of 29,432 in 1972...

...Skipping the dull stories within the story, Cervantes will lead the reader to discern two types of men that transcend age and culture, and are to be found even , in Madison Avenue and Wall Street, lands inwhich Sancho might mistakenly be thought to be as much at home as in La Mancha...

...In Agency of Fear we are told that reorganization of the federal narcotics agencies began under President Johnson, and that as of 1968, the federal anti-drug effort was generally poor...

...Chief fiction reviewer for the London Evening Standard...

...There is a tradition in sociology that holds that Catholicism militates against success in mundane affairs because it lacks the ascetic activism and this-worldliness central to Protestantism...

...Finally, the press itself constantly asked for more "dramatic" figures so as to have a more "dramatic" story...

...From Agency of Fear, we learn that the White House staff saw drug addiction as a very good way to latch on to crime, itself a very good political issue, for addiction was not only a great source of fear but (unlike most street crime) had a federal "angle...

...Epstein has provided us with a rare value in these inflationary days: two books for the price of one...

...Blacks, Chicanos, and that spurious minority, women, have all been liberated...

...For example, Irish Catholics enjoy the highest educational attainment of any Gentile white ethnic group...

...The books that follow are not books to be "enjoyed," in the ordinary sense of the word, during the reading of them, although their digestion gives me both satisfaction and a profound sense of their having been conducive to the health of my mind...

...But Epstein then pulls back from his already weak ("seemed like possibly") formulation to say, "on the other hand, it is not clear to what extent these converging investigative operations were planned with a single objective...

...To order these books, or for a copy of our catalog, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...

...But the Nixon administration's effort against drug abuse was no "coup" attempt, and Mr...

...Actually, a Catholic background and education stand to facilitate, not hinder, financial and academic success...

...The Theory of Moral Sentiments By Adam Smith Adam Smith's first book will startle those who think capitalists are purely selfish, for Smith fully understood that liberty must be based in a moral order...

...TOM WOLFE Contributing editor of Esquire...

...It has the same trade-off between economy and detail that characterizes his best short stories...

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...Even today, the barriers to Catholic success have hardly been toppled...

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...As the September 1975 (post-Nixon) Domestic Council White Paper on Drug Abuse notes, "In 1965, an epidemic of heroin abuse began in the United States...

...In addition, "Congressmen on key appropriation subcommittees always wanted the narcotics problem to be presented on a grand scale, so they could justify appropriations...

...This would have constituted a coup d' kat, Epstein writes, because it would have "radically changed the balance of power" by depriving the bureaucracy of its usual independence of the White House...

...Don Quijote...

...Yet the forces of enlightenment have somehow passed over one very important victim of prejudice and discrimination: the Roman Catholic...

...One twelve month's a wife...

...The case for linking the reorganization of federal drug activities to Watergate-style activities is a circumstantial one, and weak at that: "The same names kept reappearing...

...Epstein more appealing, it makes Agency of Fear a strangely contradictory and ultimately unpersuasive book...

...New use (orincidence) increased by a factor of 10 in less than seven years...

...Therese Raquin by Emile Zola: I defy anyone to put this book down until two-thirds the way through...

...This view, Polsby wrote, rests on the fact that only the President, in all the executive branch, is elected, so that as with a "gigantic inverted pyramid" all legitimacy rests on him, and "there can be no grounds upon which hierarchical subordinates of the President might legitimately act to thwart, undermine, modify, or attenuate his will in public policy, once it is expressed...

...The theme can be simply stated: "Under the aegis of a 'war on heroin,' " Epstein tells us in his preface, President Nixon attempted "an American coup d'etat...

...A3 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250 The American Spectator December 1977 31 tive agencies was more hard fought in the Nixon administration than in any other, it was no different in its essential character...

...But it is difficult to determine whether he succeeds or fails, since it is never really clear whether he is talking about Catholicism per se or just ethnicity...

...Chapter Notes," it must be said, is not only shorter, but more persuasive...

...Author of Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine...

...It is a credit to the author's integrity that he himself provides much of the evidence which refutes his "coup" argument, but while this makes Mr...

...Have Catholics sacrificed their 32 The American Spectator December 1977...

...In fact, most Catholics are less blue-collar and less conservative than the average American...

...We learn of Mr...

...Mr...

...AUBERON WAUGH Novelist, columnist...

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...This is the story of the Nixon administration's use of a "drug scare" as a cover for a serious attempt to gain and use illegitimate powers...

...Nixon's excesses did threaten our liberty, and in the end threatened his...

...He is one of our very best writers, and this is a book of great virtuosity...

...This man is one of the sanest minds produced by the West since "the waning of the middle ages...

...Indeed, they are prone to have more sympathetic attitudes towards Jews, blacks, and other minorities than those groups have toward them...

...Most recently, the handicapped have earned media sympathy and support from federal coffers...

...E. G. West, who writes the introduction, asserts that "if The Wealth of Nations had never been written, this previous work would have earned for him a prominent place in intellectual history...

...Epstein would have done much better, with this as his evidence, to avoid the "coup" language...

...A most invaluable book for those who find that modern society discourages meditations on the subject of death...