The Nation's Pulse / G-Men in the Dock-An Encore
Rusthoven, Peter J
"The Nation's Pulse / G-Men in the Dock-An Encore" As Art Buchwald has pointed out, Harriman was a good friend of Josef Stalin. Harriman's wife Pamela was earlier married to Randolph Churchill and Hollywood producer Leland Hayward (she...
...A year and a half ago the Church took one of the most radical theological steps of the century when it voted to admit women to its priesthood and to alter substantially its traditional liturgy...
...It is even hinted (shudder...
...a set of Ruskin sat demurely behind this ornamentation...
...Although claiming to speak equally for all Episcopal interests, The Episcopalian has actually been leading a subtle campaign over the years for doctrinal revision and societal change...
...In fact, Struggling With the System was never intended to be merely an intellectual exercise...
...the busts of FDR, Walt Whitman, and Harriman himself, executed by Jo Davidson, a socialist sculptor...
...nor is it pointed out that the surveillance activities for which Kearney was indicted were considered legal until a Supreme Court decision rendered after Kearney's actions...
...armament...
...Humphrey is accused of passing classified documents to Truong, who in turn is alleged to have passed the information to the Vietnamese Communists...
...Rather, the impression is left that Kearney (and, by implication, his fellow agents) will be left alone solely because it would be unfair to prosecute field agents who were only "following orders" from more responsible and hence more "guilty" superiors...
...Of these, the most notable is The Witness, a recent issue of A. James McAdams is a doctoral student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley...
...While both positions are short-sighted, the latter has considerably greater potential for weakening our ability to respond both to domestic terrorism and foreign aggression...
...Carter fall victim to the same nonsense he has tried to turn to his own advantage in other contexts, genuine concern for the nation's law enforcement and intelligence-gathering activities dictates a serious response to the Humphrey-Truong case...
...this has put him on the side of the angels, allowed him to enjoy the best of both worlds, and no doubt alleviated the guilt that must come from inheriting so much money...
...The Witness is backed up by several special-interest publications, the best known of which is Integrity, the very vocal and at times astonishingly uninhibited organ of the gay set...
...There is no evidence, however, that Harriman has suffered personally as a result of any egalitarian schemes he may have supported: One admired the dining room walls covered with Chinese wallpaper made in 1780...
...More explicitly radical publications also play a role...
...In recent years, leading representatives of PECUSA have embroiled the Church in such extra•sacred activities as the funding of student radicals and black militants...
...My final stop-off was at the nearby home of Mr...
...Fritchey, formerly Mary Ellis Wisner, was married to a top man in the CIA who committed suicide...
...which paints a flattering picture of Castro's Cuba and defends the Puerto Rican terrorists Maria Cuero and Raisa Nemikin (both members of PECUSA' s National Commission on Hispanic Affairs...
...At bottom, the decision reflects a somewhat transparent effort by the Carter administration to placate the myriad of FBI agents who vociferously rallied to Kearney's defense, while at the same time preserving the impression that the "excesses" which supposedly characterized the FBI and CIA during the Nixon years will be exposed and 28 The American Spectator June/ July 1978 punished by the new Washington order...
...A subtle one—that much is certain...
...The current rush to limit the tactics available to our law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies rests on a serious distortion of recent history, coupled with a well-nigh hysterical overestimation of the dangers involved in permitting the executive branch to conduct warrantless surveillance of spies and saboteurs...
...The prevailing emphasis in reportage of the matter, however, centers on the fact that the evidence against the two defendants was gathered by surreptitious electronic surveillance—measures expressly authorized by Attorney General Bell and President Carter...
...it is also one heavily swayed by the winds of our country's portside Zeitgeist...
...0 AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS by A. James McAdams Bishops to the Bar Pr he Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (PECUSA) is one of America's wealthiest and post powerful denominations...
...His name is already associated with the public's worst impressions of the Nixon era...
...the Adams chairs complete with original upholstery...
...Meyer recently retired as Assistant Deputy Director of Plans for the CIA...
...In other words, the Justice Department has linked Kearney and his fellows with a justly discredited "defense" most associated in the public mind with the moral cowards of Hitler's SS...
...Bold of Meyer, one feels, to open up his house to the hordes...
...Serious questions about personal privacy are 'said to be implicated...
...For Kearney, the Attorney General's decision represents a strange half-victory...
...If s & le oif 4W,a4Z1,4 prip,,P*40 0,,tv —a • „fa* --tot . 4 07 ; vica...
...Ironically, even if the Carter administration plays the post-Watergate game with the FBI prosecutions, the same "new morality" threatens a pending espionage action against a former employee of the United States Information Agency, Ronald Humphrey, and a Vietnamese expatriate, David Truong...
...he isperhaps the most strenuously egalitarian of the Washington Post op-ed writers...
...On to Mr...
...The most revealing of these publications, however, is the recently released Witness-sponsored "Study/ Action Guide," Struggling With the System: Probing Alternatives (available for $5.75 from The Witness, Box 359, Ambler, PA 19002...
...The answer: Monopoly Capitalism...
...Meyer is an arts activist who ran the Gres Gallery on Connecticut Avenue and assisted Nancy Hanks at the National Endowment for the Arts...
...I stood, therefore, in great wonderment be- fore the "inherited treasures, memorabilia and collected antiques," which (in the words of the brochure that came with the price of the ticket) "echo the owners' tastes and experiences...
...In the present atmosphere, it is a clever and thoroughly cynical stroke...
...The house looks, in part, like a modern "museum," with peculiar objects standing around called "sculpture" and strange daubings framed on the walls...
...Although the accusations against Kearney and Gray each relate to actions against the Weathermen, the legal theories involved, the timing of the acts, and, by and large, the individuals against whom the acts were directed are different...
...Good to see that our old friend, The New Class, is back in place here, plus a copy of The Penkovskiiy Papers and, not least, All I Know About Chess by Cord Meyer himself...
...and in the library the Kennedy-era books, hardcover with fading dust jackets, and the prominently displayed, tooled-leather edition of Why Not the Best...
...John Barkham Reviews...
...Anyone could go on the tour—the price was $7...
...she came into a great deal of money...
...He is no longer haunted by the specter of a prison term, but he has hardly been vindicated...
...Kearney had in fact retired from the FBI almost a year before Gray became Acting Director...
...that we are witnessing a return to Nixonesque misdeeds...
...This effort has been reinforced by countless smaller diocesan and parish publications which lobby for similar concerns through folksy, down-to-earth appeals on the level of the grass roots...
...No mention is made of the Weathermen's terrorist activities or of their links to Cuba and to the KGB in Moscow...
...The political orientation of this collection of articles and commentary, which consistently rivals even Hans Kung in theologic innovation, is unabashedly radical, though this radicalism is ill-served by the fact that the "Guide's" content often reflects the political acumen of a college sophomore taking his first course in Marxism...
...Since my earlier column, the Carter administration has both changed course on the Kearney matter and found itself engaged in another prosecution, this one for espionage, in which the bulk of the government's evidence was obtained through methods quite similar to those employed by Kearney and his FBI colleagues...
...In short, the simplistic and inaccurate link between the FBI's antiterrorist activities and the much-declaimed evils of Watergate will be strengthened, and Carter and company can look forward with some confidence to a conviction which will emphasize their claim to moral superiority over their predecessors...
...These institutions, we are told, must be understood, corrected, abolished if necessary, and it is precisely the function of the "Guide" to show how this can be accomplished...
...The first question the editors ask is an easy one: "What's Wrong With Life in the United States...
...a- • . - . %Ai * .,, ,,,k:,10...
...Unlike the allegations about FBI and CIA activities during the Nixon years, the Carter administration's investigation of the espionage case cannot be cast as part of a pervasive atmosphere of alleged wrongdoing and abuse of power...
...far-reaching, new judicial decisions are anticipated...
...In these pages we learn that oppression and its attendant evils (poverty, inflation, unemployment, sexism) have too often been blamed on the failings of individuals, when the root cause of such injustice is really the systemic malfunction of American institutions...
...Not surprisingly, neither Humphrey nor Truong has come in for public censure of the sort formerly reserved for spies...
...For if the initial focus of the media is a reliable indication, the case against Humphrey and Truong may result in still further erosion of the effectiveness with which the government can respond to threats to our security as a nation...
...A more elaborate adventure than Blackford Oakes' maiden exploit, SAVING THE QUEEN...STAINED GLASS is provocative, literate and suspenseful to the end...
...nonsense about this country's participation in the Vietnam war that has since become the conventional wisdom of the media and academe...
...signed not by the author but by Robert Lipschutz...
...Humphrey and Truong...
...In the FBI prosecutions, considerations of national security have been downplayed as mere excuses for abuse of power by a corrupt administration—an impression heightened by making L. Patrick Gray the primary defendant...
...Still another article purports to explain the origins of the capitalist world "empire," appealing to such expansive generalizations as "The underdevelopment of the 'Third World' is the direct result of its being incorporated, for the last 400 years, into the global capitalist system...
...As to the espionage aspects of the case, there is not a peep—save for the occasional pious warning that empty phrases about "national security"should not be used to justify such infringements of personal liberty as were inflicted on Messrs...
...One may be sure that, as Congress and the media wax rhetorical about the largely imaginary threat to liberty posed by our own FBI and CIA, neither the terrorists nor the Kremlin will be indulging in any agonizing reappraisals of their methods and tactics...
...Clayton Fritchey writes a newspaper column which appears inthe Washington Post most Saturdays...
...booksellers...
...The absence of such factors, however, appears to have WILLIAM F. BUCKLEYJR...
...What kind of a gambit is it, I wonder, to allow foreign agents to wander through one's own living room...
...Clayton Fritchey's house, further tothe west but still in Georgetown...
...According to its editors, the "Study/Action Guide" was prepared to assist "local groups"—specifically, cells of 10-12 Christian activists assembling fordiscussion at regular intervals in each other's homes—"in their struggle to understand the nature of American oppression and to explore ways out of it...
...Together, the two developments further illustrate the curious and potentially dangerous evolution of that peculiar phenomenon, post-Watergate morality...
...I confess I could not find a copy of The New Class on the bookshelves, which, the guide pointed out, were decorated prettily with "hand-tooled leather strips...
...Equally cynical is the Attorney General's choice of L. Patrick Gray to head the list of new indictees...
...Harriman's father owned the Union Pacific Railroad, leaving his son an estimated $100 million fortune...
...To prove the point, the editors provide an article on the "alienating" and "profit-hungry" New York Telephone Company and a piece by the infamous Harvard theologian, Harvey Cox, on "Barbie Doll and the Spectre of Cultural Imperialism...
...and Mrs...
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...Still, "What Right Does the Church Have to Speak About These Things ?" 30 The American Spectator June/July 1978...
...But American monopolies and kindred demon spirits are hard at work contravening God's will...
...nor is it emphasized that, even under the language of that decision, Kearney's activities were arguably legal due to the Weathermen's connections with hostile foreign governments...
...the 18th-century English wall sconces, the Queen Anne period secretary, the Sheraton chairs, the Chippendale two-tier table, Bessarabianrug, Crown Derby china, Worcester covered urns...
...Nevertheless, the mere fact that the collection was edited by an Episcopal bishop (Robert L. DeWitt), and published by an outfit whose board of directors includes five other bishops (Morris Arnold, Lloyd Gressle, John Hines, John Krumm, and Brooke Mosley), should alert us that theology has taken an interesting turn in the upper reaches of the Episcopal hierarchy...
...The Weathermen, as most readers will recall, formed a radical-leftist terrorist group which reached its bomb-throwing and occasionally murderous zenith in the late 1960s and early 1970s, riding the wave of vindictive Peter J. Rusthoven is an Indianapolis attorney...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Peter...
...The Justice Department's new strategy in the Kearney case is to let Kearney off the hook, but to substitute as defendants so-called "higher-ups," headed by former FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray, who were "really" responsible for the alleged wrongdoing involvifig the Weathermen...
...8.95 at all s'iv 1.141...
...Books...
...The new Mrs...
...Rusthoven G-Men in the Dock—An Encore Not too long ago, this column cast a somewhat baleful eye on the decision of Attorney General Griffin Bell and the Justice Department to prosecute former FBI agent John J. Kearney for allegedly illegal surveillance activities directed at members of the Weather Underground...
...As a consequence, the HumphreyTruong case may prove a significant new step in the advance of post-Watergate morality...
...In the Humphrey-Truong matter, however, considerations of national security have been downplayed as simply insufficient to justify surreptitious surveillance...
...the large Van Gogh at one end of the room, the Renoir at the other, the Picasso over the mantle, the Monet, the Pissarro, the portrait of Governor Harriman in the "Petit Salon," the 200-year-old boxwood, the information that there were four turtles in the garden...
...Cord Meyer, Jr...
...0* 4 011, seller...
...and yes, high up by the ceiling, a first edition of The New Class by Milovan Djilas, the book by the renegade Yugoslavian Communist ex- plaining how the egalitarian philosophy, so noble-sounding in theory, in fact works to create anelite class of equalizers...
...In terms of the actual charges formerly levelled at Kearney, Gray is a singularly inappropriate selection...
...e.te0.0,,..4:: :7„..„ifia*0";74: • --,P,`,0 * , _ , m vit "iz, Z. 40# -4.44:440.„ 111050 or* 1 - ), *4•1 DOUBLEM "Buckley executes the international thriller as well as nearly anyone...
...His first wife, Mary Pichot, was murdered one sunny morning in 1964, on the towpath bordering Georgetown...
...C $ • ti 1,4 The American Spectator June/ July 1978 29 made relatively little difference in media coverage of the incident...
...A man was brought to trial in the case, but acquitted...
...Averell Harriman, who began life as an industri- alist heir-apparent and has ended up as a quintessential member of the new class, learned the lesson well, even if (as I sus- pect) he never bothered to open the Djilas book but merely sensed which way the wind was blowing—something he has ex- celled at all his life...
...Now PECUSA-watchers are predicting that the Church will use its 1979 National Convention to open the doors of the priesthood to homosexuals and possibly even sanction homosexual marriage...
...God's law says that the wealth of the world should be shared by all, and should never form oppressive monopolies...
...Spearheading this effort to transform Church practice are the Episcopal publications, the most important of which is the voice of the national Church, The Episcopalian...
...teams his CIA hero with the KGB, to restore al3th century church and to rearrange 20th century history...
...Mary Meyer had been a frequent visitor to the White House during Kennedy's presidency...
...Harriman's wife Pamela was earlier married to Randolph Churchill and Hollywood producer Leland Hayward (she comes out badly in Brooke Hayward's book, Haywire...
...Indeed, the substantive defenses and justifications for his surveillance of the Weathermen have simply been ignored...
...The substantive reasons for conducting surveillance of the Weathermen, which might have sounded persuasive from the lips of one like Kearney, will be treated by the press as so much self-justification and rationalization when uttered by Gray...
...In the context of post-Watergate morality, however, Gray is a near-perfect choice to head the Justice Department's revised list of evil-doers...
...and Mrs...
...Similarly, no suggestion of personal vendetta, as charged so frequently during the later Nixon years, can plausibly be attached to the surveillance of Humphrey and Truong authorized by Carter and Bell...
...He has thus been in a position to entertain and yet advocate income redistribution...
...Instead, one sees in such newspapers as the New York Times predictable comments, a la the Pentagon Papers case, suggesting that the documents in question were "overclassified" and "not that secret" in the first place...
...There's a lightness of touch and a facileness of invention that suggests that even if he is dead serious about the ingredients of his novel, he is having nothing but fun putting them together —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times...
...While one may derive a certain petty satisfaction from seeing Mr...
...Dual Main Selection of The Literary Guild and 4 TioirSdivir4 fibir an immediate best— • .4...
Vol. 11 • June 1978 • No. 8
