THE ALTER NATIVE
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
AGAINST LYING If there is one thing upon which young conservatives and the new left can agree, it is that the Johnson administration has constantly deceived (Walter Cronkite calls it...
...The greatest 6 military or economic potential [of the Soviet bloc] . . . which would prove detrimental to the national security and welfare of the United States...
...Wilbur D. Mills (D...
...Anthony Comstock need in this nation's present financial crisis is not increased taxes but decreased spending...
...A department bulletin stated that Commerce officials had consulted with the Defense Department and "the intelligence community" and that the items "fall into the category of peaceful goods, which may be freely exported without any risk to the United States national interests...
...In October of 1966, President Johnson released four hundred goods for sale to the Soviet bloc which previously were considered by the Administration to be strategic and therefore unsaleable items...
...Rep...
...Mundt kept digging and discovered that the department had approved the sale of a gravity meter to Rumania a year before...
...According to Oxford University's noted economist, Colin Clark, "Twenty-five per cent of the national income is about the limit for taxation in any non-totalitarian community in times of peace...
...For example, the administration is determined to conceal the extent of the role of American technology to the Communists because, as a trade advocate admits, the American people "consider this whole matter one of trading with the enemy...
...Our national income was 616.7 billion dollars, with receipts of the national government totaling 143.2 billion dollars and receipts of state and local governments reaching 84.7 billion...
...Early this year Senator Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota became suspicious of the proposed sale to Communist Poland of a Worden gravity meter which is used to improve the accuracy of intercontinental missiles...
...Glen Lipscomb has faced the same kind of deception from the Department of Commerce...
...Lipscomb learned that "the administration did not consult with our military intelligence experts on the exportation of any of the four hundred goods which included, he noted, diesel engines, jet aircraft engines, machine tools (and) .. . chemicals and scientific controlling instruments...
...No president has been more secretive in telling the people what he has been doing than Lyndon Baines Johnson...
...As if all of this deception were not enough, officials in Commerce left Mundt with the clear impression that the sale of gravity meters had been prevented...
...If this were true, Mundt asked, "Why would they be buying one from us...
...AGAINST LYING If there is one thing upon which young conservatives and the new left can agree, it is that the Johnson administration has constantly deceived (Walter Cronkite calls it "lying") the American public on everything from farm conditions to the progress of the war in Vietnam...
...This, of course, was a complete reversal of the assurances the Commerce Department made to Mundt...
...The South Dakota senator was informed that "subsequent to the issuance of the license and based on information supplied by Intelligence sources, the applicant was requested...
...When the Department issued a press release announcing the sale had been reconsidered, it stated the applicant for the export license "was terminating his interest in the transaction and asked that the license be cancelled...
...It was also an acknowledgement that the department had been prepared to help the Communists aim their nucleartipped missiles at targets in the United States...
...These are, of course, strategic goods, even in a narrow sense...
...Not merely content with cutting federal spending this year and next year, Mills feels we must reestablish control over the amount and character of Federal spending in the future...
...It was obvious that "many vitally important items were listed...
...Emphasizing that basic changes in federal spending are necessary, he demands responsible leadership by the executive branch in the formulation of such changes...
...He then asked the chiefs of the military intelligence organizations if they had been consulted...
...Something immediately seemed wrong," said Lipscomb...
...to return the license...
...This has been done...
...The Department of Commerce readily admitted it approved the transaction, but claimed that gravity could be measured equally well "by Russian instruments already in Poland, or by Canadian gravity meters comparable to the Worden meter...
...In America during 1966 we paid a total tax rate of 36.9 per cent...
...Perhaps not as free as we think...
...He checked with the leading expert on gravity meters who, Mundt said, acknowledged that "the skill required to develop a gravity meter (comparable to the Worden meter) . . . exists nowhere outside the United States today...
...What Commerce officials released for public consumption and what it had told Mundt privately did not jibe...
...Rep...
...Chairman of the ways and means committee, wisely justifies the House's refusal to vote new taxes on the grounds that "we want to pause in this headlong rush to ever bigger government...
...This was an admission that the Administration felt that, according to the Export Control Act, the sale of the gravity meter would make "a significant contribution to the THE ALTER NATIVE How free are we in the land of the free...
...The obstructive camouflaging which Mundt and Lipscomb faced in trying to learn what the Johnson Administration is approving for sale to the Communists is further proof that news management is clearly contrived to keep the public ignorant of a policy which endangers the nation's security and survival...
Vol. 1 • January 1968 • No. 4
