WASHINGTON REPORT: The Second Shoe:
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT THE SECOND SHOE The New York Times has, in effect, recently apologized to one of the few genuine reporters it has. The reporter is Seymour Hersh, who last December exposed...
...The Rockefeller Commission validated the Hersh exposures...
...It is one of His sketches that has turned out badly...
...The elective offices of the federal government have phases...
...But, after all, a sketch is tentative-and Church still holds the second shoe...
...The Town-that is Washington-has not yet made up its mind which way to play the CIA matter...
...He was set upon by Lyndon Johnson and risked political death in Idaho, with its large gun-toting Mormon population...
...Freshly elected, they may understandably perform as if they have a "mandate" to continue business as usual or to vigorously pursue some course or other...
...Like the moon, occupants of these elective offices-the President and the 535 members of Congress-have (political) phases...
...A third story similarly credited Hersh...
...Within carefully circumscribed limitations- it was not, for example, to inquire into the extent, scope, nature or value of the CIA's overseas "dirty tricks" operations-the Commission set to work...
...This is where we are now on the CIA matter, and the energy-policy matter and the disarmament matter, and the economy matter...
...Hersh estimated that the CIA had collected information about "at least" 10,000 Americans...
...Church talks a pretty, good game these days...
...Church, a conscientious, righteous "loner" at age SO, has in his typically mannered and cautious way let it be known he'd like to be elected President next year...
...and the committee doors are under surveillance...
...But his, Borah's, was not an Organization Man's age and Borah did not want to be President...
...But housebreaking the CIA is the most hazardous of undertakings...
...But the question before the house is whether Church will let the second shoe drop, assuming, as he is publicly indicating, that it should be dropped, or simply will place the shoe softly on the floor...
...Those inside tend to defend what they've done-not to embark or continue on with a difficult program or project...
...In its reporting of the Commission's findings, the Times published three stories paying tribute to Hersh...
...Church has walked courageously alone, or nearly so, in the days when opposition to our involvement in Indochina was just developing...
...The right-wing members of his Senate Select Committee will be watching and running to the CIA if matters begin to cut toward the bone...
...The reporter is Seymour Hersh, who last December exposed domestic wrong-doings of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA...
...All three were suitable secular acts of contrition-long overdue...
...Those who did their duty, at that time and in a most difficult situation, were elected, it should be remembered, from the shabbier precincts of America-among them, Rep...
...The chances that the investigation be concluded in a manner fair to all-including the CIA, the existence of which can be persuasively defended-is made more difficult because the 1976 presidential election year is only six months away...
...Committee members, especially Church, himself, meet not so much in a room as in a minefield...
...In mid-June, it released its findings...
...The Church Committee does still have some leeway...
...I hope we can relate the acts in a manner that will least injure the country," he said the other day...
...The CIA, at the request of Nixon aides, kicked-in $38,000 to defray costs of replying to those who wrote to President Nixon following the invasion of Cambodia...
...The Nixon impeachment proceeding took place in an election year, 1974...
...So with the unfinished CIA investigation before the Senate (and the nation...
...Finally, President Ford was obliged to establish an investigatory commission headed by Vice President Rockefeller...
...The Commission, among other things, reported that the CIA had unlawfully collected, during a six-year period beginning in 1967, materials on dissident Americans that produced 13,000 files and related documents that contained the names of more than 300,000 persons and organizations...
...Another pointed out that the principal allegations of the numerous stories by Hersh were validated by the Rockefeller Commission...
...But there is no immutable law...
...Its writ, however, includes permission to inquire into the clandestine operations (dirty tricks) of the CIA...
...Outspokenness was the order-of-the-day...
...while in contemporary times, the conventional wisdom, as applied to, say, a thunderer like (the late) Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, is "The Senate can stand one Wayne Morse, but not two...
...The announcement was made at the Association's recent convention in New York City...
...It's held by Senator Church, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, like the Rockefeller Commission, established after the Hersh revelations to explore activities of the CIA...
...The past lions of the Senate- Borah, for example, who, like Church, represented Idaho -would have let the shoe drop, if warranted...
...Thomas (Tip) O'Neill of Cambridge Mass., Majority Leader...
...His were other times and other customs, when thunder in the Senate was accepted, even approved, and men of the President's Cabinet left, if they disagreed on major issues, with a bang, not a whimper-the latter is the case these days...
...Jimmy Breslin in his book on the affair, How the Good Guys Finally Won, suggests that in a chapter entitled "The night-school students are saving the country...
...It investigated federal income-tax records of sixteen persons...
...For Representatives, with two-year terms, it only lasts a year or less...
...But usually this comes about on the part of putative candidates now beginning to beat on the door to be admitted to elective office...
...Perhaps that is because the country doesn't seem to have made up its mind either, nor has the press corps...
...As the end of their terms approach, precinct politics begins to shade the issues...
...Hersh persisted in his explanatory reportage, so unappreciated by influential persons at the Times...
...Within a few days, the Times published an editorial downgrading the Hersh story-a position it maintained for a considerable length of time...
...I don't regard murder plots as a minor matter," Church said...
...Church responded tartly that his Committee had from evidence that planning of assassinations of leaders of other governments was one CIA activity...
...And, if not, it is capable of putting out stories to willing correspondents to make it seem as if the Church Committee, or, more specifically, Church, himself, is, innocently or otherwise, playing into the hands of "America's enemies...
...Hersh first "broke" the story on a Sabbath last December...
...The Church Committee is scheduled to complete its work this year...
...the dice are not Church's...
...Things in America are never as bad as they seem...
...Rodino of Newark, N.J., chairman of the impeaching House Judiciary Committee, and Rep...
...sisvphus Sisyphus' "Washington Report" column was cited in the 1975 awards competition of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada as "the best regular column" originating with a magazine...
...Ours is not a wicked country and we cannot abide a wicked Government...
...Looking for a descriptive phrase to apply to the situation, one is tempted to reach despondently for a remark made a long time ago by the painter Van Gogh: "I believe more and more that God must not be judged on this earth...
...Rockefeller recently said that the law-breaking offenses of the CIA were not "major...
...The CIA, itself, may have infiltrated the Senate Committee's staff...
...As the 1976 year nears, this outlook grows large...
...He wrote that the CIA "had violated its charter by conducting massive, illegal intelligence operations aimed at (domestic) anti-war activists and other American dissidents inside the United States...
...The second shoe has yet to drop...
...So much is at stake and so many disparate matters are wired to each other, politically speaking...
...For Senators, with a six-year term, and Presidents, with a four, this lasts about two years...
...It is possible under these circumstances for public benefit to accrue...
...What maneuvers, what positions, what votes (or vetoes) will look most advantageous during the approaching reelection year...
...The stakes are high...
...The CIA gave President Nixon classified information relating to military actions abroad that Nixon used to his political advantage, although the Rockefeller Commission said the CIA didn't know the materials would be used that way...
...One, appearing on page one, was written by Clifton Daniel, chief of the Times's Washington bureau, where Hersh is currently assigned...
...Then, for reason of political opposition or fatigue or discouragement, comes a slackening off of efforts...
Vol. 102 • July 1975 • No. 8
