THE ACID TEST: THE C. I. A.

...has by and large not been wielded against our real or imagined enemies-the C.I.A...

...The arguments for and against covert activities in general and the numerous forms of subversion, cor-ruption, assassination, warfare, and terror carried out by the CIA in par-ticular are new being rehearsed in Congress and the press...

...If they are not, I suppose those, like' myself, who disagree with the conservative, or neo-conservative, domestic policies of the new acolytes of "liberty" will be able to take some satisfaction at hav-ing their rhetoric discredited...

...Will their voices be raised...

...Animated by an elitist philos-ophy of "knowing best," the C.I.A...

...The extent of the problem is amazing...

...and since their voices have hardly been heard in opposition to the vari-ous assaults on liberty committed or attempted in the United States-the danger that a black or a woman might have an unfair advantage in being hired for an assistant professorship has generally exhausted their capacity for outrage-it is not impossible, in-deed it appears likely, that their at-tachment to liberty is only a rhetorically acceptable way of mount-ing their fear of equality and democ-racy...

...which is not "hamstrung" stands between surren-der and nuclear confrontation...

...In that arena, those who feel that a round of self-congratulation will be morally bracing can easily find grounds for what they think we need...

...There is an opposing theory argu-ing that only a C.I.A...

...The "liberty party" may be okay for Turtle Bay...

...But that dogma aside, it is unquestion-able that certain inconveniences, at least to the parties in power, attach to democratic control and debate of foreign policies now carried out in secret...

...Whether the advocates of the "lib-erty party" thesis are sincere or merely wordsmiths of a new ideology is about to be tested by another con-crete issue-control over the C.I.A...

...The new celebrants of liberty, like their nineteenth-century predeces-sors, are apt to pit liberty against equality and even against democracy...

...Although the real target of this debate about liberty, equality and democracy is, I believe, the domestic politics of the United States, public awareness of the discussion has been directed largely toward the sphere of international affairs...

...ac-tions, a gap which opened like a trapdoor beneath Ambassador Moyni-han when bis U.N...

...Such abuses are all too common, said the State Depart-ment, among nations we aid mili-tarily as well as those we don-'t...

...There, we can compare ourselves not with the ex-acting standards of our Founding Fathers but with the shameful and often ludicrous crimes of petty dic-tators...

...and its intelligence allies an independent nation, their annual expenditures of $10.5 billion would make them the thirty-fourth largest nation in Gross National Product, ranking ahead of Egypt, Greece, Chile and Israel...

...is an independent nation, a nation within a nation, at most sharing with the rest of Amer-ica only the rule of the presidency or the direction of a non-elected of-ficial like Kissinger...

...What is crucial is the question of control, bringing the intelligence arms under the Constitutional system of checks and balances toward which we pro-test allegiance and admiration...

...On the face of it, such talk is welcome, if only because it could become a self-fulfilling proph-ecy...

...To argue that these inconveniences are a price worth paying and, in the long run, serve us better than the efficient but unexamined and unfettered exercise of power is what we would expect from those identifying America as the "lib-erty party" in the world...

...The secrecy of the C.I.A...

...Were the C.I.A...

...Nevertheless, it is not hard to de-tect a clank in this "alarm for lib-erty," as Ambassador Moynihan call-ed it in the Bicentennial issue of The Public Interest, a rusty reminis-cence of that nineteenth-century up-per-class liberalism which made "liberty" the watchword against ex-tension of the franchise and economic protection for the great mass of citi-zens...

...We know how attaching a label may set in motion expectations which, for better or worse, finish by shaping reality to the description...

...has often known and usually prudently assumed that the "adver-sary" understood what was going on -as much as against the American people...

...resolution on po-litical prisoners was promptly fol-lowed by a State Department refusal to provide Congress with a legally required list of U.S.-supported na-tions engaged in "gross violations" of human rights...

...It is pre-cisely because of the inconveniences of freedom and democracy that so many of the world's rulers have eliminated free and representative government (and not infrequently, it should be mentioned, with the as-sistance 'of the C.I.A...

...And often enough it seems as though the C.I.A...

...evidently they have more serious business to attend to in Foggy Bottom...

...and other intelligence agencies...

...It will be small and bitter satisfaction, how-ever, not at all worth the pain of seeing liberty once again splattered with the stain of hypocrisy...

...This, of course, is where the "case for liberty" must be made...

...Imagining America the "liberty party" may thus have happier consequences than the apparent agreement, several years ago, between both critics and defenders of the international status quo that the concept most appro-priate for analyzing our role in the world was "empire...

...Still, there remains that em-barrassing gap between the new rhetoric and the reality of U.S...

...The proposals to remedy this de-velopment are many, and each should be debated on its merits...

...This seems to be an article of faith on the pait of many, apparently standing in no need for empirical evidence...

...has been shaped into an instrument designed not so much to escape de-tection on the world scene as to es-cape scrutiny and accountability at home...