01-06-2013 | Late Sunday Evening

From Jim Hougan's Spooks, page nine:

''It seems fitting that in a country where people aspire to two of everything -- cars, kids, and homes -- we should have two histories as well. And we do: a public chronicle, or "Disney version," so widely available as to be unavoidable...and a second one that remains secret, buried and unnamed.

Lately, Americans have come to suspect the existence of this second history; the Watergate affair, with all its resonances, and subsequent snippets of CIA malpractices have disinterred a part of the times. Spooks is an effort at further excavation in an area that has long been identifie as terra incognita: the private use of secret agents by multinational corporations and the rich.''

From Raphael Ezekiel's The Racist Mind, page 78:

''Deep into our final interview, I asked Metzger to talk about the Order, the group that arose in the Northwest, and -- before the leader, Robert Mathews, was killed and the others imprisoned -- assassinated Denver radio commentator Alan Berg and successfully staged several armored car robberies. Metzger's discussion is worth study. "From where you sit," I had asked, "from what you can see, what actually was going on?"

"What was going on?" he responded. "Well, it was, I think, the first stage of many others. Frustrated, racially conscious young white people. Some were religious, some were not religious. The chemistry was just right, they came together and they decided that this was their time. And they declared war on the government and went from there." "I respect every one of them," he continued. "Not because I would say go out and do it they way they did i. But they weren't hypocrites. They decided what they wanted to do and didn't make any excuses, they went out and did it."

...

He seeks tactics that will make the Establishment eat its words. "See, I believe that most of what people say is bullshit. They lie to themselves and they lie to everybody else. And they believe they are telling the truth. They say they believe in free speech. But when you ask them on the street, they say, well, not for these guys. You put it up to a vote, the Bill of Rights would be out the window in a week."

From Arthur Macy Cox's The Myths of National Security, page 181:

''The sickness hat has infected the US governmen in recent decades, and most seriously since the Vietnam War, has some grim symptoms, but nothing that can't be cured by employing the essential strengths of our democratic system. In order to find the remedies we need to understand what went wrong and why.

The most important reason for the breakdown was the grant of extra-ordinary powers to the executive branch for the intended purpose of of protecting the nation's security. The American people, responding in fear of Soviet-led communism and nuclear weapons, willingly acquiesced in the need for secret decisions, secret operations and secret information to protect our national security.

It was generally accepted that the American public would be deprived of certain information in order to prevent our enemies from obtaining our secrets. This broad national security consensus was dependent on the public's trust of its government. When that trust was violated, the consensus crumbled. The trust can be restored again, but only by insisting on the accountability and the constitutional checks and balances essential for the health of our democracy.

...

The way to impede the spread of totalitarianism in the United States is not through "moral outrage," but by limiting the secrecy system through accountability so that those who lie know they are being watched -- so that the public, if so inclined, can throw the rascals out at the ballot box. Secrets are necessary, but as Justice Potter Stewart said in his opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, "Secrecy can best be preserved only when credibility is truly maintained." Anthony Lake, a former member of the National Security Council staff, says: "The essential first step is for the government to realize that it cannot lead the public while misleading it."