Reply #34: Sy Hersh--"The Getaway" published Jan 28, 2002 in The New Yorker.

[berry]

I don't have the link either, but I think the archives are available free.

Yeah, Hersh seems to be aiming right at Rummy (and Cambone, and maybe all the neo-cons), but this article also seems to be a CIA hit on the civilian Pentagon. Maybe this is the beginning of the payback for the Plame outing, etc. that we've all been waiting for? It seems like a several-birds-with-one-stone sort of attack. The WH doesn't come off well either--and the Pentagon neo-cons may have been seen as the Achilles' heel (easiest and best target). Note that the CIA opted out of the whole extreme-interrogation business in Iraq, at least according to Hersh's CIA informant.

Frankly, there's a lot in Hersh's article that I don't understand. Probably it means more to people who know about how black ops and things like that work. I was especially confused by the talk of SAPs that are compromised by just mentioning them, and yet the ex-CIA guy is talking freely about them.

I was cheered by the suggestion that a second Church Committee was in the cards. It's high time we (the US) revisited those issues. Along with all the questions of secrecy in a democracy.