Reply #33: All of you who are interested in this issue should read the 1970s book

[Lydia Leftcoast]

The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti, an exposé of the CIAs adventures in places like Vietnam and Chile. All writings by former CIA officials are subject to pre-publication censorship by the CIA, but Marchetti was stubborn enough to demand that his publishers SHOW exactly where the deletions were made.

There was enough damning information in there to prompt Senate investigations led by Sen. Frank Church.

Anyway, Marchetti's main thesis was that government secrecy is bullshit. The U.S. government knows what it's doing. The other side knows what the U.S. government is doing (both sides have moles). The "collateral damage" victims know what the U.S. government is doing. The "secrecy" is meant to keep the American people in the dark about what their government is up to.

This is a book that needs to be reprinted and widely read.