The More Things Change The More.....

[illinoisprogressive]

Interesting little article regarding the Little Dick in the Ford White House. If it sounds familar, well, Cheney has been frozen in time with his silent rage:



I’ll give Dick Cheney credit for one thing: when it comes to his authoritarian impulses, he’s entirely consistent.

Returning to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown. The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program, and the White House chief of staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was demanding action.

Out came the yellow legal pad, and in his distinctively neat, deliberate hand, Mr. Cheney laid out the “problem,” “goals” while addressing it, and “options.” These last included “Start FBI investigation — with or w/o public announcement. As targets include NYT, Sy Hersh, potential gov’t sources.”

Mr. Cheney’s notes, now in the Gerald R. Ford presidential library, collected and synthesized the views of lawyers, diplomats, spies and military officials, but his own views shine through. He is hostile to the press and to Congress, insistent on the prerogatives of the executive branch and adamant about the importance of national security secrets.

In the 1975 incident, Cheney considered a White House response to the article that included seeking “immediate indictments of NYT and Hersh,” and getting a search warrant “to go after Hersh papers in his apt.”

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed, not because Ford administration officials realized that Cheney’s ideas were crazy, but because the White House realized an over-the-top reaction to the Hersh story would effectively admit that the article was accurate. The restraint, in other words, was pragmatic, not principled.

Dick Cheney? Advocating authoritarian approaches to inconvenient investigative journalism? You don’t say.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/9898.html