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(the interest in the candidacies of Governors Brown and Carter) suggests that
the public may be seeking not less government, but a different kind of
government . Senators Humphrey and Jackson , of course , are unsympathetic
to this inchoate tendency.
It
is there, nonetheless, and it has long-term poli–
tical implications which cannot be dismissed by references to a supposed na–
tional failure of nerve .
Mr. Podhoretz thinks that too much has been made of the abuses of
executive power described by the phrase , Watergate . More precisely, he ar–
gues that these abuses have been a pretext for an attack on an entire system
of government. The Imperial Presidency was the vehicle for a strong overt
foreign policy . The Central Intelligence Agency functioned, similarly , as the
Imperial Presidency's covert instrument. We are now experiencing, Mr.
Podhoretz suggests, a dismantling of the apparatus which alone can conduct
the kind of foreign policy he thinks we need . Here again, some of his anxiety
seems excessive. Congress has behaved recently with exemplary cowardice
with respect to the Central Intelligence Agency, and even a weak President
like Ford has not hesitated to make effective claims to "Executive Privilege "
in the domain of National Security . Much too much remains secret- as for–
eign policy advisors no different in outlook from the present ones look for–
ward to January twentieth of next year.
Mr. Podhoretz 's analysis of the critique of the Central Intelligence
Agency is worth reading. He suggests that the agency is now subject to at–
tacks which can be likened only to McCarthyism. In an interesting phrase ,
he tells us that McCarthyism had the function of concretizing the Commu–
nist threat, of mobilizing the American public for the cold war abroad.
Similarly , the attacks on the CIA have a demobilizing function-and , in–
deed, intent. The analogy is not credible. In the McCarthyite period , federal
agencies, congressional committees , the media and employers, combined
and conspired to defame , persecute and penalize individuals accused of
holding unacceptable beliefs. The attack on the CIA, by contrast, is an of–
fensive intended to recapture our constitutional liberties-and to regain for
the public its right to know, and for the Congress its right to vote upon , for–
eign engagements undertaken by a government agency.
Since Mr. Podhoretz seems to have a good dead of sympathy for the
CIA, we ought to consider his arguments . He describes the CIA as a " liberal
creation." True in part, but we ought not to ignore the initial role of corp–
orate lawyers and financiers in the agency; its Ivy and WASP character.
Jewish professors no doubt supplied it with statistics on the Soviet economy,
and Greeks and Italians killed at its behest . The orders came from the Dul- .
leses and Helmses of this society . Mr. Podhoretz says of the CIA that its poli–
tical tone was found congenial by large numbers of anti-Communist lib-
