The Paradox of Our National Security Complex: How Secrecy and Security Diminish Our Liberty and Threaten Our Democratic Republic - Softcover

Otto, Richard Alexander

9781782794448: The Paradox of Our National Security Complex: How Secrecy and Security Diminish Our Liberty and Threaten Our Democratic Republic

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782794441 ISBN 13: 9781782794448

Verlag: CHRONOS BOOKS, 2017

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Most Americans live very hectic lives and have little time to devote to reading lengthy tomes on a single subject, never mind researching these matters. Here, in a single volume, Richard Otto presents a series of compelling essays on Vietnam, Watergate and the assassinations of the 1960s. The Paradox of our National Security Complex examines the consequences of our militaristic and corporatist policies since World War II on our liberty, our security, and our democracy.

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�ber die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard Otto is an award winning attorney at law with a lifelong fascination for politics and history. The Paradox of Our National Security System is the culmination of almost a decade of research. Otto works as a case manager in a drug court, and lives with his family in Maine.

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The Paradox Or Our National Security Complex

How Secrecy and Security Diminish Our Liberty and threaten our Democratic Republic

By Richard Otto

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Preface, 
Chapter 1 – The Evolution of our Modern National Security Complex, 
Chapter 2 – JFK's Urgent Quest for Peace, 
Chapter 3 – JFK Assassination, 
Chapter 4 – The Dissenters, 
Conclusion, 
Epilogue, 
Endnote References, 
Bibliography,

CHAPTER 1

The Evolution of our Modern National Security Complex

When discussing why the CIA ran amuck with Trento, Angleton stated, "There was no accountability. And without accountability everything turned to shit."

James Angleton

"You know, the CIA got tens of thousands of brave people killed ... We played with lives as if we owned them."

James Angleton

"When national security is used as the excuse for concealing essential facts surrounding a disaster, it usually refers to the security of the man who allowed the disaster to occur. Actually, the greater threat to national security is the cynical concealment of such facts from the people."

James Garrison

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

George Orwell

When asked by a reporter to describe the purpose of the CIA, Allen Dulles replied, "It's the state department for the unfriendly countries."

Allen Dulles

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"There is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is a grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment."

John F. Kennedy

"... the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing (atom bomb)."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan."

Admiral William D. Leahy

"... we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Brigadier General Carter Clarke

"The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."

General Curtis LeMay

"The war might have ended weeks earlier if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

General Douglas McArthur

"We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises."

John F. Kennedy

National Security vs Dark Secrets (How our classification system threatens our republic)

An interview of Edward Snowden triggered some thoughts on how our national security state operates. Snowden was posing questions to former KGB officer, President Vladimir Putin, regarding Russia's intelligence programs and if they collected and stored data on their citizens as was done by our National Security Agency (NSA). His reply was predictable in that he denied that they had the money or the technology to spy on their citizens as in the United States.

The issue I intend to confront is the expansive classification program we have instituted in this country since the end of World War II. Before the war documents were classified and secrets were kept from the public; this certainly was true. However, the dynamics and the scope of this practice has morphed into a beast that undermines our democracy or what our founding fathers called our republic. When Benjamin Franklin was asked after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 how he would characterize our form of government – a republic or a monarchy? He responded "A republic, if you can keep it."

Before World War II, this country never had a formal infrastructure for intelligence. This was considered by our British allies as a liability as war approached. British intelligence and military officers – which included Ian Fleming the eventual author of the James Bond series – advocated to President Franklin Roosevelt the need for the United States to establish an intelligence capacity worthy of a world power that was commensurate with what the European nations had instituted. Roosevelt was persuaded and quickly formed the Office of Intelligence Coordination. This fledgling agency would be eclipsed during the war by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which added clandestine operations to its responsibilities.

The euphoria that swept through the world after the surrender of Germany and Japan did not last long. The hopes and aspirations by many at the end of the war were dashed as cooperation between the allies would slowly recede to the tides of fear and mistrust as the world observed the rise of the Cold War between the East and the West. This combination of fear and paranoia was memorialized in the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. This act reorganized our military that was now headed by the Secretary of Defense. It also created our National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The NSA was established in 1952 by President Truman. It is operated under the auspices of the Pentagon and is completely separate from the CIA.

As our intelligence communities grew in stature and their influence in the formation of Cold War policy was consolidated, as well as supported by the military, the pressure to engage in secret programs and operations began to expand their authority and responsibilities in the safeguarding of our national security. Many of those who originally joined the CIA were former OSS agents that were well trained in covert operations. This perceived need to be able to confront an adversary as evil as the Soviet Union and its communist allies encouraged policies and programs that could tackle any threat even if it required illegal and unethical action. As former Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell conceded in his memoir, "The end justified the means." This clearly meant that secrecy was paramount to the success of any mission or operation. This led to the doctrine of plausible deniability which was formalized in National Security Council 10/2. Along with this was the establishment of a hierarchy of classification codes that limited access to documents and information to those who had the requisite security clearance. Consequently, the CIA was compartmentalized and responsibilities were divided. Information was transferred and shared on a need to know basis. This meant that two employees engaged in the same project while working next to each other would not be able to comprehend that their duties were related.

Many of the programs executed by the CIA, FBI and the NSA operated under such strict security and secrecy that even the President and Congress were not informed. In many cases, this was an intentional corollary to our classification...

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