AT THE TOP It seems to me that we had better accept the idea of naming a military man to head up a section of our government we conveniently choose to call "non-militant" by nature.
Our overall concept of what the counter intelligence twig of our governmental organizational tree is supposed to accomplish is rather vague to start with and the ground rules are constantly being tweaked to make sure in someone's mind that we are not stepping on someone's touchy toes by making it impossible for a dictatorship to rise up and smite us. Could there be any better reason for putting a military-minded man in charge from time-to-time?
Let's avoid names in this, for the time being.
If our President has found a men whom he feels can do the job as he wishes it to be done, then, he certainly, should be allowed to nominate that person or whatever procedure one must undergo to enable such a talent to be an active part of his administration.
Granted, there is a chance that such an individual - military or civilian - might, in some way, seek to gain unauthorized power. There are those among us right now who would, at this point, insist that we went far along such a road in those days when J. Edgar Hoover was, for many years, in charge of our FBI. Others, would quibble about the illegal nature of some "New Deal" actions and of F.D.R's "P.H." factor. Still others would wonder about the mysterious absence of restricted documents which turned up, eventually, in casual reading material at the White House. We talk about these and other incidents which are a bit aside from the straight and even narrow path we profess to be ideal.
Admittedly, it is possible that a dictatorship might well have been established on such a base at some point in the man's attempts to organize himself and his activities.
The entire question becomes moot if you think about the number of leaders we have been authorized to care for our clandestine information sources have been civilians who are accepted, praised and promoted to even higher office because they have served in one of our military services.
Far wiser, it would seem, for us to be concerned over the fragmentation of our basic institutional ideals - not so much changes in our way of doing thing but in our basic reasons for doing them at all.
Now, go on back to today's news and put in name of the specific "General" who's name has been set forth by our President - like many before him - a former military man.
We make a news game of checking out their "Good Conduct Medals," "Ruptured Ducks" and and their "Purple Heart" collections. Occasionally, there is conflict and we step aside.
Let's try to keep it that way.
A.L.M. May 10, 2006 [c487wds] fulkp
