Going nuclear

Among the recent news of interest regarding Iran’s nuclear program is the Wall Street Journal article “Group says Iran resumed weapons program.” In a column on the NIE, Henry Kissinger not only observes the argumentative nature of the estimate, he also diplomatically observes the subversive role taken by the intelligence agencies with respect to Bush administration foreign policy.
Kissinger makes the second point with extreme tact toward the end of the column and it would be easy to miss what he is saying. It is a point that we have made here repeatedly over the past few years, but it is newsworthy when a man of Kissinger’s stature makes such an incendiary observation.
Once upon a time, liberals worried about the takeover of the executive branch by intelligence or military operatives. Think back to 1962’s Seven Days In May. The novel and the movie that was made of it pioneered what has become a genre unto itself. “Three Days of the Condor,” for example, extended the concerns of “Seven Days In May” to the CIA. Of course, the operatives in these novels and films were always depicted as right-wing or “fascist.”
But the permanent bureaucracy that mans the intelligence community and the State Department is a virtual preserve of the left. The visible role undertaken by the CIA in undermining administration foreign policy should be a concern to Americans of all stripes. Yet the progressive love of power has undermined the left’s concern about democratic niceties.
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