Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Deep State Factoids



Do you know of Stephen Martin Young?

He served in both WWI and WWII.

He also had a long political career.  He ran for many offices.  Among the offices he won election to? The US House of Representatives.  He served his term and sought re-election but he lost that campaign.

The next public office he ran for was Attorney General of Ohio.  He lost.  Two years later, he ran for the US Senate and won.  He ran for re-election in 1964 and won again.

When 1970 rolled around, he did not seek re-election.

He told some that it was getting more difficult.  Specifically, he said, things were more difficult since he began criticizing the CIA.  This criticism included his essay "A Call For Curbs on the CIA" that ran in the May 1967 issue of PLAYBOY.  Two years earlier, on October 20, 1965, THE CHICAGO DAILY quoted the senator stating, that while he was in Vietnam, the CIA told him that they worked to discredit Communism by disguising people as Vietcong, people they sent out to rape and murder the Vietnamese people. One day later, the CIA mop-up rag (THE WASHINGTON POST) ran a story claiming Senator Young had been misquoted (AP reported that he didn't say he was misquoted, he said he got it wrong on who had passed on the information).  (If you're new to that moment in time, you can read William Blum's book KILLING HOPE -- in fact, read it in full for free at the CIA online library where, apparently, US copyright laws don't apply.)


You can go to the JFK LIBRARY online and hear JFK's remarks on Young.  JFK got along with Young, they agreed on many things.  For example, in the Senate, JFK had voted for a new Congressional committee -- a joint House and Senate committee -- to be created to provide additional oversight of the CIA.

Grasp that Young called for more Congressional oversight of the CIA because "wrapped in a cloak of secrecy, the CIA has, in effect, been making foreign policy" (Tom Wicker, John W. Finney, Max Frankel, E.W. Kenworthy and other members of the Times staff, "CIA: Maker of Policy, or Tool?," NEW YORK TIMES, April 26, 1966).  It's an issue that should especially register and resonate today.






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