CAPITALIST CRISIS CREATES CHAOS CIA-FBI SCANDALS MOUNTING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070088-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 88
• Publication Date: October 8, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070088-0
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By CARL D VIDSON
What is happening in A_ erica?
The question undoubted!; crossed the minds of millions
of people recently as they !carncd about an FBI informant
shooting at the President, CiA's manufacturing of
poisr:n dart guns and oper. Richard Nixon's mail and a
millionaire heiress claiming she was brainwashed into
terrorism.
It all gave the impression of a ruling class falling apart at
the scams, of a government unable to govern.
Nor was it simply a week of extraordinary exceptions. The
prog-ess of. events had built up for more. than 'a
decade-the Kc;rnedy -and King assassinations, . the
Vietnam upheaval and U.S. defeat, Watergate and the
resignations of Nixon and Agnew.
At present the CIA remains at the center of controversy
and contention within the ruling class. Beginning with the
exposure over a year ago of its role in the Chilean coup and
continuing .through the revelations of domestic spying.
i:rtcrn ! purges, dcfcctioas and assasscati_ns, the secret
police agency has been spotlighted as never before.
"More than a quarter-century worth of skeleton's have
tumbled from the agency's closet," noted the Sept. 29
Time. "Today the CIA is'the least secret espionage service
- -- . . ..
in the
But the CIA has not been the first to come under. fire.
"When the Chile s' tory broke last Year." added Time, "the
military, and foreign policy establishments had met their
Vietnam. The presidency had-met its Watergate. Congress
,.vas reasserting' itself. The CIA was the obvious next
"Scrutiny" is hardly the word for it
What is t
i
i
g
.
ransp
r
n
.
is an intensive struggle for the reorganization of power
within' the ruling class., for the ? rectification of policies
which have met with defeat and for preparations for new',
wars born of interirnperialist rivalry over a redivision of the'
world.
The problem for the bourgeoisie is that the defeats ard'I
setbacks of -the immediate past . have -discredited old '
authorities before new authorities from within its ranks
have been able ro prove themselves. Support for Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger within the government, 'for
instance, as with- Nixon's 1972 electoral base among the :
masses, is "a'rimile.-wide- and an inch deep., -,It could
evaporate overnight with the outbreak of 'a major conflict
and is being,-regularly criticized and challeno'ed by'
Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and Sen: Henry
Jackson (D-Wash.): _
The result is a crisis of transition, a progress made all
the more tenuous by-the fact that the old regime of Nixon
was dislodged, in part, through the mobilization of public
opinion by rival monopoly groups bidding for power. But
once certain weapons are used and various processes set
into motion, they take on a life of their?own'and are
diFticult to control.. As Karl Mar., pointed out more than
100 years ago in his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: I
"The struggle of the orators on the, [parliamentary]
platform evokes the struggle of the scribblers of the press;
the debating . club in parliament is' : necessarily.!
supplemented by debating clubs in the salons and
pothouses; the representatives, who copstantlyappeal to
public opinion, give public opinion the right to speak its
real mind in petitions. The parliamentary regime leaves
everything to the decision of majorities;' how shall the
great majorities outside parliament not want to decide?
When you play the fiddle at the top of the state, what else
is to be expected but that those Pwrr below dance?
Thus Ford, who came into office on a wave of sentiment
against "covenrps" and "executive privilege," now finds
himself hamstrungs in pressing forward these same
techniques in defense of the CIA and his own:
IF Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070088-0 ontirtued