How to Get a Job in the Bush Administration

Here are some of the key players in the Iran-Contra scandal who are employed by the Bush administration:

Richard "Dick" Cheney - now the vice president, he played a prominent part as a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry of 1986, taking the position that Congress deserved major blame for asserting itself unjustifiably onto presidential turf. He later pointed to the committees' Minority Report as an important statement on the proper roles of the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

Robert M. Gates - President Bush's nominee to succeed Donald Rumsfeld, Gates nearly saw his career go up in flames over charges that he knew more about Iran-Contra while it was underway than he admitted once the scandal broke. He was forced to give up his bid to head the CIA in early 1987 because of suspicions about his role but managed to attain the position when he was re-nominated in 1991. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)

Elliott Abrams - currently deputy assistant to President Bush and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy, Abrams was one of the Reagan administration's most controversial figures as the senior State Department official for Latin America in the mid-1980s. He entered into a plea bargain in federal court after being indicted for providing false testimony about his fund-raising activities on behalf of the Contras, although he later accused the independent counsel's office of forcing him to accept guilt on two counts. President George H. W. Bush later pardoned him.

David Addington - now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, and by numerous press accounts a stanch advocate of expanded presidential power, Addington was a congressional staffer during the joint select committee hearings in 1986 who worked closely with Cheney.

John Bolton - the controversial U.N. ambassador whose recess appointment by President Bush is now in jeopardy was a senior Justice Department official who participated in meetings with Attorney General Edwin Meese on how to handle the burgeoning Iran-Contra political and legal scandal in late November 1986. There is little indication of his precise role at the time.

Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, he was Ronald Reagan's controversial attorney general who spearheaded an internal administration probe into the Iran-Contra connection in November 1986 that was widely criticized as a political exercise in protecting the president rather than a genuine inquiry by the nation's top law enforcement officer.

John Negroponte - the career diplomat who worked quietly to boost the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Central America as ambassador to Honduras, he also participated in efforts to get the Honduran government to support the Contras after Congress banned direct U.S. aid to the rebels. Negroponte's profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005.

John Poindexter - who found a niche deep in the U.S. government's post-9/11 security bureaucracy as head of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program (formally disbanded by Congress in 2003), was Oliver North's superior during the Iran-Contra period and personally approved or directed many of his activities. His assertion that he never told President Reagan about the diversion of Iranian funds to the Contras ensured Reagan would not face impeachment.

Otto Reich - President George W. Bush's one-time assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Reich ran a covert public diplomacy operation designed to build support for Ronald Reagan's Contra policies. A U.S. comptroller-general investigation concluded the program amounted to "prohibited, covert propaganda activities," although no charges were ever filed against him. Reich paid a price in terms of congressional opposition to his nomination to run Latin America policy, resulting in a recess appointment in 2002 that lasted less than a year.

Nearly all have assumed key roles in the defense ,intelligence, or foreign policy apparatus of U.S. state power. Positions that would qualify them as what Jim Garrison calls "Praetorian Guard" of our time.

Many of these individuals' involvement includes covering up Reagan's knowledge of the affair - which meant lying to Congress (so they will have no problem doing it again if legitimate investigations into the Iraq fiasco ever occur).

Reagan's knowledge of the affair is undeniable.

On December 1, 1981, President Reagan signed an initial, one-paragraph "Finding" authorizing the CIA's paramilitary war against Nicaragua. A signed Finding confirms that the president has personally authorized a covert action, "finding" it to be in the national security interests of the United States. In this second Finding on covert action in Nicaragua, Reagan responds to mounting political pressure from Congress to halt U.S. efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government. This document defines CIA support for the Contras as a broad "interdiction" operation, rather than an explicit counter-revolution. The language, however, is deliberately vague enough to justify violent actions by the Contras and the CIA and to enable the CIA to work with other nations such as Honduras in the effort to undermine the Nicaraguan government.

It would seem that the "Praetorian Guard" takes care of its own. The fact that these repeat offenders keep getting away with lawlessness is evidence of that. The same names always seem to pop up when there is a major scandal relating to black ops in recent history.

The overarching issue in all of these affairs seems to be the extent of Executive power. This is a battle that has raged on in American poltics since the Founding Fathers began drafting the Constitution.

However, these individuals are not omnipotent or omniscient, as they are commonly portrayed (read: feared) to be. As for the latter, the Echelon program, the purported "corporate espionage" program that listened to people's phone calls was never truly effective. In fact, there were fears in the late 1990s that the NSA was, as LTG Michael Hayden puts it, "going deaf." And the new Patriot Act laws, though they are deplorable and an affront to democracy, pale in comparison to historical analogs of abuses of elite power such as Wilson's Red Scare or the actions of Cointelpro under the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon administrations.

As for the former, omnipotence, U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq while the Sandinistas (at least Ortega) are back in power in Nicaragua and overtly anti-American independent nationalists are in power in Iran. These are deja vu for many elites, as the same essentially happened during Jimmy "Weak on Defense" Carter's administration. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen to the bellicose, jingoistic reactionary statist forces of the right-wing elite. Now that the moderate right-wing party of American government, the Democrats are in power in Congress, the world is crumbling down around the right-wing elite, a group that have dictated foreign policy since the "right turn" in American foreign policy that occured beginning with NSC Memorandum 68 in 1950. I, for one, am terribly afraid of what measures to which they may resort in order to stay in power.

http://www.gwu.edu/...
Link to document "Finding":
http://www.gwu.edu/...