-Caveat Lector-

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/BiggestSecret_ZR.html

The Biggest Secret
by Howard Zinn, 1975
from the Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press



Secrets are coming out of the Senate committee probing
the FBI and CIA. But the biggest secrets, I suspect
will remain untouched.

Yes, we learn that the FBI tapped wires illegally,
kept lists of people to be put in concentration camps,
wrote fake letters to destroy personal lives and used
dirty tricks to disrupt organizations it didn't like.
The CIA opened mail illegally, plotted the murder of
foreign leaders and conspired to overthrow a
democratically elected government in Chile.

It is the habit of governments everywhere, including
ours, when caught lying, stealing or murdering, to
murmur a few words of confession, find a scapegoat to
punish and go right on doing its dirty work in more
subtle ways.

Recall: Families were burned to death in Vietnam,
babies were shot in their mothers' arms, Cambodia was
bombed secretly and Laos openly, the land and culture
of 40 million people in Southeast Asia were laid
waste. And then what? Instead of trying Mr. Nixon and
Kissinger for mass murder by terror bombing, we
scolded their flunkies for breaking and-entering and
gave them a little time in jail. Instead of trying the
generals for the massacre at My Lai, we tried Calley
and put him under house arrest.

What will happen now with these revelations on the CIA
and FBI? The usual. A few changes in personnel, a few
new laws. But the same exclusive club of corporate
billionaires, with their teams of lawyers,
accountants, politicians and intellectual advisers
hoping to become Secretary of State, will remain in
power.

For profound changes to come about in this country, we
will have to start revealing to the American public,
and especially to the school kids of the coming
generation, the really big secrets, which no
congressional committee will touch.

First, that there is little difference between Them
(the enemy- Communism) and Us (the West, American,
"democracy") when it comes to a reckless disregard for
human lives in pursuit of something called "national
interest." That "national interest," it usually turns
out, is the interest, over there, of the Kremlin
bureaucracy, and here, the interest of the oil
companies, the banks, the
military-industrial-political complex. When we were
told in grade school that the difference between Them
and Us is "they believe in any means to gain their
ends and we don't"-we were lied to.

People are beginning to catch on. The Spy Who Came in
>From the Cold was the first best-selling novel to
boldly make that point: "Our side" would use ex-Nazis,
would sacrifice the lives of its own people, to score
points in a game whose concern was not humanity but
power.

The current movie, Three Days of the Condor, is even
more explicit. The CIA is portrayed as a group of
sophisticated men using dazzling scientific techniques
to ruthlessly exterminate anyone, including their own
employees, who stood in the way of control of oil in
the Middle East and Venezuela.

Even the fantasies of movie scripts can't match the
reality. There is evidence now that the FBI was
involved in the planned murder of two black leaders in
Chicago on December 4, 1969. A gang of police, armed
with shotguns, pistols, rifles and submachine guns,
and a plan of the house furnished by an FBI informant,
attacked an apartment occupied by Black Panthers, at
four in the morning, and executed Fred Hampton as he
lay asleep in his bed.

The biggest secret of all is beginning to emerge: That
"the enemy" of this government is anyone, here or
abroad, who won't put up with control of the world by
Chase Manhattan, Exxon, General Motors, I.T. & T. It
is chilling but suddenly believable that a government
willing to kill Vietnamese peasants and put Asian
protesters in tiger cages will also assassinate native
Americans and put citizens here in concentration
camps.
That's a heavy secret for us to carry in our heads.
But we need to know it, if we are going to figure out
how to defend our lives and our liberties from those
who have occupied America.



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