THEY MADE THE BED, THEN WOKE IN IT:

Different hearings - and times: 9/11 hearings expose Washington's culture of caution. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 3/26/04, CS Monitor)

While the news media fixed on the firefight between the Bush White House and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, there's a deeper theme in this week's 9/11 commission hearings: Call it un-Church imperative.

Sen. Frank Church's scorching 1973-76 investigations of US intelligence operations changed the thinking of a generation. Starting with the CIA role in the downfall of Chile's Salvador Allende, the hearings targeted international "dirty tricks." Today, instead of asking why an assassination was attempted (against Fidel Castro), panels are asking why one didn't succeed (against Osama bin Laden). The difference stems partly from the 9/11 attacks themselves, which galvanized Americans against terrorists - and in favor of using stronger means of stopping them. But it also reflects a slower evolution of national opinion.

In the mid-'70s, packed hearing rooms heard of botched attempts on the life of Cuba's Castro that ranged from exploding cigars to acid in his shoes. In the wake of the just-completed Watergate hearings, the cautions stuck. At the end, assassination was no longer viewed as a legitimate tool of foreign policy, and the CIA was no longer considered a top career path for the "best and brightest."

Asked why US officials seemed cautious "to a fault" in going after bin Laden, 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean recalled his days as a student at Princeton University: "The CIA was not a very good thing to go into for a while. When I was in college, I think the guy who recruited for the CIA was the dean of the college. It was a very prestigious organization to go into. Some years later, the CIA was kicked off campus and most good campuses didn't even allow them to recruit on campus because of the kind of reputation they got after some of those [Church] hearings."

Critics at the time dubbed the Church Committee hearings "potentially dangerous" to the nation's security. "The repercussions of the Church Committee's misguided zeal are still being felt today," wrote former Sen. John Tower (R) of Texas in his 1991 memoir.

That legacy was everywhere in evidence in this week's 9/11 hearings.

Excellent point which requires one follow-up: perhaps the most successful foreign policy initiative of the past several decades was Reagan's covert aid to the Contras, in contravention of congressional desires. It is a model for how aggressive we need to be against our enemies, including those here at home who opposed it, like John Kerry.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 25, 2004 7:40 PM