WASHINGTON, June 22 — William E. Colby faced an uneasy decision in late 1973 when he took over the Central Intelligence Agency: whether to make public the agency’s internal accounting, then being compiled, of its domestic spying, assassination plots and other misdeeds since its founding nearly three decades earlier.
Mr. Colby decided to keep the so-called family jewels a secret, and wrote in his memoir in 1978 that he believed the agency’s already sullied reputation, including a link to the Watergate scandal, could not have withstood a public airing of all its dirty laundry.
So why, at a time when the agency has again been besieged by criticism, this time for its program of secret detentions and interrogations since the Sept. 11 attacks, would the current director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, decide to declassify the same documents that Mr. Colby chose to keep secret?...
General Hayden’s decision to declassify the family jewels now has been greeted negatively by some C.I.A. veterans, who say it could be a blow to the morale of a proud organization afflicted by turmoil during the last five years.
“C.I.A. officers, especially the young officers, want to belong to an organization that has a history and tradition they can look up to,” said one recently retired veteran, who insisted on anonymity because he had been an undercover officer. “If you put something out that says the founders of the agency were a bunch of criminals, that doesn’t exactly help.”
Truthiness, forever.
They can't handle the truth.
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