Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Killing the Constitution: How I Became a Radical Twenty Years Ago Today
-- Leonard Cohen
Many think they now see through the Democrats' complicity with the Bush administration's illegal wars and unconstitutional actions. If they think this is new, they don't know that half of it.
Exactly twenty years ago today, on July 13, 1987, I witnessed the Democratic Party establishment covering up -- and therefore helping -- the subversion of the U.S. Constitution. It was actually on national TV, but few seemed to care.
The Iran-Contra hearings were going on. I watched them almost in their entirety, had just graduated from college and wasn't sure what I wanted to do, so I spent time with my dad, who'd just been diagnosed with a severe heart condition and we watched much of the hearings together.
For a while, I was admiring of the co-chairs of the Iran-Contra committee, the Democrats Sen. Daniel Inouye and Rep. Lee Hamilton -- who would go on to co-head the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Commission.
But, following events closely, it became clear Inouye and Hamilton were covering things up things. This became glaring on July 13, 1987 when the following exchange took place as Rep. Jack Brooks, a Democrat from Texas questioned Oliver North:
REP. BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the " continuity of government " in the event of a major disaster?
BRENDAN SULLIVAN (North's lawyer): Mr. Chairman?
SEN. INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that, sir?
REP. BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.
SEN. INOUYE; May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session. [Text is here and video is here].
And go into executive session they would. I expected a firestorm about this. It never happened. The media were largely silent, the Chicago Tribune the next day was rare in having a page one story (which I of course didn't see till years later) leading with:
Members of the Iran-contra congressional panels Monday questioned Lt. Col. Oliver North about his alleged involvement in a highly secret government plan that reportedly included suspension of the Constitution in times of national crisis.
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Iran, immediately cut off discussion of the plan, saying it touched on a "highly sensitive and classified area."
The reference by Rep. Jack Brooks (D., Tex.,) to the plan followed comments Friday by chief Senate committee counsel Arthur Liman that the late CIA Director William Casey was attempting to promote "a CIA outside of the CIA" to carry out covert policy.
And the committee did go into executive session at various points. In his questioning, Brooks was referring to a few articles like the Miami Harald piece of July 5, 1987 by Alfonso Chardy, which I didn't find until much later:
Some of President Reagan's top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded.
Investigators believe that the advisers' activities extended well beyond the secret arms sales to Iran and aid to the contras now under investigation.
Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. [Text is here].
You might have watched the hearings but not remember any of this -- that's probably because most of the media wrote pieces like the liberal Mary McGrory in the Washington Post quoting Inouye shortly thereafter: "We have a job to remind people of the Constitution and what it stands for."
In fact, just a few days after the Brooks-Inouye exchange, much of Congress went on to Philadelphia for the 200th Anniversary of the Constitution that they were in the process of undermining. ABC reported on July 16:
Two hundred years ago today in Philadelphia the Constitutional convention designed what we now call the Congress of the United States. And for the occasion a delegation from Congress rode a special train to Philadelphia for a ceremony in the same room where the Constitution was written.
The ABC piece quoted Lee Hamilton: "The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. I do not see how your attitude can be reconciled with the Constitution of the United States." If the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights are dead, their death did not just happen during one administration or by one political party. It was indicated on national TV by a few brave representatives like Jack Brooks and Henry Gonzalez, written about by some independently minded journalists. And the establishment of both the Democratic and Republican parties with the big media outlets covered it up -- while celebrating the Constitution they were killing.
Many of Sam Husseini's writings are at husseini.org.
17 Comments so far
Show AllI didn't watch the Iran-Contra hearings . . .
I presumed that what had happened was wrong and that Oliver North and the administration would be held accountable.
I was shocked to find that North became a national hero!!!
And I regret not watching the hearings at the time -- I would have woken up earlier.
Of course, since then these "hearings" and their deceptions are much clearer -- 9/11 just another example of the farce that they are.
Thanks for all the info/links --
And -- I agree -- no where was the American "press" properly informing the public and alerting them to the truth of what was happening in America -- !!!!
We should be grateful to Sam Husseini for reminding us about this sickening episode in our history about which we know so little. As he points out, it was done pretty much in public view and there is a documented record of the Inouye/Hamilton sell-out of the U.S. Constitution - treason and malfeasance in all but name.
We should look again at National Security Directive No 1. (NSD #1), signed by the mad nuclear terrorist Harry S. Truman in 1947 that created the National Security Agency, CIA and much of the rest of the National Security State
shadow government that Reagan refined during his reign.
A presidential executive order, not legislation, it was created at the height of the Cold War to fend off "communism" and ensure the nuclear supremacy of the US, as the National Security State lurched forward toward global domination of resources, labor and capital - with alot of success.
And we should do this quickly, before this key document is buried with hundreds of other presidential directives and orders under a Top Secret rubber stamp. We should do this to reclaim our right to be called human beings.
As a resident of Texas, I am deeply aware that we no longer have decent elected officials, like Jack Brooks and Henry Gonzalez, who executed their Constitutional responsibilities to represent their constituents and all citizens and residents of the US.
We must do this ourselves. We're pretty much on our own here.
Yep, thank you all you greedy, conscripted, coked-out yuppies of the 1980s for re-electing Raygun, keeping HW at the helm, for delivering Clinton.
Trivia:
Did you know Lee Hamilton was a potential VP for 1992?
The same Lee Hamilton who oversaw the "October Surprise" investigations?!
OMG! no, could it really be true?
oh, never mind
The Constitution, like everything else in America, is for sale or lease. We the people have been sold out to we the corporations.
Hoa binh
There's the rub. The fine work of people like Sam Husseini and the people that Rich M names is out there and has been out there. As much as the main stream media is bought off and/or co-opted, progressive academics, journalists and activists get to the truth and find ways to publish and distribute it.
The funny thing about the National Security State and secrecy is that who they are and what they do is not all that secret.
People just don't seem to care enough to do anything about it: The general refrain is: oh, that's boring, oh, thats politics, oh that's communism...blah, blah, blah.
Most people are not particularly interested in democracy, the state of the world, or anything else unless it impinges on their personal wealth and comfort. And even in this impinging age, when the fragile situation of human life itself has become pretty apparent, organizing for change is...well, difficult - to put it mildly.
Personally I attribute it, in the US, to having pretty much surrendered as a society to the Red Scare and all that was attached to it. The fear-mongering set the stage, taking away our critical thought capacity and even our ability to feel solidarity with others (empathy, love). We'd already been pretty distorted as a nation by the genocide against the original peoples, slavery and apartheid.
But whatever the causes, the last clean fact is: we have to figure out how to organize successfully for change in so many arenas. We don't lack information. We're drowning in information.
We lack the capacity to effectively communicate and act collectively in our own interests. Hell, bugs have figured that out better than us.
I have been throughly disgusted with Lee Hamilton ever since he chaired the 9-11 Commission and published it's "full of holes and lies" whitewash report.
Then I discovered Hamilton was on the Iraq Study Group with Carlyle's James Baker (who was the former Reagan's campaign manager, Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Treasury, Bush I's Secretary of State, and Son of Bush's chief counsel in Bush vs. Gore).
A couple of weeks ago I discovered that Hamilton was chair of the committee that "investigated" the charges of an October Surprise, the effort of the Reagan campaign to subvert the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter prior to the election to prevent the Iranian hostages from being released. He gave Reagan a two thumbs up. This was in 1991.
Now comes this article, which suggests Hamilton was also involved in covering up Iran Contra.
Lee Hamilton, a traitor for all seasons I guess....
Contract Telephone # 202-456-1111 and take a moment to ask that President George W. Bush resign the office of the President of the United States effective immediately
Did any of you notice how quickly the 9/11 Report was written? The Report is eminently flawed, but I was surprised how quickly it was written and published.
my my claudius:
you be thinking this is all a script
including the bumbling character of
the boy george..
ken
Methinks that they are beginning to wear out their welcome. If the Dems refuse to solve the problems within the system, the solution will emerge from without.
I was in the mainstream media, I worked as a reporter for a big east coast paper, and I can say from my own frustrating, sometimes enraging, experience, that reporters are exposed to coercion everyday they come to work. It is mandatory we write from a conventional big-business-government line of attack. We also spend a lot of our energy splashing pages full of personal tragedies that evoke strong emotion but, as written, have little or no value to the population as a whole. When I covered something of importance to people, I tried to write what was true. But my story would come back from an editor as a joke, basically. And I would get a feeling of being tacitly scoffed at by the higher ups and some of my ambitious colleagues.
God knows this country has some big problems here at home. We are losing rights while we sleep. Our world view (and the way we think of our own individual lives) is controlled by corporate advertising and media companies that consistently, blatantly, lie and manipulate everyone.
It is frightening to me to think of a culture that accepts the idea that there really is no truth, and can absorb lies as easily as we seem to be capable of today. I have always admired the ethic of trying to get to the bottom of things. But when lies become so prevalent that whole histories are built upon them, what is at the bottom of that? Is this the kind of culture we want for our children?
There is no oversight and a lot of threat that corporations and government in collusion, without accountability, will indeed cause us a lot more harm in the upcoming decade, unless things change.
The pardon of Nixon stopped the criminal investigation that would have nailed future members of Bu$h the inferior's administration.
The same is true of Iran - Contra and other scandals. These guys keep perfecting their subversion of the constitution.
One of these times the criminals must be caught, prosecuted, and punished to stop the educational cycle of each generation of traitors training the next.
bush has no plans to resign...
to the contrary, he has plans to stay in office EVEN PAST THE 2008 ELECTIONS.
GOOGLE: NSPD 51
TJ What you say is right-on. Can you say Illuminati?
This kind of stuff pretty much tars and feathers all your leaders as all part of the one bunch. Could that be?
I recall being concerned if not alarmed by the Iran-Contra scandal. The hearings at least caused a stir. How quickly we all forget. But, you must recall George Senior was in charge by that time and in all his grooming and power maneuvring throughout his whole career, who better to be behind the scenes on Reagan's side. I am a bit unclear on all details. Was it Bush Sr. that pardoned Oli? He was convicted, I believe, and then granted pardon by somebody. Note to self: Must do more research. Please forgive my foggy details.