jonrappoport | —In 1947, the president of the United States, Harry Truman, decided:
I’m going to create a snake and call it the CIA. Its watchword will be
secrecy. It will collect secrets of our enemies and hold them secret
and report the secrets to the president, who will decide what to do. Of
course, the snake will remain under the president’s control. Its
entire personality will be based on deception, but it will remain loyal
to the president. No problem. Sure.
I’m thankful for Charles Hollander’s challenging piece on Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49: “Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49.”
Hollander offers vital reminders of the war between two parts of the Executive Branch: the presidency and the CIA.
“Implicit in Pynchon’s fiction is the view that events in recent
American history have led to a virtual constitutional crisis, a
challenge to the supremacy of the presidency by the intelligence
community.”
“In a very short time, two presidents, a Republican and a Democrat, ran
afoul of the CIA. The result amounted to a constitutional crisis, a
change in our actual form of government without benefit of a duly
ratified constitutional amendment. The crisis is reminiscent of that
period in Roman history when the Praetorian Guard could sell the office
of Emperor to the highest bidder and then, after a time, assassinate him
and have a new auction. To this day, the president has never again
challenged the CIA, though the agency has made its share of egregious
errors. With the selection of former CIA director George H.W. Bush, the
presidency and the CIA effectively merged…”
