Learning always an adventure
Contributing writer
Since I am totally immersed in summer school classes, thinking of something else to write about proved impossible. Therefore, here are my reactions to the summer school experience.
Needless to say, I am the old woman on campus, although there is a man my age in one of my classes. Amazing! The college "kids" I room with and see around campus are a good bunch though. They are not only friendly as one human being to another, but also ready to help me with some of the things my generation finds difficult, like finding things on the Internet.
Right now I'm taking two classes, Historians as Detectives and National Security and Intelligence Policies. The first is fascinating to me. Of course, when I told a colleague we would be reading about Richard III and whether or not he murdered his nephews to gain the throne of England, she asked me when all this happened. When I told her it was about 500 years ago, she replied, "Then who cares?" I hate to think how she'd react to the news that we are also examining the alleged murder of King Tutankhamen about 3000 years ago. Actually what we are really studying is historians' methods of examining evidence to try to determine what actually happened at any period. It can truly be interesting; trust me.
I'm less excited about the other class, since I am buried in more reading than I can possibly get done. In trying to get six hours credit in three weeks, I think I bit off more than someone my age can chew. I used to be able to study until 2 or 3 a.m. if necessary, but now I can only read until I nod off and the book falls on the floor, usually about 10:30 or 11.
Much of the reading is pretty dull, but occasionally I run across something interesting. We were assigned a few chapters from Pat M. Holt's Secret Intelligence and Public Policy, which gave one furiously to think. He examines the dilemma of secret intelligence agencies in a democracy. The salient characteristic of a democracy is that the government is held accountable to the people. However, by its very nature intelligence must be collected, analyzed and acted upon in secret. Therefore agencies like the CIA are accountable to no one. A President can use such resources to pursue policies he knows are not approved by the public or their elected representatives, even (as in the Iran-Contra affair) policies forbidden by Congress.
One of the pioneers in the intelligence field was Herbert O. Yardley, who started as a code clerk for the State Department in 1912. Later he was assigned to a secret group called the Black Chamber, where he and his staff decoded and deciphered over 45,000 telegrams from 19 countries in a twelve-year period. When he tried to impress Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson by sending him the texts of an important series of intercepted messages, Stimson, shocked that such an activity was going on in peace time, disbanded the Black Chamber. "Gentlemen," said Stimson, "do not read each other's mail." We've come a long way since then.
Of course, there is no going back to Stimson's day. For establishing our foreign policy, sometimes for our very survival, we have to know the perils we are dealing with. It would be impossible to gather such intelligence openly, but the secrecy is out of sync with our democratic ideals. If the government is doing a lousy job of keeping up a highway system or maintaining our parks, people will notice and protest to the department responsible. Sooner or later, something will be done about it. If the intelligence community does a poor job, we may pay a big price in bad policy decisions, but we have no way to protest, or even to know there is a problem, until it is too late.
Although Harry Truman established the Central Intelligence Agency, he said 20 years later that he had made a mistake. He went on to say, "Those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to
Although I have great respect for Truman's insights, I don't see how we can actually disband the CIA, at least without its intelligence functions being performed by somebody else. I'm not sure we need to have a dozen or more entities in the intelligence business, as we do now. But intelligence is a necessary function, and secrecy is equally necessary.
Holt has no good answer to the dilemma of reconciling secrecy with accountability, and neither do I. However, I think it is important for us to recognize the dangers and work toward a solution.
You may be wondering why I am going to school in my old age. My teaching certificate is expiring, and I want to get recertified, since I will go on substitute teaching as long as I am able. I haven't been getting enough calls to begin to pay for tuition and other expenses, so I can't really justify it as a financial decision. Years ago I saw a cartoon in which one mother says to another, "I want my Doris to go to college, so she'll have something interesting to think about while she is washing dishes." I guess that reason is as good as any, even at my age.
