Rationale for Secrecy and Lawlessness: The Cold War is “A Different Kind of War”
The Doolittle Commission, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower to examine the CIA, delivered its “Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency” on this day.
The report made the startling argument that the anti-Communist Cold War was a “different kind of war,” meaning different than conventional wars such as World War II. This rationale justified allowing the CIA to use secrecy, lawless actions and other tactics that were not otherwise permissible in war or diplomacy.
The Doolittle Report declared that “It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. . . . Long-standing American concepts of “fair play” do not apply.”
The same rationale was used by the George W. Bush administration in the War on Terror, especially the “torture memos” written by John Yoo on August 1, 2002, to justify extraordinary claims of presidential power, secrecy, and torture.
Read the Doolittle Report: http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/45/doolittle_report.pdf
Learn more: Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008)
Read about the CIA’s secret funding of the National Student Association: Karen Paget, Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism (2015)
Read the biography of the CIA’s notorious spymaster, James Jesus Angleton: Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (2017)