/b/ - Random

>implying they're creative enough or competent enough for that
>implying there's someone driving the bus

>>9540 (OP) 
Nothing came of mkultra doebeit

>>9542
I came.

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>>9542
I have heard the claim on the Internet that when the CIA and NSA found out about the investigation the Church Commission back in 1975, they destroyed over 99% of the relevant records.  I don't know the truth of the matter but given what the Church Commission was able to reveal, it would not surprise me.  For that matter, it's a little surprising that the CIA didn't just arrange for Frank Church to have a heart attack the day before the hearings were scheduled to start, given all the other dirty business they and the other three-letter agencies were shown to have gotten up to.

Also, what bothers some people about the revelations is that the CIA was indeed shown to have assassinated people.  I am not greatly bothered by this.  They are, or at least back when cars had tailfins, they were the premier intelligence agency of a nuclear superpower.  If arranging a fatal accident for some hostile Third World dictator prevents a war I cannot really make a coherent argument against it.  What bothers me more is the poison cigars for Castro and all the other pants-on-head retarded, utter fucking slapstick buffoonery, clown show they were running.  If they are going to skulk about in the dead of night and kill inconvenient people, can't they do it right?  As Lyndon Johnson said to White House staffers when he kept beating them at poker, "Cain't any o' you people play this goddamned game?"  If all of civilization was dependent upon them to hold it together, we are very, very fortunate that the Russians seem to be even less competent.

Also, Lyndon Johnson had J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI opening and reading lots and lots and LOTS of people's private mail, including people like William F. Buckley.  That's one of the things the Church Commission found that nobody talks about now.  Thin-skinned grifter that he was, LBJ had the FBI spying on half the reporters at big national newspapers and TV networks, and three quarters of Congress, and also every celebrity or intellectual who ever said anything mean about him, from William F. Buckley to Timothy Leary.  Left, right, center, it didn't matter, if you ever had anything to say that LBJ didn't like, that was reaching a significant audience in a world before the Internet, then he had the FBI reading your mail, wiretapping your phones, following you around and making notes on your daily schedule.  It didn't start with LBJ, either.

It has been fashionable for a little while now to accuse this or that American politician of being a wannabee dictator and abusing his powers.  Sometimes the accusations are purely spurious, purely a tactic, but sometimes not.  Only, holy shit, where have these people been for the past century?  None of this is new.  Are they yearning for the good ol' days when good ol' Nixon and good ol' LBJ would never have the government spy on people who did nothing wrong?   This shit was going on before you were born.  This shit was going on before your parents were born, and maybe your grandparents.  It's all so tiresome.

Sounds implausible, but hurr soyjak retard comedians spouting unfalsifiable populist dreck without ever being held accountable for it is actually the modern version of Jester's Privilege so this is okay and Lindy and good actually hurr hurr hurrr hurr durr hurrrr durrr hurrrr hurrrrrr hurrrr

>>9544
Fun fact: the "Nixon had people killed" meme every late night talk show comedian used for 20+ years, the punchline of every third or fourth sketch on Saturday Night Live for decades, got really popular and widespread because no one anywhere was actually afraid of Richard Nixon.

Frank Church only dared to bring up LBJ's very real, very tangible, very well documented abuses of power because Lyndon Johnson died in 1973.  Everybody in Washington was absolutely terrified of Lyndon Johnson.  His spiteful temperament, thin skin, and the contempt with which he regarded the law were very well known.  His reach was long and displeasing him could and did end careers. It could also get you audited by the IRS. Blackmail was too subtle and undignified for ol' LBJ. He was not above having the FBI, and you may recall that he had J. Edgar Hoover in his pocket, collate the data from all those illegal wiretap records and illegal dossiers and go on a legal fishing expedition.  LBJ really liked fear.  And because he controlled the System he had no fear of it.

Nixon didn't have anyone or anything much in his pocket. Everyone knew it and nobody was afraid of him.  This is why he and his whole administration got dragged through one legal knothole after another.  The whole Watergate scandal stems from a 1972 incident in which G. Gordon Liddy, then a relatively minor FBI functionary, led an unofficial dirty-tricks team that bugged the rooms at the Watergate Hotel being used by a number of high-ranking Democratic Party officials during that year's Democratic Convention. They didn't do a very good job, because the bugs were found.  Nixon was accused of giving the orders, then pressuring the Justice Department to drop the matter, which he denied.

This is the kind of thing Lyndon Johnson spent six years doing a dozen times every day before breakfast, plus ordering spurious prosecutions for purposes of political intimidation, along with ordering the literal, actual assassinations of a number of foreign nationals.  Nixon's name became common anathema, like the names of Boycott and Lynch.  But all the brave crusading reporters and idealistic young new politicians were too chickenshit, too afraid of LBJ to bring any of this up, even after he left office, until he was safely dead, and even then they spoke only briefly, in hushed tones.  Doesn't that activate your almonds?  Doesn't that make you go "hmmm?"