It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job;

[RKP5637]

it's a depression when you lose yours.

Harry S Truman, April 13, 1958

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950

[struggle4progress]

1. Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role To Intelligence (Washington Post | December 22, 1963 - page A11)

... I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility ...

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda ...

But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%20article.html

[RKP5637]

2. Well said and so highly appropriate then and now!!! n/t

[lib2DaBone]

3. Our leaders backin the 50's were prescient....

..the CIA is now out-of-control

[PETRUS]

4. Gee, how far we've come. K&R nt