CIA, DIA, FBI—and 50 More!

After reading the Rockefeller Commission report, Senator Frank Church declared, “This is just the tip of an iceberg.” A little later it looked like the tip of a glacier. From December 22, 1974, when Seymour Hersh’s first dispatch on “Massive Illegal CIA Operations” appeared in the New York Times, we have been swamped with more “classified” information than anyone can assimilate. A media’s worth of the stuff every day, plus weekly and monthly supplements, quarterly reactions, revelations, confessions; horror upon horror.

I. F. Stone’s call for liquidation of the CIA surprised no one. Eyebrows were lifted, however, at least mine were, when Tom Braden took the same positi...