Clandestine Operations Quotes
36 days later, September 11, he did strike, and at the World Trade Center. The memo was kept secret by the Bush administration until public pressure as a result of the 9-11 Commission hearings forced the declassification and release. At that point it became clear that there was no reason that the memo could not have been released much earlier except that it was embarrassing.
The Illuminati was a secret society. At the time, anyone who differed with the Church on issues of philosophy, ethics or religion could be tortured and burned at the stake, and anyone who criticized the Monarchy could be tortured and hung or beheaded. The result was the concept of a secret society of which the Illuminati was one. The last sentence, once it became known generally, made established monarchies and their governments very suspicious of all literary societies. To this day, literary societies are suspect in most countries as a hotbed of anti-governmetn activity, if not by the Illuminati then by some other clandestine groups. In the first half of the 20th century in America, the Communist Party infiltrated several literary societies.
The United States is the only nation that overtly defines covert activity in its legal system. It makes these very subtle distinctions which seemed to many intelligence leaders like Lowenthal a distinction without much of a difference and an attempt by our democracy to make moral and legal distinctions so the dirty parts of the business of espionage seems consistent with an open democracy.
Hunt was in operational charge of the “Plumbers” and the illegal Watergate conspiracy, burglary and cover-up operations. He had denied participating in illegal activities, but admitted to “clandestine” activities which were against the law such as breaking into offices and stealing the contents. His “logic” was that if the President authorized something, it could not be against the law. The courts of course disagreed, and Hunt with most of the other Watergate Conspirators was convicted. Hunt’s argument was resurrected during the George W. Bush administration, when the Vice President and a few Bush appointed lawyers in the government took the position that torture of criminal suspects or wartime adversaries which was against the law, could be legally used if the President authorized it. They pointed out that Abraham Lincoln acted without authority of law on several occasions in the crises of the Civil War. However, Lincoln in all cases, went to Congress to obtain the authorization. The Bush people were surreptitious about their law breaking and publicly insisted that the did NOT brak the law, If it were not for leaks to the press, it would not have been known that the administration was breaking the law.
