THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

UNTIL WE FACE THE SIMPLE CAUSE, THE SITUATION WILL GET WORSE | 2001-09-11

When the KGB briefly opened its files right after the fall of the Soviet Union, those who looked at them were shocked to discover the enormous extent of Soviet penetration into the US Government since the 1930s. It was worse than even McCarthy had thought!

Naturally the liberal media bureaucracy minimized this news. Respectable conservatives, who are chosen by the same bureaucracy, hardly mentioned it either.

Nobody spent many resources looking at those files while they were open. Neither the big media nor the US intelligence community really wanted to open that can of worms. So when the KGB closed its files, it was clear that only a tiny percentage of their American operations had been uncovered.

For the KGB and other enemy agencies, a static bureaucracy like that in America's CIA and FBI is a sitting target. Over a period of seventy years, it took little talent to penetrate it wherever one wanted to. They got one Communist sympathizer in, and he got others in.

Any entrenched bureaucracy will be as riddled with informers as an unguarded computer is with viruses. These security failures are easily explained. But it is an explanation no paid security expert would dare make public.

So our security bureaucracy is not only inefficient. It also is open to infiltration.

And please take note: these are only two of the MANY obvious realities that those who work for our security bureaucracy must overlook if they want to keep their jobs.

No security professional, in or out of the government, is going to point out this obvious fundamental problem. If he did, he would never get paid to do anything in that area again.

No bureaucracy, be it security or media or education or military, is going to fund a serious critic.

This is not a plot. It's just the obvious result of letting bureaucracy go its own way.

We must stop promoting and listening to people because they have degrees or years in office or the right crowd approves of them. That is why they are allowed, even encouraged, to fail.

Only a complete intellectual revolt against all entrenched bureaucracies, a root-and-branch house cleaning, can deal with the real problems America faces.

Make them give us real solutions or get rid of them. Until we do that, things will get worse.