By Semour M. Hersh

What the Pentagon can now do in secret

Posted 2005-01-17

George W. Bush’s reelection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control-against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism-during his second term. The CIA will continue t be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

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