The following clip may be for you if you were at all surprised that the end of the Bush W. administration did not bring about an end to the Bush wars, or the Bush war shenanigans, or Gitmo, or that the Obama presidency has shown less than zero appetite for pursuing and prosecuting Bush officials who lied, deceived, profiteered, and engaged in such war crimes as unprovoked war, attacks on civilians, use of banned weapons, torture, and illegal detention, or that two resounding Democratic presidential victories still find America hip-deep and drone-high in dirty undeclared wars, or that in a Washington DC where every player and every entity supposedly clings tenaciously to its every power and perogative, Congress shows not even tepid interest in asserting its sole legal right to make war, or that in these times of tough austerity talk, the defense budget remains sacrosanct, the REAL third rail of US politics.

Even if you are not surprised by any of the above, you should probably watch this fascinating period-piece from the dusty archives of access television (the proto-podcast medium). It was recorded shortly after the election of George H. W. Bush in 1988 and opens with the question, ‘how did a man so steeped in the scandals of the Reagan period and so caked in dirt and blood from his time in the CIA, manage to eke out a presidential victory?’

I worked for [Bush], I witnessed personally his supervising the CIA’s covering up of illegal activity at the end of the Angola operation, in early 1976. And he was actually fending off a hostile Congress, instead of investigating and firing the perpetrators of crimes, he was fending off the FBI and the Congress, on at least three or four major CIA criminal activities.

The show was broadcast at a time when the USSR had already begun its dramatic implosion. Within eight months, Solidarity would win power in Poland, and the whole of the East Bloc would teeter and collapse. Talk would soon turn to the ‘peace dividend’, the massive economic gains that western powers would enjoy now that the Cold War was over. Defense, intelligence and security budgets could be cut back, and Eastern European markets would open up. Google ‘peace dividend’ today, and you won’t find much. (Talk would also turn to the inevitable break-down of communist China, but that didn’t happen either.)

Via Democratic Underground

The program is Alternative Views which broadcast out of Austin Community Television from 1978 to 1998, often on little budget (watch the co-host leap up to man a camera to get the show rolling, then yell out his questions or comments from the far side of the lens). The guest is John Stockwell who served thirteen years in the CIA, in Congo, Vietnam, Angola, before resigning in 1976. His book, In Search of Enemies (1978) caused the agency to sue him, dropping the case only after he was bankrupted.

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