Foreign Policy
by Kelly Wright; (December 30, 2024)
In 1976, Jimmy Carter campaigned to hold the CIA accountable. His first nominee for CIA director was scuttled by no less than Joe Biden — whose political career is aligned with intelligence agencies. Carter had to soften his stance. Will Trump, facing the same entrenched forces, do the same?
I got started in politics in 1976 as a 13 year old boy enthusiastic with the Carter / Mondale ticket. Fascinated with foreign policy I grew up to a career working for the US government overseas.
I was a politically precocious child. Disillusioned with Nixon's corruption and Ford's pardon, Jimmy Carter’s promise was compelling.
I was the Super volunteer on his campaign. (Note the Secret Service clearance pin in the picture of myself with Carter.) Back then, before email or even fax machines, there was a lot for a kid to do on a campaign. It was a different time; when parents would let their kids take the bus from Pioneer Square to Mercer Island at 11:00 at night — alone!
I was aware of the Church Commission and particularly attracted to Carter's dedication with installing human rights at the center of our foreign policy. Carter and Mondale openly campaigned on reigning in the excesses of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
I also read everything I could about the Kennedy assassination and was excited about Carter's cabinet nomination of Ted Sorensen to head the CIA. Sorensen was one of JFK’s closest confidants who also served as his speech writer.
In an April, 2021 article in The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill writes about how Sorenson’s 1977 nomination was scuttled by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Scahill writes, “the national security establishment in Washington was apoplectic” over Sorenson’s potentially leading the CIA.
Enter a young Senator Joe Biden, who served on the committee. Biden was at first supportive to Carter’s pick, but eventually killed Sorenson’s nomination. Scahill writes, “Biden went out of his way to dig up an episode from Sorenson’s past that would serve as a red flag against his confirmation”. Biden had his staff scour documents and Sorensen’s books. There were also, “allegations that Sorensen was a pacifist who dodged the Korean War draft”.
Carter's withdrawl of Sorenson's nomination shows how Democrat Biden ran errands for the CIA — to the point of damaging a reform-minded Democratic president. The senator established himself as a neoconservative early on — values expressed with his vice presidency and senescent term in the White House. His orientation ultimately manifested various proxy wars and color revolutions — leaving office with a world burning.
Scahill cites a March 1977 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report titled The Carter Devolution on the CIA. It’s a chronology of how the president dealt with the revelation of a secret CIA operation involving the payment of millions of dollars to King Hussein of Jordan.
“CIA officials who viewed the payments as ‘bribes’ reported the program to the Intelligence Oversight Board established by President Ford to review the legality and propriety of CIA operations. The Board determined that the payments, amounting to $750,000 in 1976, were ‘improper’ and reported the matter to President Ford. The President took no action.”
The ACLU report is critical of Carter’s handling of the affair and how he was reneging his campaign promise to keep the agency accountable. President Carter became aware of the payments and called them, “distressing’. Soon after, the president was careful not to comment in detail saying, “It can be extremely damaging to our relationship with other nations, to the potential security of our country even in peacetime, for these kinds of operations which are legitimate and proper to be revealed.”
Once elected, and exposed to institutional barriers, Carter was less idealistic about addressing the CIA’s operations. This after Senator Biden succesfully led the effort to take down a CIA reformer (who was connected to JFK!). The national security establishment in Washington was apoplectic in 1977 over Sorenson — and they’re squirming today over Trump 2.0.
Get ready for nomination spectacles. At least live Senate hearings are unfiltered and, like symptoms of apoplexy, the sick face of US foreign policy run amok should be plain to see up on the dais. It's up to how the nominees fire back.
Trump’s first term had its share of Neocons, and like Carter did in ’77, Trump 2.0 could let the swamp float happily in its muck. Hopefully, under Trump 2.0, we could eventually find out about the CIA and other alphabet soup of foreign policy agencies and NGOs. Did these bureaus continue the practice of improper payments / bribes in the course of various international projects? Who got paid, where and how much?
Kelly Wright is a foreign policy specialist with 20 years of experience in Diplomacy, Development and Defense, working directly for the US government as well as numerous NGOs and other implementing partners in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
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