Commentaries'
Patrick Gray, R.C.
By GARY WILLS
L. Patrick Gay has a funny idea of the
FBI’s mission. During the last
presidential campaign, he admittedly
gave speeches in areas where the election
might be close. He admittedly did this at
the request of Nixon reelection workers.
They said this did not constitute a political
act, since he only did it to “carry the FBI’s
message to the people.’’ If election
workers thought it might help the cam
paign, that was their problem (or
blessing); he would not “take up a cudgel
for Richard Nixon” — to quote his own
testimony from last week’s confirmation
hearings.
Well, how did he carry the FBI’s
message to the people? Senators quoted
from one such speech, in which he praised
the expansion of the GNP, and said the
country is “on the threshold of the greatest
growth in our history.” Gray could only
defend that assertion by saying love and
praise for America is part of the FBI
“message.”
That is one of those defenses more
damaging than the accusation itself. If the
FBI is in the business of puffing American
economic might and propagandizing the
country’s own citizens, it is more
dangerously full of a sense of mission than
we had feared.
Some of Gray’s other responses were
just as unreassuring. Asked why he had
not followed up this or that lead in the
Watergate case, he said he had not been
asked to. Even when an accusation had
been made, he did not check it out, because
“No one sent any recommendation to me.”
I thought it was the FBI’s job to in
vestigate — i.e., to find out things. How
can it find out what is there to be
examined, when it must wait for a
recommendation to examine it? This
daintiness where the White House is
involved is not paralleled in the FBI’s
treatment of the press or of the anti-war
movement.
There is another aspect of Gray’s
nomination that is disturbing — his
religion. This is a touchy matter. One does
not want to disqualify a man on the
grounds of his religious belief. On the other
hand, men should not be favored on those
grounds, either; they should not be con
sidered super-qualified because of their
faith. J. Edgar Hoover, though not himself
a Catholic, heavily favored them in his
employment practices, especially during
the heat of the Cold War.
There is a disproportionate number of
Catholics not only in the FBI, but in other
security and military agencies in
America. This has led to a certain
chumminess between church and secular
officials. I gave one instance of this in my
book, “Nixon Agonistes,” telling how a
priest slipped secret FBI information to
Richard Nixon during the Hiss trial. That
episode tends to undermine the Nixon
administration’s shocked state of virtue
when it finds “leaks” made to Jack An
derson or the New York “Times.” It also
puts in a new light Nixon’s nomination of
his good old Catholic friend, Pat Gray, to
succeed Mr. Hoover.
There have been recent cases of
prosecutorial enthusiasm uniting church
and state authorities — as when the
chancery of the Baltimore Archdiocese
handed over the most intimate letters in its
files to agents trying to indict and convict
anti-war priests. Agentswhoaregraduate«
of Catholic colleges can be very winning
when they go back to their old priest
friends for some “patriotic” assistance.
It was natural, I suppose, to put up a
Catholic as Hoover’s successor. Only “the
real thing" can approach Hoover’s own
admiration for the Church’s hard line on
things like communism. But that is just the
trouble. It was too natural — an ap
pointment where religion seemed to
“overqualify’’ a man. It should not, in this
case, compensate for the disqualifications
that Gray has manifested on other grounds
entirely.
I, as a Catholic, am not happy at the
prospect of continuing the use of Catholics
as spies upon their co-religionists. I resent
this, not for the harm it does the nation
(though it does some of that), but for the
harm it has done to the Church.
Money for North Vietnam ?
By William F. Buckley, Jr.
There are mixed feelings, to say the
least, concerning the proposed economic
aid to North Vietnam by the United States.
Hanoi loosely calls it “reparations,”
thereby giving aid and comfort to those in
this country, who, viewing it as such, are
opposed to it. Reparations after all signify
one of two things: either the acceptance of
a moral debt; or, in the absence of a
morally completed formula, the ac
ceptance of defeat. A country can pay
reparations — as it is universally hoped
Israel will do to Libya, in the case of the
destroyed airliner, no final military point
having been proven. France, after 1870,
paid over huge reparations to the Kaiser’s
Germany in simple recognition of France
having lost the war.
Those in America who are sensitive to
the implications of our paying reparations
are quite rightly sensitive to the symbolic
meaning that might be inferred by the
transfer of money to North Vietnam. We
do not by any means concede any moral
obligation to North Vietnam and we do not
by any means concede a military defeat by
North Vietnam.
So what is the meaning of a proposed
economic aid to North Vietnam? In a
curious way, it would have been easier to
swallow having decisively beaten North
Vietnam. Under such circumstances it
might have been accepted as work-a-day
charity by the victor for the vanquished
such as was shown by the U.S. a
generation ago towards Germany, Italy,
and Japan.
But we find ourselves now in the
equivocal position: we are a power neither
humiliated morally, nor defeated by the
enemy. Nor vanquisher of the enemy and
yet, they talk routinely about giving North
Vietnam $2 or $3 billion, a huge per capita
outlay, and huge in its potential im
plications.
There are those whose opposition is
based primarily on the deteriorated
balance of payments — we cannot, they
thunder, increase our economic debt
abroad. This argument, though
statistically useful, is defecated, ami wiii
not carry the weight of the argument in a
controversy in which passions are the
primary tender. Those who favor aid to
North Vietnam have got to make the point
that we are investing via that aid in a
stability which is otherwise far less easy to
attain, and here is where a little Yankee
ingenuity is in order.
There must be a dozen and a half ways of
infusing money into North Vietnam of a
sort that will not assist it in remounting its
war of aggression.
Obviously the $2 billion in aid should be
channelled towards the construction of
facilities in North Vietnam which are
poof!-vulnerable in the event of North
Vietnamese treachery. For instance, vast
new facilities for Haiphong Harbor
combined with a pledge not to put anti
aircraft installations within X number of
miles of such installations: this is merely
suggestive.
And above all, we should call on China
and the Soviet Union to contribute equally
not only in North Vietnam but in South
Vietnam. Granted the likelihood of success
particularly in South Vietnam is slight,
still, the cogency of the suggestion could
very well put the Russian and the Chinese
aggressors on a significant defensive, se?
that is worth a very great deal. We shd^^j
not let the subject go in the United Natiofflr
We should keep it alive through speeches
by our diplomats around the world, at
meetings of the World Bank —
everywhere.
Finally, on the moral problem: ought
one to help restore the economy of an
aggressive nation, my feeling is that the
pragmatic point is the principal one to
make: Do we advance the cause of peace
and stability by doing so? The business of
making fine entries in the moral ledger is a
very important thing to do — one which
should occupy and preoccupy our
philosophers. But at best the dialectic
between the moral and the practical is
vaguely harmonious, and in the current
situation, we must proceed with sU^t.
reference to the real objective.
Letters
Blasphemy
Tom Mascott, and h<s open blasphemy of
religion, God, Jesus, the Second Coming,
and the faith of Christ’s followers (Com
mentaries, March 2) provoked me to the
point that I must bother to reply to him and
his illusionary camp of atheists.
Addressing himself to what he termed
the “right” question, . . necessity to
confront the problems which beset us with
real fervor, not the escapist faddism of a
cultist ideology,” Mascott never bothered
to explain how he would deal with these
problems, but instead devoted the
remaining assault to exploiting those who
find Jesus as the answer.
I cannot allow Mascott to delude my
thinking to the level of another shallow
entry in the explanation of life contest. His
idea of rational reality takes mi the same
one-dimensional view that he attributes to
followers of Christ whom he so readily
condemns. He seems to suffer from a
genuine inability to see matters from
another person’s viewpoint and com
pensates for this by lashing out at anyone
whose ideals differ from his own. In effect,
his own belief is merely a rebellious
reaction to the beliefs of others.
Nearly every major religion I can think
of faces the coming of death and its con
sequences to each man. Mascott fails to
deal with death logically and again finds
his sanctuary in disposing of the beliefs of
others. “How like a simple fairy tale their
whole myth is,” he muses. Dealing with
reality on a rational level requires a man
to face every stage of his life, not ex
cluding the reality and consequences of
death.
The absence of this basic truth from
Mascott’s statement is unfortunate. In
closing, Mr. Mascott, I must say how like a
tragedy your whole life must be.
Lynn Keesecker
Forever
Not being an atheist but a Bible
believing Christian I like to react on Tom
Mascott’s commentary in the Emerald of
March 2, 1973.
The only reason that I write is that I
want him and other people to know that he
is wrong. At the same time though I realize
that I can not convince him or anybody
else of this, as whether you believe in God
or not depends on faith and that is
something only He can give.
What I am disappointed about is that
Tom does not go into objectively ex
plaining why atheism “makes more
sense”. He basically only attacks
Christianity by telling me what is wrong
with it. He does not give me any “scientific
evidence” for the fact that atheism is
right. The evolution theory is, the word
says it, a theory and not a truth.
It is kind of funny to read that Tom
subjectively feels that “it is the necessity
for modern man to confront the problems
which beset us with real fervor, not the
escapist faddism of a cultist ideology”. I
happen to agree with him because
Christianity is not an ideology in that it is
based on facts and truths. It gives a person
the necessary vision to really confront the
problems.
If somebody asks me to prove that there
is a God, I like to return: “Why don’t you
prove that there isn’t a God.” Whereas
nobody ever has been able to give me that
proof (Tom neither), I have all evidence
that He does exist not only in that I can
read His infallible Word (the Bible) in
which he clearly explains to me how I am
supposed to live in order to be the person
that does “not close his door (and mind) to
the real world, which we all must function
in as usefully as possible” (to use Tom’s
words) but also through the experience of
His daily presence in my life.
I regret that the commentary is not
more than an emotional attack. How
otherwise can I explain the “abortion” of
the Lord’s Prayer? It seems to me that it is
not based on any real knowledge about
either Christianity, atheism or evolution
theory. For example, does Tom know that
authoritative evolutionists (also Darwin)
did admit that evolution, in critical areas
is based on some very questionable
assumptions?
Well, Christianity is not based on any
assumption but is based on the reality of a
truly existing God, Who revealed Himself
in the Bible and Who goes on to reveal
Himself in the daily life of every Christian.
He was, is, and will be forever. And we
with Him!
Albert Wesselinfc
Graduate, Bus. Adm.
Editorial rhetoric
With regard to yesterday’s (Feb. 28)
editorial, it is not the scenario of the return
of the POW’s, but Emerald editorials
themselves which are “becoming in
sufferable”.
The editorial rhetoric of late has been
the type of heavy-handed, knee-jerk
liberal thinking one would expect from a
person who has become overwhelmed by
his own sense of power.
John Stewart’s proposal to end ASUO
subsidy to the Emerald (unless
meaningful policy changes are made)
seems more intelligent with every passing
issue. I suggest that the editor start using
his head — or stop using his pen.
Mike McPherson
Jr. Economics