VIEWSrnDefenders of DemocracyrnCovert Policing and Dirty Tricksrnby Philip Jenkinsrn^^ T T i g h ranking police officials trained by the FBI andrnJ. Xarmed by a IJ.S. marshal formed a secret unit thatrnmay have committed political murders… under the banner ofrncounter-terrorism, the secret police turned into terrorists.” Untilrnrecently, most Americans reading such a news report wouldrnassume that it derived from the most eccentric radical tract,rnwhile even connoisseurs of conspiracy theory might have troublernplacing the exact context. Never in the v’orst years of J.rnEdgar Hoover did the FBI ever go so far, and it seems a little extremernfor the Nixon White House. In fact, the words quotedrnstem from the quite moderate pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer,rnwhich in 1992 reported on an antiradical operation devisedrnby federal officials working out of the United States Marshalsrnservice. In the late 1970’s, the deliriously named “Defenders ofrnDemocracv” “disappeared” individuals who might pose arnthreat to federal judges and apparently bombed the headquartersrnof the local Bar Association. One might think that thisrnwould be a major story, the sort of thing that actually bringsrndown governments, until one realizes that the attacks in questionrnoccurred under the United States flag, but on the soil ofrnPuerto Rico. As Graham Greene reminded us, the world canrnbe neatly diided into those who can and cannot be torturedrnPhilip Jenkins heads the religious studies program at Penn StaternUniversity. His most recent hook is Pedophiles and Priests:rnAnalysing a Social Grisis (Oxford University Press). He isrncurrentlv working on a history of far-right movements in thernmO’sandWs.rnand “disappeared” with impunit)’, and the Defenders had thernwisdom to direct their illegal acts at torturees. With a few honorablernexceptions like the Inquirer, the national press treatedrnthe death squad affair with all the fanfare normally received byrnthe retirement of a school crossing guard.rnThe oblivion into which this affair has sunk is indicative ofrnthe highly selective coverage accorded to official misdeeds, espeeiallvrnin the realm of covert policing and “dirty tricks.” Forrnmuch of its history, the United States lacked a clandestine policernnetwork of the sort that characterized every other advancedrnnation, but since the I940’s, the proliferation of secret agenciesrnhas more than made up for this absence. In the last half century,rnthese bodies have repeatedly been caught out in acts of grossrnillegality, which in the Watergate years brought the whole apparatusrnto the verge of destruction. Recently, the investigationsrninto the Waco disaster and the Randy Weaver incident haverndemonstrated a pattern of incredible incompetence and contemptrnfor law and human life. However, the ofHcial responsernhas been to reshuffle a few of the obvious culprits, while leavingrnuntouched the overarching structure which permits and encouragesrnmisbehavior.rnThe obvious question is, how do they get away with it? Onernanswer has been the thoroughly partisan nature of the publicrnand political response to the acts in question and the selectivernnature of the outrage evoked. As with political scandals, tell mernthe high crimes and misdemeanors which make you irate, andrnI will deduce your ideological outlook with reasonable accuracy.rnVery few liberals evince the slightest concern about Vinceirtrn12/CHRONICLESrnrnrn