75-04-A6
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Congress and Security
TranscriptIf the crime rate drops you don't disband the police department. Congress it seems has a different idea. I'll be right back. A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives with its new ultra liberal block voted to abolish the House Committee on Internal Security. It's armed for monitoring subversive activities. On the heels of that the liberals in the Senate began a campaign to do the same thing with the Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee. Almost simultaneously, as if to underscore the second campaign, the so-called Weather Underground took credit for bombing the State Department building in Washington and a federal building in Oakland, California. Though the intent of Congressional committee investigations is to shed light on matters of national importance, apparently the existence of the Weather Underground which claims to have accomplished more than 19 major bombings is inconsequential to many Congressmen. Over the years the House committee in particular shed light on a great many Communist and other subversive activities, accompanied by howls of complaint from a smorgasbord of communist sympathizers. But times change. Detente it seems has led us to believe that internal subversion is no longer a threat. One senator recently described the Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee as "a relic of the Cold War." All the while he speaks the currently fashionable view organizations such as the Weather Underground go about their merry way bombing. Just last year they went public with a hundred and fifty two-page booklet proclaiming their call for violent revolution. Its pages are laced with romantic radical nonsense such as this quote "We are a guerrilla organization. We are Communist men and women, underground in the United States for more than four years. Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside." Unquote. They're dead serious too. 24 members of the Weather Underground are wanted on federal warrants and one of them, a woman, is on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Institutions designed to protect our security have been diminished sharply in the last two years. The Internal Security Division of the Justice Department has been dropped, as has the Subversive Activities Control Board. The Attorney General's list of subversive organizations has been eliminated as well. Now ironically the functions and records of the House Committee on Internal Security may be transferred to a subcommittee on crime headed by left-leaning representative John Conyers of Michigan, who has backed causes such as the National Peace Action Coalition, which was one of those identified as a Trotskyite front by the very House committee that's just been abolished. If the SALT talks turn out to be truly equal and if detente is also, maybe one day we can afford the luxury of having fewer institutions to monitor subversion. Meanwhile I like Congressman Ashbrook's House Resolution number 67 to revive the House Committee on Internal Security. How about you? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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