What happens when the stated policy of the U.S. government—set by Congress and the President—is vetoed by a single, unelected bureaucrat?
This is not a theoretical question. It is the documented history of the U.S. covert-aid program to the Afghan mujahedin in the 1980s, a subject I detail in Chapter 3 of my new book, Normal Channels: Blocked or Compromised.
After the Soviets downed the Korean Air Lines passenger plane, President Reagan ordered CIA Director William Casey to retaliate by shipping surface-to-air missiles to the Afghan guerrillas.
The order was never carried out.
According to Hoover Institution scholar Arnold Beichman, the roadblock was one man: CIA Deputy Director John J. McMahon. Beichman wrote that McMahon “succeeded in preventing execution of the proposal, arguing that it would be too difficult to accomplish.”
This was not an isolated incident. When Casey later proposed bringing 65 Soviet POWs from Afghanistan to the U.S. for a mass press conference—a “stunning blow against Soviet imperial interests”—McMahon again “vetoed the idea and his veto stuck.”
This is the very essence of systemic failure. While Congress voted for aid, the agency “roadblock” (as Dr. Warren H. Carroll explained) ensured that the aid sent was ineffective: useless SAM-7 missiles and poorly-chosen mortars. The system’s official purpose was to win, but its bureaucratic function was, as one Senator was warned, “we don’t want the Afghans to win too big.”
Chapter 3 is a case study in how Andrew Eiva, the man who uncovered the “One Minute Per Month” lie, had to bypass the official process, go to the public, and organize a grassroots campaign to force the U.S. government to implement its own stated policy.
The full chapter is now live on my Substack.
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For all other readers, I have posted a free preview on the Substack page. This preview includes my personal introduction to the chapter and details McMahon’s bureaucratic war against the President.
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