Secret Prisons: Bush Iran Contra Redux

James Mulvaney's blog in the Huffington Post from yesterday ties Iran-Contra and a lot of other things to current actions by the Bush II administration. To me, he comes off as supporting the US Constitution. Talking about Iran-Contra, Mulvaney says

From a series of safe houses in El Salvador and Honduras, Contra commandos (if you can call fat guys in Guayaberas "commandos") ran military incursions into Nicaragua. I was a newspaper reporter in Latin America when a Contra supply plane was shot down over Nicaragua. I tracked the operation back to a safe house in San Salvador and got the calling records from that address from ANTEL, the Salvadoran telephone company. The records showed calls directly to the VP's office in Washington D.C., many more were the homes and haunts of his staff (I would have thought as former Director of Central Intelligence George Bush would have demanded better trade-craft). The story was initially denied as "liberal propaganda." Later several members of the VP's staff broke down and confirmed their participation (Some numbers on the ANTEL bill were listed to homes of the girlfriends of married VP staffers. At least one member of the band of Vice Presidential patriots agreed to confess to gun running "on the record" in exchange for my promise of not printing the specifics of his domestic duplicity. I continue to maintain my promise not to name the individual.)

The article makes the point that administrations need to take responsibility for their actions. That is, if they are going to selectively suspend the US Constitution, they need to fess up with the US citizenry.