Would covert operatives whose work involves subverting democratic governments abroad—including violent coups such as the one that brought down Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973—hesitate when ordered to participate in comparable activities at home?

We’re constantly told that no such thing could happen in the good ole USA (certainly not in the deaths of JFK, RFK, MLK, for example), if for no other reason than that it is impossible to keep such plots secret.

Or, in the common parlance: “Someone would have talked.”

The logic goes: since no one has come forward to describe their role in such plots, therefore no plot has existed.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. People are coming forward all the time to provide, if not the whole story, crucial bits and pieces that together would lead us to awareness of a variety of covert doings, some clearly nefarious. For example, scores, perhaps hundreds of credible eyewitnesses have cast doubt on the official “lone kook” scenario that is a staple of every domestic assassination.

But these whistleblowers are quickly discredited, suppressed, or worse. From time to time people even come out of the national security establishment to testify to such wrongdoing, but they almost always pay a heavy price –which of course discourages others from bearing witness......