Jonathan Kwitny's The Crimes of Patriots is subtitled "A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA," but it offers a much wider indictment of the structure and nature of the very government of the United States itself. Kwitny relates his specific subject to the Iran-Contra scandal at several points, so that the reader becomes increasingly aware that the scandal he explores is not an aberration but rather simply one more exposure of the tip of the iceberg which is the corruption of the government of the country and all it stands for.
-While the CIA is certainly the target of many of the author's accusations of abuse of power, he makes it clear that the Agency does not operate in a vacuum. No arm of the government could engage in such widespread corruption and immorality and abuse of power without much of the rest of the government knowing about it and either condoning or ignoring it.
Another point made in Kwitny's story is one which could be made in Iran-Contra as well --- few of the perpetrators of these outrageous crimes against the law and against the people and principles of the United States ever are punished or otherwise brought to justice.
Nevertheless, the accusation of wrongdoing leveled at individuals is not the most important part of the book. As Kwitny declares, " . . . Actors come and go. It is the roles that stay, and that we need to be concerned with" (p. 12). In other words, corruption has become such an established element of the government that it infects, in a sense, the individuals who enter into government service. Certainly, Kwitny is not indicting every government worker, but he does argue that the continuing instances of wide-scale corruption and abuse of power indicate that such behavior is not rare in government.
Indeed, the charges leveled by the author are not aimed merely at the lower-level players in the government. Kwitny argues that such players could not freely behave as illegal...