Are Berman & Co., flacks for the tobacco, restaurant and booze industries who specialize in attacking groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Greenpeace, preparing to launch a new front group called "Tarnish the Halo?" Or are they just looking for new recruits for their on-going smear campaigns? We wonder because they've posted a job advertisement seeking a researcher. "The food police want us arrested," the ad states. "The animal-rights movement wants us thrown to the lions.

"We know that secrecy by its very nature may affect the personality of its practioners," wrote the still-secret author of a 1977 secret study by the CIA, which noted that these "unintended psychological effects ... seem to diminish rather than enhance security." The author, whose study was finally declassified last month, pointed to the example of Pearl Harbor: "That most disastrous of intelligence failures was due in no small measure to the mishandling of compartmented intelligence.

"As soon as the results of Tuesday's mid-term elections are known, a small group of influential right-wing hawks with close ties to the offices of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney will launch a new political campaign to rally public support for the invasion of Iraq," writes Jim Lobe.