Just think, it was once a "scandal" that an American secretary of state gave the green light to a program of "targeted killings" -- assassinations -- murders -- that he knew was about to take place. This was once considered a deeply serious matter -- so staining and shattering to the official's reputation that he has spent almost 35 years lying about it, and having other people lie about it for him: Cable Ties Kissinger to Chile Scandal (AP):

As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington's Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows. ..

In 1976, the South American nations of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay were engaged in a program of repression code-named Operation Condor that targeted those governments' political opponents throughout Latin America, Europe and even the United States...The State Department drafted a plan to deliver a stern message to the three governments not to engage in such murders.

In the Sept. 16, 1976 cable, the topic of one paragraph is listed as ''Operation Condor,'' preceded by the words ''(KISSINGER, HENRY A.) SUBJECT: ACTIONS TAKEN.'' The cable states that ''secretary declined to approve message to Montevideo'' Uruguay ''and has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter.''

...The next day [after Kissinger's orders had been conveyed to U.S. ambassadors by an underling], on Sept. 21, 1976, agents of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet planted a car bomb and exploded it on a Washington, D.C., street, killing both former Ambassador Orlando Letelier, and an American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Letelier was one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet government.

Poor old Henry Kissinger. All that botheration, all those lies, all the years of gut-churning anxiety about scandal, even prosecution -- and for what? Mere complicity in state murder of foreigners carried out by a foreign government? Why, nowadays, we have U.S. presidents openly ordering the murder of American citizens, and nobody bats an eye. There is no scandal, no prosecution -- there is not even any debate. It's just a fact of life, ordinary, normal, unchangeable: the sun rises in the east, cows eat grass, rain is wet, American presidents murder people. What's the big deal?

Anyway, thank God good old Hank is still with us, and that this honorable public servant has lived to see the day when honorable public servants (and so are they all, all honorable public servants) no longer have to worry about the petty snares of law as they go about their sacred duty of keeping us safe.