It was another lovely Sunday, and I basically took the day off from blogging (except, of course, for this post).
For now, I’ve turned off anonymous commenting. That was actually my policy early on; I required registration with Blogger in order to post a comment here. It’s really not all that difficult a process to register (as those of you who haven’t already done so will see if you take a look), although I apologize for the inconvenience.
See you tomorrow!
Yesterday, commenter “sally” posted this on the Zarqawi thread:
Something to bear in mind in all of this is that terrorism itself is a purely ideological and propagandistic form of warfare. Sudden, random, and otherwise pointless acts of mass slaughter are an extremely effective way of, first, getting everyone’s attention, and second, “persuading” the more impressionable and easily frightened (e.g., the indecent left) of the value of your cause.
A fair amount of contention over sally’s message followed in the comments section.
Do I agree with sally? To a point, but not entirely.
One assumption that I don’t think can be disputed (although no doubt someone, somewhere, will try) is that terrorism is an excellent way of getting attention, and that this is one of terrorists’ main goals.
In addition, I think nearly everyone would agree that terrorists seek to foster fear in the populace, and often succeed in doing so–although, like civilian bombings in conventional wars such as WWII, terrorism can also foster solidarity and resistance in those who are its intended targets.
And I’m not at all sure that what sally refers to as “the indecent left” (I’m assuming she means that segment of the far left that makes excuses for and/or sympathizes with terrorists) is the most frightened part of the population. No, I don’t believe the far left’s particular response to terrorism come mainly from fear; rather, it comes from a world view that follows the PC Commandments (see this for the Commandments, and pay particular attention to my number 12).
When sally states that pointless acts of mass slaughter are a way of persuading those who are easily frightened of the value of the terrorists’ cause, what could she possibly mean? Isn’t it counterintuitive to think that horrific violence would foster sympathy for the cause in whose name it is perpetrated (the Rolling Stones notwithstanding)?
One mechanism by which such sympathy can occur is Stockholm Syndrome, in which, paradoxically, a bond is formed between a captive and his/her hostage-taker. But Stockholm Syndrome is generally limited to a situation of very close contact and vulnerability; the hostage is under the total control of the hostage-taker in that situation. Terrorism doesn’t generally have these characteristics.
Does terrorism sometimes result in more sympathy for the perpetrators, and, if so, why? One example of terrorism that seems to have worked in this way was the Munich massacre, which not only increased the visibility of the Palestinian cause but gave it more supporters. The old saw about children–that even negative attention is sometimes sought, because negative attention is better than no attention at all–seems true of those who turn to terrorism. Sometimes, it works.
Who says so? Surviving Munich terrorist Jamal Al Gashey, for one:
“I’m proud of what I did at Munich because it helped the Palestinian cause enormously,” he says.
“Before Munich, the world had no idea about our struggle, but on that day, the name of Palestine was repeated all around the world.”
And only two years after Munich, Yassar Arafat was considered an acceptable and legitimate enough world leader to address the UN. It’s no accident that he tried to wear his pistol during the speech he gave there (he ended up with an empty holster, instead). It seems Arafat already understood the value of wearing his gun on his sleeve, as it were.
So, why do some people end up sympathizing more with terrorist causes as the outrageousness and offensiveness of the terrorist attacks escalate? Perhaps it’s a combination of the aforementioned PC commandments, an attenuated Stockholm Syndrome, and the sort of inverted logic that goes like this: anyone desperate enough to commit an act as evil as the Munich Massacre must be sorely oppressed by circumstances. Therefore, the more terrible the terrorism, the more the cause must be just–as long as it’s against the West, especially the US or Israel.
Sally has more to say:
But in this case the murderers are counting on their opponent — that is, the West generally — being fundamentally soft and weak, enfeebled by decadence, riddled with self-doubt, fractured into squabbling factions. Against that kind of target, acts of mass carnage have the force of a spectacular propaganda display, and can induce a degree of internal collapse that leaves the target an empty and effectively paralyzed shell.
Are the US and the West already that soft? I think the jury is still out on that. But the last few years have made it abundantly clear that our society is, as she says, “riddled with self-doubt, fractured into squabbling factions.”
The terrorists and their supporters have known this for quite some time, and count on it. But don’t take my word for it, let’s turn to those of that prescient and wily old adversary of America, Ayatollah Khomeini (remember him?), who said as much:
In recent days an old slogan of the Khomeinist Revolution has made a spectacular comeback on city walls throughout the Islamic Republic: “America Cannot Do A Damn Thing!”
The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launched the phrase in 1979, as he played Tom and Jerry with the clueless Jimmy Carter who, at the time, acted as President of the United States.
At the time many in the ayatollah’s entourage believed that he was being unnecessarily provocative. Khomeini, however, was dismissive. “America, “he told his secretary, a mullah called Ansari Kermani, “may have a lot of power but lacks the courage to use it.”
According to Kermani, who wrote a hagiographical account of Khomeini’s life in 1983, the ayatollah “always counted on America’s internal divisions” to prevent the formulation and application of any serious policy on any major issue. The ayatollah believed that the American political system was clear proof of the saying attributed to Jaafar al-Sadiq, the Sixth Imam, that “God keeps the enemies of Islam fighting among themselves!”
I don’t know about you, but this reminds me of a “Saturday Night Live” bit:
The videotape released last week by the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi showed him firing long bursts from a machine gun, his forearms sprouting from beneath black fatigues, as he exuded the very picture of a strong jihadist leader.
But in clips the American military released on Thursday and described as captured outtakes from the same video, Mr. Zarqawi, head of the Council of Holy Warriors, cut a different figure.
In one scene, Mr. Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, appears flummoxed by how to discharge the machine gun in fully automatic mode. Off camera, one aide is heard ordering another, “Go help the sheik.” A man walks over and fiddles with the weapon so Mr. Zarqawi can fire it in bursts.
Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists groups use the power of video with great flair, boldness, and skill. Modern communications such as videocameras and the internet may be a primarily Western invention, but the US has lagged far behind the terrorists in the propaganda arena almost from the start.
This current campaign by the US is an interesting one. I’m not at all sure that it will matter much in terms of actually reaching any of those we’re trying to persuade. But at least it represents that someone on our side is thinking a little outside the box. And it’s true that in honor/shame cultures, looking ridiculous is one of the worst things that can happen to a leader such as Zarqawi, who clearly prides himself on appearing to be the meannest, baddest man around.
In another blend of old and new, the video goes on to exploit a sartorial mixed message:
Another sequence shows Mr. Zarqawi handing the weapon off to other aides and striding away, revealing white jogging shoes beneath his black guerrilla attire.
Shades of the Munich massacre terrorists in their jogging suits.
Zarqawi seems to be attended by at least one of the Three Stooges:
One insurgent later appears to grab the machine gun absent-mindedly by its scalding-hot barrel and drop it.
Of course Al Jazeera–which has no problem whatsoever being the mouthpiece for Al Qaeda propaganda–isn’t jumping to show these particular videos (perhaps they’re too shocking for Al Jazeera’s tender sensibilities):
The selected outtakes released late Thursday were not shown on the most popular Arab channels, Al Jazeera and Arabiya, although Arabiya mentioned them in a newscast later. But they were broadcast on state-run Iraqi television.
Al Jazeera picks and chooses the propaganda it deems worthy of broadcast, and this one didn’t make the cut. But Iraq has a competing network that is willing–and perhaps eager–to show it.
How did we ever come to this? One seminal event in the history of terrorist propaganda was that same Munich massacre I mentioned earlier. While doing research for this post, I came across an article featuring the Dutch-born widow of the Israeli fencing coach Andre Spitzer, one of the Israeli athletes so cruelly murdered that terrible September of 1972. She believes (and I concur) that Munich was the true start of the successful Mideastern terrorist use of propaganda through the use of worldwide media:
“The message was you could pull it off and get major exposure,” [Ankie] Spitzer said.
“No one was punished, no one was held responsible. I am really convinced that if the world had reacted differently then, zero tolerance then … everything would have looked different now…”
In the Arab world, Munich was viewed as a triumph. Weeks later, the three captured Palestinian terrorists were freed by the German government after a Lufthansa plane was hijacked in the Balkans. The men got a heroes’ welcome when they arrived in Libya.
Spitzer says a new era had begun. “I call it the first shot fired for international terror. Before that, it was never on such a level.”
I remember Munich well; I lived through it, or at least the media coverage of it. I remember the profound shock I felt then, my disbelief that people could invade the previously peaceful and off-limits realm of international sports to wreak such horror. At the time I didn’t know the details of the mindboggling incompetence of the German authorities, and then their later capitulation in releasing the terrorists in response to a possibly faked airplane highjacking (anyone who’d like to know the particulars should read this some time).
But with repetition over the ensuing decades, such events have lost some of their power to shock. And the fact that brutality wins converts has also become apparent. So let’s give ridicule a chance.
The sole survivor of the night of the marauding squirrels/deers/gophers has bloomed:
That’s it for my tulips this year. It stands, forlorn and alone, a profile in courage.
It’s a beautiful day today, though, one of several unseasonably warm ones we’ve had lately. Spring usually isn’t quite springlike here, not exactly–that old saw that there are two seasons in New England, winter and the Fourth of July, isn’t so very far from the truth. Usually it goes from snow to rain to brown crud/mud and then, after a brief burst, right into the short hot summer.
But this year spring has been early and, so far, it’s been long. The forsythia have been fully in bloom for more weeks than I can ever remember previously. And they’re still going strong, although this photo doesn’t nearly do justice to their intensity, which is the very essence of yellow:
Nothing is so beautiful as spring —
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
—-from “Spring,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The jury deliberated, and the verdict for Moussaoui is life without possibility of parole.
I think that’s actually the best possible outcome for this extraordinarily strange case.
Moussaoui himself is a pernicious person, his rantings devoid of even a drop of the milk of human kindness: he has no sympathy for the 9/11 victims or their families, and regards Timothy McVeigh as “the greatest American.”
So no, I have no sympathy for Moussaoui himself. Despite his dreadful family background, he is coherent and sane enough to be held fully responsible for what he’s done and its consequences.
But what has he done? That’s the problem; we don’t rightly know. From the lack of hard evidence presented at the trial, it appears he’s done less than he would like us to believe–although he intended plenty of harm, as much as possible.
But our system of justice judges the act, not the personality. Intent is an element of some crimes, yes, but it has to be coupled with certain actions, and those actions have to be proven in court. To justify a death penalty it’s not enough to have wanted to cause the death of thousands or planned to cause the death of thousands or rejoiced in the death of thousands. One has to actually have caused those deaths–or, in Moussaoui’s case, to have withheld pertinent information that, if revealed, might have saved them.
Three jurors agreed that Moussaoui’s knowledge of the details of 9/11 was too inadequate to have given authorities the knowledge to prevent it, even if he had divulged those details in time. All twelve jurors agreed that Moussaoui’s actions did not result in the 3,000 deaths on 9/11. The fact that Moussaoui is the sort of terrible human being who would have been proud to claim such an accomplishment doesn’t change the fact that it probably wasn’t his accomplishment; he just didn’t have enough insider info.
I have no problem with this verdict. Life imprisonment without possibility of parole is, in my opinion, the very last thing Moussaoui wants, despite his yelling out “I won” at its announcement. Methinks the man doth protest too much. I think Moussaoui has no desire to live out his days in the belly of the hated beast, America, rather than to become a glorious martyr.
And France seems happy that the cowboys held off on the ultimate penalty:
The French Embassy in the U.S. issued a statement that said the trial was “conducted in an exemplary fashion.”
I think the trial was a circus, actually, as I indicated here. But I think this result is the right one–or at least, a right one.
[ADDENDUM: Varifrank has an interesting take on the death penalty vs. life imprisonment, with a look at the fate of some well-known lifers.]
In a way, my post today on Juan Cole and the Left is really about denial.
Well, Dr. Sanity’s the expert on that. And if she ever quits her day job, she has a future as a lyricist. Here’s still another in a long line of her clever parody offerings. This one happens to fits in quite nicely with the theme of the day–the Left’s denial of some hard but basic truths.
To the tune of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Dr. Sanity writes:
An’ just take dese newsfolk
As if dey’s a big joke,
‘Cuz when it bleeds it’ll lede.
Which reminds me to put in another Orwell quote that I came across here, while researching the previous post:
Orwell was perhaps even less kind to the press than Hitchens; when he was not censuring their mangling of proper English (he was once “upset for days” when the Tribune printed “verbiosity” in one of its articles), he was abusing them as “professional liars” and “halfwits.” “Early in life,” he wrote, “I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.”
Orwell was a great writer. But he didn’t set it to music, like Dr. Sanity.
Christopher Hitchens (previously no special friend of Israel’s) deconstructs Juan Cole’s Dowdification of Ahmadinejad’s threats to Israel in this Slate article (via Austin Bay) entitled “The Cole Report: when it comes to Iran, he distorts, you decide.”
Hitchens’s contention is that, contrary to Cole’s statements that Ahmadinejad never threatened to wipe Israel off the map, Cole is playing fast and loose with the quotes, and that it’s indeed what Ahmadinejad has said, several times over.
Cole is an excellent example of the repeated tendency of some on the Left to make excuses for outright declarations of annihilative intent by third-world tyrants. This tendency on the Left is both understandable and dangerous.
After all, many people (and not all of them are on the Left by any means, although a great number on the Left do fit this description) believe everyone pretty much resembles them in the way they operate. And my impression is that many on the Left see the use of words as a sort of harmless game.
It was George Orwell, a member of the Left but a different sort entirely (he knew the dangerous excesses of the Left up close and personal, and spent much of his writing life warning us about them, as well as musing on the extraordinary power of words themselves), who famously told us:
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
Plus ca change…
Hitchens, who recently wrote an entire book in praise of Orwell, clearly considers himself to be in the same mold: a straight-talking leftist who’s not afraid to break out of the circle dance.
The signers of the recent Euston Manifesto have also stepped out of the leftist ring and stated their unequivocal opposition to tyranny and their refusal to apologize for it:
We decline to make excuses for, to indulgently “understand”, reactionary regimes and movements for which democracy is a hated enemy ”” regimes that oppress their own peoples and movements that aspire to do so. We draw a firm line between ourselves and those left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such political forces….
People like Juan Cole are the ones they are up against. What else might be motivating him, besides a lightness about the meaning of “mere words?” My guess is that it’s the need to keep his conceptual world intact, to continue to dance in that circle to which he’s grown accustomed without feeling undue guilt or cognitive dissonance.
And what is that conceptual world? It includes, but is far from limited to, the idea that almost everything wrong with the world today is the fault of the US and past abuses of power by Western nations. And a further corollary–perhaps a more important one–is that human beings are basically well-meaning and reasonable (with the example, of course, of Bush, Cheney, et al).
The latter principle of general reasonableness applies even to tyrannical and dictatorial leaders who have unequivocally stated the desire to destroy the US and Israel (the famous “Big and Little Satans”). If the words of those such as Ahmadinejad are unequivocal, don’t worry; Cole will do the honors and equivocate for him.
Twas ever thus. Or at least, it’s been thus ever since the debacle of WWI made the fear and knowledge of war’s destructive costs far greater, the dream of peace ever more powerful, the need to believe in the goodwill of dictators more intense, and the ability to equivocate and deceive oneself about said goodwill more likely.
Witness, please, exhibit B: the British Parliamentary debate on the Munich Pact, which took place on October 3, 1938. Duff Cooper, speaking in the House of Commons, said:
Prime Minister [Chamberlain] has confidence in the good will and in the word of Herr Hitler, although when Herr Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles he undertook to keep the Treaty of Locarno, and when he broke the Treaty of Locarno he undertook not to interfere further, or to have further territorial aims, in Europe. When he entered Austria by force he authorised his henchmen to give an authoritative assurance that he would not interfere with Czechoslovakia. That was less than six months ago. Still, the Prime Minister believes that he can rely upon the good faith of Hitler; he believes that Hitler is interested only in Germany, as the Prime Minister was assured….
The Prime Minister may be right. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, with the deepest sincerity, that I hope and pray that he is right, but I cannot believe what he believes. I wish I could. .
Here is a portion of Chamberlain’s reply to Cooper (note, especially, the Pitt quote that ends the excerpt):
My right hon. Friend [Duff Cooper] has alluded in somewhat bitter terms to my conversation last Friday morning with Herr Hitler. I do not know why that conversation should give rise to suspicion, still less to criticism. I entered into no pact. I made no new commitments. There is no secret understanding. Our conversation was hostile to no other nation. The objects of that conversation, for which I asked, was to try to extend a little further the personal Contact which I had established with Herr Hitler and which I believe to be essential in modern diplomacy. We had a friendly and entirely non-committal conversation, carried on, on my part, largely with a view to seeing whether there could be points in common between the head of a democratic Government and the ruler of a totalitarian State. We see the result in the declaration which has been published, in which my right hon. Friend finds so much ground for suspicion….
I believe there are many who will feel with me that such a declaration, signed by the German Chancellor and myself, is something more than a pious expression of opinion. In our relations with other countries everything depends upon there being sincerity and good will on both sides. I believe that there is sincerity and good will on both sides in this declaration. That is why to me its significance goes far beyond its actual words. If there is one lesson which we should learn from the events of these last weeks it is this, that lasting peace is not to be obtained by sitting still and waiting for it to come. It requires active, positive efforts to achieve it. No doubt I shall have plenty of critics who will say that I am guilty of facile optimism, and that I should disbelieve every word that is uttered by rulers of other great States in Europe. I am too much of a realist to believe that we are going to achieve our paradise in a day. We have only laid the foundations of peace. The superstructure is not even begun….
As regards future policy, it seems to me that there are really only two possible alternatives. One of them is to base yourself upon the view that any sort of friendly relation, or possible relations, shall I say, with totalitarian States are impossible, that the assurances which have been given to me personally are worthless, that they have sinister designs and that they are bent upon the domination of Europe and the gradual destruction of democracies. Of course, on that hypothesis, war has got to come, and that is the view–a perfectly intelligible view–of a certain number of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen in this House”¦.
If that is hon. Members’ conviction, there is no future hope for civilisation or for any of the things that make life worth living. Does the experience of the Great War and of the years that followed it give us reasonable hope that if some new war started that would end war any more than the last one did? No. I do not believe that war is inevitable. Someone put into my hand a remark made by the great Pitt about 1787, when he said:
“To suppose that any nation can be unalterably the enemy of another is weak and childish and has its foundations neither in the experience of nations not in the history of man.”
Read it and weep. Weep for the opportunities lost, for what Chamberlain himself called “facile optimism:” so noble, so hopeful, so well-meaning, so deadly, so fatally wrong about the benign intents of totalitarian dictators who threaten others.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not the most organized of people.
Oh, I’m not all that bad. My desk doesn’t pile up too much before I clear it. You can walk a straight line through my house and not run into any large obstacles, such as stacks of magazines or old clothes.
No, the house is relatively neat. The parts that aren’t are mostly safely hidden away in my “office.” I’m not really sure why I put in the scare quotes–it is an office, a small bedroom with a skylight revealing a view of a beautiful old birch tree on this rainy day (which, through the magic of digital photography, I can show you even as we speak):
The office isn’t as photogenic as the tree. So I’ll post no photo of that. Best to leave it to your imagination.
This is what you would see, though, if you were here (besides neo-neocon herself, sans apple):
A bookshelf filled with literary and poetry journals, as well as books on poetry and writing, a dictionary, thesaurus, and rhyming dictionary; some framed prints on the wall featuring old pens and books; a calendar with paintings of women reading; two poorly functioning remote telephones (I can’t seem to find a good one); and a bed for guests. There’s also a large flat desk that holds my shiny newish computer. And a chair for said desk.
But on that desk we see the first evidence of problems to come: an old Brother word processor, circa–oh, I don’t know, maybe 1980-something-or-other? I still remember when I exchanged my old electric Smith-Corona for it; the Brother seemed the latest word in typing advances. The ability to make corrections without needing erasable typing paper! Spellcheck! No more white out! Oh, it was wonderful, wonderful–although now it seems about as modern as a Model-T.
Why is it here? All my writing from the 80s and early 90s is still on it. I’ve been told there’s no way to transfer the information except to laboriously enter it into my computer in the old-fashioned way, by keyboarding it. Needless to say, that’s not my top priority now. So, there it sits, gathering the proverbial (and metaphoric) dust.
And those two file cabinets up against the wall are only half full. On the floor next to them, and spread out on the guest bed, are piles of papers.
I’ve got a master plan. Quite a while ago (how long ago I dare not say) I bought a system of files. Hanging files and regular folder files, tabs and accessories, all color-coordinated to allow me to separate my papers into categories: writing, memorabilia, photos, medical, financial, etc.–you get the idea.
I’m going to do it. I know I will. And yesterday I actually started. But one of the problems with starting is that it makes me confront what I already knew–that this is a large task. I know, I know–like hitting one’s head on the wall, it will feel so good when it’s over. But it’s very far from over, despite my having put in about five hours last night.
But I’ve already realized some benefits. No, I haven’t located everything I was looking for. Some official papers missing from my “offical papers” file, for example, are still AWOL. But I found the text of a children’s book I’d written about twenty years ago, which had been lost for the last five. Some papers I need in connection with my license were, remarkably enough, in a large envelope marked “For license,” which had been buried under a pile of others.
Going through much of it is a strangely emotional experience. Old cards–birthdays, anniversaries, loves gained and lost. Photos of me and my boyfriend who went to Vietnam, and his last letter, the only one I saved (for those of you who haven’t read my posts on that subject: yes, he did return, but no, we didn’t marry). Photos from college–me, impossibly young, sporting one of those long flippy “do’s” that required setting on rollers the size of beer cans; old friends from that era, some of them now dead. Poems that make me cry when I stop to read them. My diplomas. A photocopy of the check from Central Casting Corporation I got for doing a “silent bit” as a dancer in the film “The Turning Point” (see this).
In one file entitled “School–grades and awards” are all my old report cards (height: 48 1/4 inches, weight, 51 pounds, first grade). Even now those report cards have the power to stir a hint of anxiety in me, remembering the drama of the reading of the names and the doling out of the little cardboard squares representing so much work. My SAT scores. My GRE scores. My scholarships, and some newspaper clippings announcing same. A little card of commendation with a gold star on it, given to me in third grade for a bunch of poems I wrote, illustrated, and compiled into a scrapbook for extra credit and for fun (“Snowflakes falling, down, down, down…)
Letters from a few famous people I wrote to who had the decency to write back, some at great length (Oliver Sacks, for one). A huge file of poetry I like that isn’t anthologized in any books I own. My own poetry, with many different alternative drafts (ah, my biographer will be so grateful!) A folder filled with the condolence letters people wrote my mother when my grandmother died in the late 60s, which still have the power to evoke her warm presence and vitality.
So the benefits of going through papers aren’t limited to getting organized. And in fact, that has yet to happen. But the folders are now in stacks, roughly sorted out. The next step is to toss about half this material–although not the half I just listed, of course. Wonder when that will happen.
Under what circumstances should a national security employee decide to disclose classified information, and to whom should he/she disclose it? Should the leaker be met with penalties for these actions, and, if so, what should the punishment be? And what’s the role of the press? Should it be allowed to publish any leaks short of treason, no matter what the national security consequences? And if not, how should those consequences be judged, and by whom?
Those who argue that leaks to the press are never justified, and should always be punished severely, believe that the framers have already put sufficient checks and balances in place so that the system can deal with any situation that could come up without the need for the press to get into the act and sensationalize and publicize the situation prematurely. The proper course of action for a national security employee would be to launch an internal investigation within his/her own agency, and if that fails to remedy the prolem, to go to the committee in Congress charged with Congressional oversight. The legislative branch would be acting in time-honored fashion as a curb on the executive branch, just as the Constitution intended.
Those who disagree with the above base their contention on two ideas: distrust of government oversight (fostered by such events as the initial My Lai coverup, as discussed in Part II), and the public’s right to know. In general, they also tend to routinely downplay the security repercussions of disclosures such as the CIA detention centers in Europe (I discuss the origins of this attitude here and here).
Recent events indicate that some seem to consider national security employees to be justified in making their own individual decisions to act as watchdogs, spilling the beans and breaking their oaths of secrecy if they merely happen to believe there’s an illegal act on the part of the CIA, and to believe that an internal complaint and investigation (the usual procedure) wouldn’t get the results they’re looking for, without actually launching one:
“This a matter of principle,” said Ray McGovern, a former fellow CIA analyst, “where [McCarthy] said my oath, my promise not to reveal secrets is superceded by my oath to defend the constitution of the U.S.”…McCarthy’s supporters say if she revealed classified information, it’s because she strongly believed what was happening was wrong. With unsympathetic superiors and a Congress that has been reluctant to investigate, she had no one to turn to but the press.
Did McCarthy (or whoever the leaker actually was) really have no avenue but the press? If the leaker’s conscience was troubled by confidential information gained in the line of duty, didn’t that person also have a duty to go through internal channels or to Congress? Was this ever done in the detention center case, or did the leaker simply cut to the chase (and the press), assuming an internal investigation would go nowhere?
When that process is short-circuited, the leaker unloads his/her information in the most public way possible, which can end up being the most damaging way. Right now the only people deciding how bad that damage might be before it occurs are the leaker him/herself–hardly the most objective judge of that–and the press (ditto). Once the story is published, it’s too late: the cat is out of the bag, the horse is out of the barn.
The judiciary was meant to act as the check and balance on potential leakers and the press–and in the past, of course, we also had more self-imposed restraint on the part of the press, especially in times of war. Now, however, not only does the press see itself in the role of government adversary and whistleblower, but personal repercussions are few and far between, short of treason (a very hard case to make in most situations).
The landmark Supreme Court decision in the Pentagon Papers case gave a relatively free reign to the press in such matters, freeing it from the fear of prosecution except in the most egregious of cases (the excerpt that follows is from the post of mine that I just linked):
In 1997, Adam Clymer of the Times wrote, in a review of a new book–The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case, by David Rundestine:
“The Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 decision in the Pentagon Papers case was a monumental victory for The New York Times and The Washington Post and a huge defeat for the Nixon Administration. In practical terms, it meant that the United States Government bears an awesome — perhaps impossible — burden before it can censor the press. But the opinion written by Justice William J. Brennan did not tell courts how to weigh that burden, though it made clear that a just claim of injury to the national security is not enough.”
So, “a just claim of injury to the national security is not enough.” Think about it: what would be enough? How bad an injury to the national security is sufficient to muffle a story, and how certain does this injury have to be?
So that brings us to where we are today. And Houston, we’ve got a problem (although I’m sure some would disagree with me!)
How do other countries with a tradition of a free press deal with the situation? Some punish security violations far more stringently. Britain, for example, has a statute called the National Secrets Act, which establishes penalties not only for the leaker, but for the press publishing the information. And there is no discretion given to the leaker or the press on such matters:
…due to the extreme strictures of Britain’s Official (National) Secrets Act, certain topics can be designated as matters of national security of which any published (or public?) discussion is completely forbidden ; if this order is violated, the “offenders” can be immediately incarcerated, their publication facilities etc. closed/dismantled; further, if any mention whatsoever of those actions (i.e. against the publisher of the forbidden information) is made by any other publisher, the publishers of that subsequent information are likewise subject to the exact same penalty…According to other terms of this National Secrets Act, any publisher/news organisation who receives information, publication of which would violate the previously noted terms, is obliged to inform British authorities of that fact — as well as the source of the information.
The British law represents the opposite extreme in dealing with the problem of leaks to the press–perhaps too extreme? In the US at present, the only possible legal penalties (as far as I know) are charges such as espionage and treason, very high crimes indeed–and very difficult, if not impossible, to prove in instances that don’t actually involve outright spying. Loss of job and/or security clearance is of course also possible. Some ways to stretch the espionage laws to cover the situation of leaking to the press have also been tried, most notably in a 2003 case involving a leak by a lobbyist to the Israeli officials.
Should we pass a law as stringent as Britain’s? At the moment, I’m not sure what my opinion is on that; I don’t know how the British law has been working so far, for example. However, in doing research for this post, I discovered that a law something like the British Official Secrets Act actually was passed in the US–amazingly enough, prior to 9/11, under the Clinton administration.
The law was promoted by none other than the now very beleaguered George Tenet, who was head of the CIA under Clinton and during Bush’s first administration. The bill was in fact passed by Congress in 2000, on Clinton’s watch; and it even had Democratic support at the time (any bets on whether that would happen now?), according to this Scripps-Howard article from October of 2000:
The ship of state, some say, is the only ship that leaks from the top.
So many high-ranking officials could theoretically get tossed in the brig under a sweeping new law about to be signed by President Clinton. The law, drafted without public hearings, for the first time makes it illegal to leak any classified information.
“Because of the seriousness of the leaks and the releasing of classified information, we needed to take some additional steps,” said Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “We hope it helps.” Condit said he and other Democrats attempted to modify the measure to account for some concerns. But the full implications of what critics are calling America’s first Official Secrets Act remain unclear – for whistle-blowers, for journalists, and for security officials themselves…
“This is like a sea change,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies. “Congress has never even gone half this far.”
But the sea didn’t change, after all. The article’s prediction turned out to be incorrect: Clinton did not sign the bill. He vetoed it, instead. The article doesn’t say why, and I could find no further information on that. And the 2000 bill never contemplated penalties for the press, by the way; it limited punishment (a fine of up to the relatively paltry sum of 10,000 dollars, and a possible imprisonment) to the leaker him/herself. Still, it failed to garner enough votes to override Clinton’s veto.
So, what about some version of the British act? Is it overkill, causing more potential problems than it fixes? Does anyone actually know how the act is working in Britain–its pitfalls and its accomplishments? If so, I invite you to come forward in the comments section–inquiring minds want to know.
It seems logical to me that in order to have any sort of workable national security at all, it should only be breached for extremely serious governmental offenses, and then only after other ordinary channels have been exhausted and found wanting. My suggestion would be penalties for national security leakers who go to the press first, without trying other remedies, as well as penalties for the press if the information damages national security as defined by the courts (and I would hope they would define it at least somewhat less narrowly than in the Pentagon Papers decision).
The goal of instituting these changes would be to motivate both leakers and the press to cease and desist except in cases in which (a) the leak involves a very major governmental offense; (b) has already been reported to the proper authorities in the way the Constitution envisioned; and (c) has been covered up. The idea is to create that situation I spoke of in Part III, in which the needs of national security and the public’s right to know would come into better balance.
Untrammeled executive governmental power is dangerous. But we also can’t afford to ignore the danger of individual leakers and journalists with an agenda, setting themselves up as unchecked arbiters of what secrets should be leaked and publicized around the world. It makes a mockery of national security, and of the oaths taken by those sworn to protect it.
I’ve been out most of this beautiful day, and now I’m going to take a pizza over to my mother’s. So I’ll just say see you tomorrow, with Part IV–the final one in the series, I think.
The initial coverup of My Lai in the late 60s, discussed in Part II, helped make Americans more cynical–more likely to believe the government couldn’t be trusted to uncover wrongdoings through the mechanism of internal investigations. The press came to be seen as the more reliable watchdog, and whistleblowers were now more likely to go directly to the media to report governmental offenses. The media, in turn, felt freer to oblige without fear of negative consequences to itself.
My Lai had some special (perhaps even unique) characteristics that make it the purest example of an event that needed a whistleblower. The offenses involved were of an extraordinarily serious and profound nature, and the initial coverup was virtually complete. Furthermore, the whistleblower was not bound by any vow of secrecy. Whether he needed to go to directly to the media (as Ridenhour eventually did, after the second investigation–sparked by his letters–was already in progress and had led to Calley’s being charged with murder) is unclear, however.
Another seminal case from the 60s, somewhat more analogous to present-day leak situations, is that of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. It is perhaps the most famous example of someone in a national security position leaking classified information to journalists. Far more than My Lai, the Ellsberg case has certain parallels with the present situation involving the CIA detention center leaks.
At the time he gave the Pentagon Papers to the press, Ellsberg was not a CIA employee. But he was an employee of the RAND Corporation, with access to classified information; one can safely assume he had taken an oath to keep those papers secret. His growing disillusionment with the Vietnam war (although, interestingly enough, Ellsberg had been strongly against the war from his earliest exposure to it, way back in 1961) led him to copy the classified documents with the idea of making them public and exposing the cynicism and duplicity with which he felt the Vietnam war had been conducted.
Ellsberg hoped that the publication of the Papers would cause people to become upset on learning they had been lied to by their government, and then to clamor for the war to end. As such, his position was essentially political–although it was not narrowly partisan, since the Pentagon Papers was an equal-opportunity disclosure; the information obtained therein implicated both Democrat and Republican administrations.
Like Ridenhour, at the outset Ellsburg did not release the documents to the press, but sought instead to persuade certain sympathetic antiwar Senators (chief among them J. William Fulbright) to go public with them on the Senate floor. His motivation for this scheme was that he knew he would be liable to prosecution if he went to the press, and he fully expected to be sent to prison as a result, whereas Senators would be immune from such prosecution.
But no Senator would take the bait, not even Fulbright. As a result, Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the media. Initially, he made an effort to escape prosecution by hiding out:
Although the Times did not reveal Ellsberg as their source, he knew that the FBI would soon determine that he was the source of the leak. Ellsberg went underground, living secretly among like-minded people. He was not caught by the FBI, even though they were under enormous pressure from the Nixon Administration to find him.
However, Ellsberg surrendered voluntarily to authorities only a few weeks later:
On June 28, Ellsberg publicly surrendered to the US Attorney’s Office in Boston, Massachusetts. He was taken into custody believing he would spend the rest of his life in prison; he was charged with theft, conspiracy, and espionage.
But Ellsberg never went to prison. In a stunningly ironic turn of events, the actions of Nixon’s “plumbers” (who later carried out the Watergate burglary, but whose nickname came from their earlier attempts to fix Ellsberg’s “leaks”) ended up inadvertently freeing Ellsberg. As in a Shakespearean tragedy, Nixon’s wild overreaching against Ellsberg sowed the seeds of Nixon’s own downfall, through the mechanism of those very same plumbers:
In one of Nixon’s actions against Ellsberg, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in September 1971, hoping to find information they could use to discredit him. The revelation of the break-in became part of the Watergate scandal. ..Because of the gross governmental misconduct, all charges against Ellsberg were eventually dropped.
Earlier, the administration had sued the Times to try to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers on the grounds that such publication would threaten national security. The case went to the Supreme Court; here’s an excerpt from a review of a book written about it, “The Day the Pressed Stopped,” by David Rudenstine:
Despite Americans’ constitutional right to a free press, certain government information–particularly that concerning military affairs–has been placed beyond the realm of public access. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1971, however (brought about when the Nixon administration sued the New York Times) knocked a howitzer-sized hole in that theory when the case allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to print excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000- page document regarding U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
I haven’t read Rudenstine’s book–although I’ve added it to my ever-growing, always-daunting, reading list–but the above quote describes what a watershed event the publication of the Papers was. Before then, newspapers would have been reluctant to print such things–whether out of loyalty to the government or out of fear of repercussions, or both. After the 1971 case, the gloves were off.
(For anyone interested in reading some original sources around that groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling–I confess that I’ve not yet done so, myself–this site looks to be an excellent place to start. And, by the way, on the question of whether the publication of the Pentagon Papers actually did pose any true threat to national security, the Rudenstine book supports the controversial contention that they did).
Fast forward to now. National security officers presently are encouraged to spill information with which they disagree–and are provided with support groups, networking, and free legal advice–organized by none other than Daniel Ellsberg himself.
It’s now almost assumed that the proper course of action for such whistleblowers is his final course of action: going to the press, rather than launching an internal investigation or going to Congress with the information. As I wrote previously, it appears that national security whistleblowers are being encouraged to act as virtual moles within their own organizations, remaining in their jobs in order to gain more of the sensitive material and to reveal it as they see fit, according to the dictates of their individual consciences, and often for political reasons. And the idea that there will be any serious legal consequences for the whistleblowers has been weakened; Ellsberg expected to be charged with treason (and was), but many whistleblowers today seem to consider such possibilities to be idle threats.
I believe that, as in so many things, the pendulum has swung too far in one direction. We would not want go back to the era when something of the scope of a My Lai could be successfully covered up. The exposure of My Lai was a shock, but one of the benefits is that My Lai has been studied in depth and used as teaching tool by the military, which has instituted reforms that make such an event far less likely to ever happen today.
But it hardly seems necessary–or productive–to allow national security employees to leak like sieves to the press, much of the time about matters that are not clearly illegal, and motivated sometimes by pure partisanship. And it hardly seems good to allow the press to be the final arbiter of whether their own disclosures will damage national security or not.
The next post in the series will deal with suggestions as to how the pendulum might swing back to a more evenhanded position, one that balances the public’s need to know with the need to protect national security. One thing’s for sure: it won’t be easy.
The Anchoress recently watched a video of the 1976 film “Network,” written by Paddy Chayefsky. She found the movie’s satire to be strangely prescient, featuring TV networks that would do nearly anything to make a buck, including suck up to terrorists.
I saw the film when it first came out, but I can’t say I remember too much about it except the always-arresting Peter Finch , and Faye Dunaway’s nervous edginess. Maybe I’ll have to rent it again to refresh my memory.
I had developed a mild crush on Peter Finch in his younger incarnation in “The Nun’s Story,” which turns out to have been his favorite movie of the ones he made prior to 1968. And, by the way, doesn’t Finch look just the tiniest bit as though he might have been the somewhat glum father of the smilier Tony Blair? (don’t want to start a rumor, but…):
After reading the Anchoress’s post, I got curious about Chayefsky, and looked him up. There wasn’t a whole lot of information, but I found this in Wikipedia, indicating that Chayefsky may have not only been prescient, but that he also didn’t shy away from speaking up and speaking out himself:
[Chayefsky] is known for his comments during the 1978 Oscar telecast after Vanessa Redgrave, when she went to accept her award for Best Supporting Actress in Julia, made a controversial speech denouncing extreme elements of Zionism. He made a comment during the program immediately after hers in which he stated that he was upset by her using the event to make an irrelevant political viewpoint during a film award program. He said, “I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple ‘Thank you’ would have sufficed.”