By Cliff Montgomery – July 26th, 2010
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says the documents on Afghanistan released today by WikiLeaks”pose a very real threat” to American forces–even as he admits that the data in those sources already are wellknown.
In fact, it appears as if WikiLeaks tried to keep any “real threats” from being an issue in its release.
“The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF [International SecurityAssistance Force] operations,” states WikiLeaks’ introduction to its Afghan War Diary.
So now we’re hearing tough-sounding talk about a supposed “threat” to American forces, national security,and so on.
We’re hearing this only for one reason: The WikiLeaks documents reveal this Afghan war for the mess it reallyis.
Knowledge is power. Thus the opposite also is true–ignorance is slavery.
Our view? Any politician who claims that citizens are only secure when they are kept ignorant of nationalactions or policy is simply trying to maximize his power and manipulate those he pretends to represent.
This simple truth perhaps was best expressed in a fascinating 2007 study, jointly produced byOpenTheGovernment.org and People For The American Way Foundation, entitled Government Secrecy:Decisions Without Democracy.
Its introduction included a re-printed preface to the 1987 edition, written by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a PulitzerPrize-winning historian and former aide to President Kennedy.
Though writing about the Reagan Presidency, Schlesinger’s words are even more valid when applied to thecurrent empty shouting over the WikiLeaks release:
“Secrecy is the bane of democracy because it is the enemy of accountability. The framers of the AmericanConstitution designed a system of government intended to bring power and accountability into balance.
“The secrecy system, as it has been nurtured by the Executive Branch over the last [several] years…is theindispensable ally and instrument of the Imperial Presidency.
“Now no one can question the right of the state to keep certain things secret. [For instance,] in certaindomestic areas: personal data given the government on the presumption it would be kept confidential–taxreturns, personnel investigations and the like–and official decisions that, if prematurely disclosed, would lead tospeculation in land or commodities, preemptive buying, higher governmental costs and private enrichment.
“But the contemporary state has extended the secrecy system far beyond its legitimate bounds. In doing so,the target is far less to prevent the disclosure of information to enemy governments than to prevent thedisclosure of information to the American Congress, press and people.
“For governments have discovered that secrecy is a source of power and an efficient way of covering up theembarrassments, blunders, follies and crimes of the ruling regime.
“When governments claim that a broad secrecy mandate is essential to protect national security, they mostlymean that it is essential to protect the political interests of the administration. The harm to national securitythrough breaches of secrecy is always exaggerated.
“The secrecy system has been breached since the beginning of the republic–from the day in 1795 whenSenator Mason of Virginia enraged President Washington by giving the secret text of Jay’s Treaty to thePhiladelphia Aurora, or the day in 1844 when Senator Tappan of Ohio enraged President Tyler by giving thesecret text of the treaty annexing Texas to the New York Evening Post.
“[But] no one has ever demonstrated that such leaks, or the publication of the Pentagon Papers either,harmed national security. No one can doubt that these disclosures [in fact] benefited the democratic process.
“The republic has survived great crises–the War of 1812, the Civil War, the First and Second World War–without erecting the [current] suffocating structure of secrecy…
“The consequences for American democracy of the cult of secrecy may be dire. For the secrecy system notonly safeguards the executive branch from accountability for its incompetence and its venality. Worse, itemboldens the state to undertake rash and mindless adventures, as the Iran-Contra scandal sadly reminds us.[…]
“Perhaps President Reagan will one day regret that the press had not exposed his secret intentions towardIran in time to block his ill-considered policy, as President Kennedy regretted that the New York Times had notplayed up its story on the exile invasion of Cuba.
‘If you had printed more about the operation,’ he told a Timeseditor, ‘you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.’
“Because the secrecy system is controlled by those on whom it bestows prestige and protection, it has longsince overridden its legitimate objectives. The religion of secrecy has become an all-purpose means by whichthe American Presidency seeks to dissemble its purposes, bury its mistakes, manipulate its citizens andmaximize its power.
“ ‘Executive secrecy,’ John Taylor of Caroline, the philosopher of Jeffersonian democracy, wrote in 1814, ‘is oneof the monarchial customs…and [is] certainly fatal to republican government…How can national self-government exist without a knowledge of national affairs? Or how can legislatures be wise or independent,who legislate in the dark upon the recommendation of one man?’ ”
