![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/19841.gif\" "\\"1984\\"")
A zippier title for this post would be State Secrets & Shit Lists, but I’ll refrain.<\/p>\nA zippier title for this post would be State Secrets & Shit Lists, but I’ll refrain.<\/p>\n
The way the authoritarians in our midst are calling for Julian Assange’s assassination<\/a>, I can’t help thinking of Orwell’s 1984<\/em>, where the citizens of Oceania turned to their viewscreens once a day for the Two Minutes Hate<\/a> directed against perpetual villain Emmanuel Goldstein.<\/p>\n I’m with Digby<\/a>, who says:<\/p>\n My personal feeling is that any allegedly democratic government that is so hubristic that it will lie blatantly to the entire world in order to invade a country it has long wanted to invade probably needs a self-correcting mechanism. There are times when it’s necessary that the powerful be shown that there are checks on its behavior, particularly when the systems normally designed to do that are breaking down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “. . . when the systems normally designed to do that are breaking down.”\u00a0 Why, what system would that be?\u00a0 In our country, that system would be our free press.<\/p>\n Unlike the heroic press we remember from the days of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, today’s corporate media consider it their job to help hide the corruption and lies behind our wars and much of our foreign policy.\u00a0 Just the other night I watched MSNBC’s Chris Matthews — a tool if ever there was one — cut off a guest who tried to make the point that George W. Bush began planning the invasion of Iraq immediately after his inauguration in January 2001, months before 9\/11.\u00a0 Even though the fact that Bush planned to invade Iraq well before 9\/11 is amply documented<\/a>, Chris Matthews did not want us to be reminded of it.\u00a0 Our media is now little more than a mouthpiece for authority, power, and wealth.<\/p>\n But even more than that, our government has a long history of abusing secrecy to withhold information, often for the most pitiful of reasons.\u00a0 The classic . . . and still shocking . . . case is United States versus Reynolds<\/a>.\u00a0 Basically, here’s what happened:<\/p>\n In 1948, a B-29 flying a peacetime test mission crashed in Georgia.\u00a0 Everyone aboard was killed, including three civilian employees of RCA who were testing a piece of radar equipment.\u00a0 The widows of the RCA employees sought damages in federal court, but the USAF would not release the accident report, claiming the tests conducted on the flight were classified and that the release of the report would compromise national security.\u00a0 The case eventually went to the Supreme Court, which in 1953 sided with the USAF.\u00a0 Not only was this particular report now protected, the USAF was safe from any other lawsuits arising from accidents where it could claim the necessity to protect national security.<\/p>\n In 2000, the accident report was routinely declassified and released.\u00a0 Nothing in it related to the “secret” radar tests.\u00a0 It was a straightforward accident report, pinning the blame for the fatal crash squarely on the USAF, which had authorized the flight of an airplane with serious documented maintenance problems, problems severe enough that by the USAF’s own rules the aircraft should not have been released for flight.\u00a0 One of those problems led to an airborne engine fire which spread to the wing and fuel tanks, bringing the B-29 down.<\/p>\n In other words, the widows had a case, and the USAF knew it.\u00a0 The USAF covered its malfeasance by falsely claiming national security.\u00a0 Not only did they get away with it, they got themselves a Supreme Court precedent allowing them to abuse the power of classification again and again.\u00a0 Naturally, by the time the report was declassified, the widows were long dead.<\/p>\n So I have to ask myself, who is the greater enemy here?\u00a0 Those who expose lies and corruption, like Assange, or the corrupt liars themselves?\u00a0 Next time someone in the media tries to get you to tune into the daily Two Minutes Hate, you should ask yourself the same question.<\/p>\n Update (later, same day):<\/strong><\/em><\/span> I just learned that the federal government and military are warning job applicants, employees, and troops not to link to, or even read, WikiLeaks<\/a> . . . not just warning, but threatening them.\u00a0 Threatening them with what?\u00a0 For applicants, denial of employment and future security clearances; for employees and troops, prosecution for disclosing classified material (link #1<\/a>, link #2<\/a>, link #3<\/a>).\u00a0 Emmanuel Goldstein<\/span><\/span> Julian Assange is really on the shit list, isn’t he?<\/p>\n Remember when Donald Rumsfeld, after General Taguba’s DoD-directed report on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was released, retroactively claimed\u00a0 it was classified and threatened to prosecute military and DoD personnel who accessed it online?\u00a0 I blogged about it<\/a> at the time.\u00a0 This sort of close-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-out tactic is as pathetic and futile now as it was then.<\/p>\n