|
Breaches of trust
By
John Maxwell
11/30/05 "Jamaica Observer" -- -- As I understand them, the rules
are pretty simple. Freedom of the press is the public's right to
truthful information so that people can make up their own minds on
matters which may concern their survival, their happiness and their
ordinary existence.
Corporations cannot have human rights because they are not human
beings. Freedom of expression, of which freedom of the press is just
one part, is the essential baseline of democratic organisation. If
people do not know the truth, if it is distorted, skewed or hidden
from them, they are likely to endanger themselves and others because
they do not have the information on which they may act rationally
It is now clear from the opinion polls that in the matter of the
Iraq war, most Americans are now aware that they have been misled,
lied to and deceived by their leaders as well as by the press whose
duty it is to keep politicians honest and the stream of public
information pure and unsullied. .
The press, which is one expression of this freedom of expression,
has the duty and responsibility to tell the truth as completely and
as accurately as it can. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth is a rubric not just for the courthouse but for any
purveyor of public information.
The people have the right to know where their news originates, just
as they have the right to know where their drinking water
originates. In both cases, the people have the right to know that
what they are consuming has not been tampered with or adulterated in
any way.
So I have been bemused first by the case of Judith Miller and now by
the case of Bob Woodward. Both claim to be journalists, and until
now, both seemed to be. But now both have been exposed as stooges of
power, accomplices of people who distort the truth and feed lies to
the public to satisfy their own lusts and ambitions.
The recent disclosure by Bob Woodward that he has been, for two
years, helping to defend an official programme of lying and
disinformation has destroyed for me, whatever credibility Woodward
may have had as a chronicler of important events. He is an
accomplice in the falsification of history.
Some commentators in the US appear to believe that Woodward's
announcement means an 'ease-up' for Mr Scooter Libby, because
Woodward has said that Libby was not the first official to leak the
name of Valerie Plame to a journalist.
But that is not what Mr Libby is charged with. He is under
indictment for lying to a grand jury and to an FBI investigation and
for obstruction of justice. Nothing that Mr Woodward has said or can
say will change that. In fact, Mr Woodward's testimony may make life
more stressful for Mr Libby, since it is probably now possible to
reconstruct the lines of an official conspiracy to mislead the
American public and the world.
Two questions occur to me in this regard. First is to whom could Mr
Woodward have been talking who could have referred, almost as
gossip, about Mrs Wilson? The second is why would Mrs Wilson's name
have come up in this conversation, apparently, out of the blue?
Mr Woodward has bought himself a lot more time infront of the grand
jury and may end up being indicted himself.
Reasonable Doubt
In July 2003, shortly after Ambassador Wilson's op-ed piece in the
New York Times exposed the Niger uranium hoax, the Italian
journalist, Elisabetta Burba told Corriere della Sera that she gave
documents on Iraq seeking uranium from Niger to the US embassy in
Rome last year to try to find out if the information was credible.
"The story seemed fake to me," she said, and she published nothing
on it. "I realised that this could be a worldwide scoop, but . . .
if it turned out to be a hoax and I published it I would have ended
my career."
Miss Burba had gone to the trouble of going to Niger herself to
check the story before turning the papers over to the US embassy in
Rome. Presumably she told the embassy what she had done. She heard
nothing from the embassy.
One would have imagined that the Embassy would have made its own
inquiries before sending suspect documents up the line. It would
have been as easy or easier for the Embassy to send a fact checker
to Niger as it had been for Miss Burba.to go For some reason,
however, they appeared to have simply transmitted the documents to
Washington.
Miss Burba says that if the documents were true she would have had a
world scoop but that if they were not and she published them it
would have meant the end of her career.
If an Italian journalist could have had such reservations, would we
not expect that seasoned diplomats and intelligence professionals
would have had their own doubts and would have tried to resolve
them. They could simply have phoned the French Embassy in Rome or
the IAEA in Geneva. They did not apparently do any of these things.
The hoax had wheels and was moving fast.
In July 2003 when the hoax fell apart, the Sunday Telegraph phoned
the french Ambassador to Niger and the Independent phoned the Niger
minister of mines who both dismissed the story out of hand. France
controls the mining of uranium in Niger and the International Atomic
Energy Agency controls the disposition of uranium. Didn't the US
embassy know that?
Miss Burba, according to the Associated press, told Corriere della
Sera that the documents appeared to show that Iraq wanted to buy
uranium from Niger. She became suspicious because the documents
talked about huge amounts of uranium yet were short on details.She
then went to Niger.
On her return, she told her editor "the story seemed fake to me".
After further discussions, Burba brought the documents to the US
embassy.
"I went by myself and gave them the dossier. No one said anything
more to me," Burba was quoted as saying.
An extract from the top secret National Intelligence Estimate which
was used in composing Mr Bush's speech was released by the White
House in July 2003. According to that extract, the State department
told the CIA that "The claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in
Africa are, in INR's [the department's in-house intelligence arm]
assessment, highly dubious," the State Department wrote in a 90-page
report prepared by the CIA in October.
The State Department's said Saddam Hussein "continues to want
nuclear weapons" and is making "at least a limited effort to
maintain and acquire nuclear weapon-related capabilities". Those
activities "do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq
is currently pursuing an . . . integrated and comprehensive approach
to acquire nuclear weapons".
One imagines that such a report must have been prepared for the
White house, for the National Security Adviser certainly.
Condoleezza Rice, who then occupied that position. According to her,
when the yellow cake hit the fan, nobody in her neck of the woods
was conscious of any doubt about the claim.
However bizarre that explanation sounds, it does make one wonder why
then did Mr Bush transfer his source attribution to the British,
when his own intelligence agencies had told him four months before,
in October, to remove the reference to uranium from a speech he was
due to make.
According to a letter written to the chairman of the Permanent Joint
House Committee on Intelligence (then congressman, now FBI chief)
Porter Goss, Congressman Henry Waxman said that the White house
needed to explain the many discrepancies in how the uranium claim
came to be used in the president's State of the Union speech.
This was particularly because Mr tenet had fought hard for the
removal of a similar reference in the Cincinnati speech and was now
being blamed for its inclusion four months later in the State of the
Union speech.
Mr Waxman also wanted to understand Ms Rice's claim on "Face the
Nation in July 2003, that "Had there been even a peep that the
agency did not want that sentence in or that George tenet did not
want that sentence in, that the Director of Central Intelligence did
not want it in, it would have gone."
Can anyone believe that Ms Rice, her deputy, Stephen Hadley and
whoever was the speechwriter, were not aware of the brouhaha about
the Cincinnatti speech? That they did not know of the State
department's reservations?
It is clear to me either that the conspiracy is much bigger than
anyone seems to think or that the entire Bush White house spends
lots of time asleep at the wheel.Whichever is true, it seems to me
that there should be some extremely important changes coming soon in
the makeup of the Bush Administration.
As Mr Waxman put it two years ago, the credibility of the United
States is at stake. It has since been shredded by all the disclosure
about torture, outsourcing torture, secret prisons, terror weapons
and other flagrant breaches of the human rights of Americans,
Iraquis, Muslims in general and all sorts of other people, not to
mention the Haitian people moldering away in their island
concentration camp.
There was always the lingering belief that when all else failed, the
American press would rise up and do its duty . Bob Woodward has for
30 years been a worldwide icon for the integrity and doggedness of
the press in the pursuit of the truth. Today, the reputation of the
administration is in tatters and the probity of the press is seen to
be a comforting myth.
There are just two developments to be optimistic about. The Congress
and the American public both appear to be awakening after a long
slumber, induced by the opiate of the Big Lie. It is not only Hugo
Chavez and Fidel Castro and their people who feel menaced by a
superpower apparently out of control.
The rest of the world is just as uncomfortable. But even if balance,
peace and rationality are restored, most of us outside the United
States will not be comforted by the knowledge that it is so easy for
a small group of dedicated and unscrupulous men to capture the
wheelhouse of the world's only remaining superpower and steer it to
destabilise, fragment and eventually obliterate any chance of a
peaceful world order, wondering if they will wake up to smoking guns
in the form of mushroom clouds.
Almost exactly four years ago, in November 2001, then Attorney
General John Ashcroft proclaimed, "To those who scare peace-loving
people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is that your
tactics aid terrorists" .
He was not talking about the government of the USA but about the
Taliban.
Rightwing commentator William Safire said in that same week: "The
sudden seizure of power by the executive branch, bypassing all
constitutional checks and balances, is beginning to be recognized by
cooler heads in the White House, Defense Department and C.I.A. as
more than a bit excessive" and Safire believed that the American
constitution, the American legal system, American journalism and
other democratic institutions would, with spirit of the American
people, soon put things to rights.
He was wrong.
Copyright©John Maxwell - jonmax@mac.com
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
