{"id":39546,"date":"2014-02-17T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=39546"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:11:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:11:06","slug":"clapper-reads-from-the-bushcheneynixon-playbook-to-fear-monger-over-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/02\/clapper-reads-from-the-bushcheneynixon-playbook-to-fear-monger-over-transparency\/","title":{"rendered":"Clapper Reads from the Bush\/Cheney\/Nixon Playbook to Fear-Monger over Transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Clapper, President Obama\u2019s top national security official, is probably best known for having been caught lying outright to Congress<\/a> about NSA activities, behavior which (as some baseball<\/a> players found out<\/a>)\u00a0happens to be a felony under federal law<\/a>. But \u2013 like torturers and Wall Street tycoons before him \u2013 Clapper has been not only shielded from prosecution, and not only allowed to keep his job; he has has now been anointed the arbiter of others\u2019 criminality, as he parades around the country calling American journalists \u201caccomplices\u201d<\/a>. Yesterday, as Wired\u2019s Dave Kravets reports<\/a>, the \u201cclearly frustrated\u201d Clapper went before a Senate committee (different than the one he got caught lying to) to announce that the Snowden disclosures are helping the terrorists:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re beginning to see changes in the communications behavior of adversaries: particularly terrorists. A disturbing trend, which I anticipate will continue . . .\u00a0Terrorists and other adversaries of this country are going to school<\/b> on U.S. intelligence sources, methods, and tradecraft. And the insights they\u2019re gaining are making our job in the intelligence community much, much harder. And this includes putting the lives of members or assets of the intelligence community at risk, as well as those of our armed forces, diplomats, and our citizens.<\/p>\n

As Kravets notes, \u201cClapper is not the most credible source on Snowden and the NSA leaks.\u201d Moreover, it\u2019s hardly surprising that Clapper is furious at these disclosures given that \u201cSnowden\u2019s very first leak last June\u201d \u2013 revelation of the domestic surveillance program<\/a> \u2013 \u201chad the side-effect of revealing that Clapper had misled the public and Congress about NSA spying.\u201d And, needless to say, Clapper offered no evidence at all to support his assertions yesterday; he knows that, unlike Kravets, most establishment media outlets will uncritically trumpet his claims<\/a> without demanding evidence or even noting that he has none.<\/p>\n

But in general, it\u2019s hardly surprising that national security officials claim that unwanted disclosures help terrorists. Fear-mongering comes naturally to those who wield political power. Particularly in post-9\/11 America, shouting \u201cterrorists!\u201d has been the favorite tactic of the leadership of both parties to spread fear and thus induce submission.<\/p>\n

In a recent New York Times op-ed<\/i><\/a> detailing how exploitation of terrorism fears is the key to sustaining the modern surveillance state, Northwestern University Philosophy Professor Peter Ludlow wrote that \u201csince 9\/11 leaders of both political parties in the United States have sought to consolidate power by leaning \u2026 on the danger of a terrorist attack\u201d. He\u00a0recounted that \u201dMachiavelli notoriously argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble\u201d and that \u201cHobbes in \u2018The Leviathan\u2019 argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign.\u201d\u00a0It would be surprising if people like Clapper didn\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n

But what has struck me is how seriously many media figures take this claim. In the vast majority of interviews I\u2019ve done about NSA reporting, interviewers adopt a grave tone in their voice and trumpet the claims from U.S. officials that our reporting is helping the terrorists. They treat these claims as though they\u2019re the by-product of some sort of careful, deliberative, unique assessment rather than what it is: the evidence-free tactics national security state officials reflexively<\/i> invoke to discredit all national security journalism they dislike. Let\u2019s review a bit of history to see how true that is.<\/p>\n

Here, for instance, is Dick Cheney, in a June, 2006 speech<\/a>, condemning The New York Times<\/i> for its reporting on the NSA warrantless eavesdropping and SWIFT banking programs, sounding exactly<\/i> like James Clapper yesterday, along with countless Democratic commentators and blogs over the last year:<\/p>\n

Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made it harder to defend America against attack by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs.<\/b><\/p>\n

First they reported the terrorist surveillance program, which monitors international communications when one end is outside the United States and one end is connected with or associated with al Qaeda. Now the Times has disclosed the terrorist financial tracking program.<\/p>\n

On both occasions, the Times had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials. They went ahead anyway. The leaks to The New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging to our national security.<\/p>\n

The ability to intercept al Qaeda communications and to track their sources of financing are essential if we\u2019re going to successfully prosecute the global war on terror. Our capabilities in these areas help explain why we have been so successful in preventing further attacks like 9\/11. And putting this information on the front page makes it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks. Publishing this highly classified information about our sources and methods for collecting intelligence will enable the terrorists to look for ways to defeat our efforts<\/b>. These kinds of stories also adversely affect our relationships with people who work with us against the terrorists. In the future, they will be less likely to cooperate if they think the United States is incapable of keeping secrets.<\/p>\n

Cheney was joined by George Bush<\/a>, who called the NYT\u2019s reporting \u201cdisgraceful\u201d and said: \u201cThe fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror.\u201d Bush White House spokesman Tony Snow added: \u201cIn choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counterterrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources<\/b> used to track their money trail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush made exactly the same accusations in 2005<\/a> as Clapper did yesterday after the NYT back then (finally)<\/a> revealed the NSA\u2019s warrantless eavesdropping program. \u201cMy personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we\u2019re discussing this program is helping the enemy<\/b>\u2026.It is a shameful act by somebody who has got secrets of the United States government and feels like they need to disclose them publicly.\u201d A week later, Bush officials announced a criminal investigation of the leaks and said<\/a>: \u201cOur enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, [and] endangers our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the GOP-led House actually passed a formal resolution<\/a>\u00a0condemning the NYT and \u201ccall[ing] on news organizations to avoid exposing Americans \u2018to the threat of further terror attacks\u201d by revealing U.S. government methods of tracking terrorists.\u201d Then House Majority Leader John Boehner said: \u201cWe\u2019ve just tipped off all of the terrorists around the world<\/b> that here is another way that we could have caught you, but now you know about it.\u201d\u00a0Rep. Mike Oxley, the GOP Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called the paper\u2019s reporting \u201ctreasonous\u201d, saying: \u201cWe are at war, ladies and gentlemen. Now some of you folks find that an inconvenient fact.\u201d GOP Congressman Peter King\u00a0called for the prosecution of the Times journalists and editors<\/a> responsible for the stories \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous,\u201d he said \u2013 just as he\u2019s done<\/a> for journalists involved in the current NSA reporting.<\/p>\n

These same platitudes have been hauled out by U.S. officials for decades. When Daniel Ellsberg disclosed the Pentagon Papers, Nixon officials repeatedly smeared him<\/a>\u00a0– with no evidence \u2013 as likely working in conjunction with Russia (sound familiar<\/a>?), while he and the NYT were repeatedly accused of damaging national security, putting our men and women in uniform in harm\u2019s way, and helping America\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n

Political officials hate transparency.They would rather be able to hide what they\u2019re doing. They therefore try to demonize those who impose transparency with the most extreme and discrediting accusations they can concoct (you\u2019re helping terrorists kill Americans!<\/i>). The more transparency one imposes on them, the more extreme and desperate this accusatory rhetoric becomes. This is not complicated. It\u2019s all very basic.<\/p>\n

James Clapper is saying exactly<\/i> what Dick Cheney and George Bush before him said, and those three said what John Ehrlichman and Henry Kissinger said before them about Ellsberg. It\u2019s all spouted with no evidence. It\u2019s rote and reflexive. It\u2019s designed to smear and fear-monger. As Professor Ludlow notes, \u201cFear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s time for journalists to cease being the leading advocates for state secrecy and instead take seriously their claimed role as watchdogs. At the very least, demand evidence<\/i> before these sorts of highly predictable, cliched attacks are heralded as something to be taken seriously. As it is, they\u2019re just cartoons: ones that are played over and over and over.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Murtaza Hussain<\/a> contributed research and reporting.<\/i><\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, and author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His fifth book, <\/i>No Place to Hide<\/em>, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world, will be released in April 2014. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn\u2019s column was featured at <\/i>Guardian US<\/em> and <\/i>Salon<\/em>. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2019s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, <\/i>Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He lives in Rio, Brazil.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it\u2019s time for journalists to cease being the leading advocates for state secrecy and instead take seriously their claimed role as watchdogs. At the very least, demand evidence before these sorts of highly predictable, cliched attacks are heralded as something to be taken seriously. As it is, they\u2019re just cartoons: ones that are played over and over and over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}