Via the Cynic Librarian, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said he believes journalists can be
prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security:
"There are some statutes on the books which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected.
What is particularly chilling about this "jurisprudence of intimidation" is that it is being presented at the same moment the press has started doing its job - revealing government policies and procedures that are aimed at destroying opposition and dissent.
Geof Stone, a legal scholar over at the University of Chicago Law School has a post about the history of classified information and the Press. He indicates that a journalist has never been prosecuted for divulging "governement secrets" in the history of the United States.
But there was a moment in 1917, just as the U.S was about to enter World War I, that Congress debated enacting legislation that would have prohibited the publication of classified information:
Only three weeks after it voted a formal declaration of war under Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, Congress began debate on what would become the Espionage Act of 1917. Although the Act was directed primarily at espionage, the original bill included what we can call the “press” provision. This provision would have made it unlawful in time of war for the press to publish any information that the president declared to be “of such character that it is or might be useful to the enemy.” The proposed provision added that “nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or restrict any discussion, comment, or criticism of the acts or policies of the Government...”
Opposition to the provision was fierce. Representative Simeon Fess of Ohio warned that “in time of war we are apt to do things” we should not do. Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts expressed concern that the government officials who would administer this provision would use their authority to stifle legitimate criticism of the government. Representative Medill McCormick of Illinois added that he was appalled to think that if an epidemic were to break out in the Army the proposed provision might empower the president to prohibit the press from “drawing public attention to the condition of the troops.”
In response, proponents of the provision invoked the clause guaranteeing that “nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or restrict any discussion, comment, or criticism of the acts or policies of the Government.” Opponents replied that it was impossible effectively to criticize the policies of the government without discussing the information on which the criticism was based.
As Stone points out, the House of Representatives defeated the provision by a vote of 184 to 144, with 36 Democrats joining the Republican opposition. And thank god they did. If only the current Republicans knew a little history.
I feel trapped in my limited range of reactions: oh my god it's so awful!, what did we expect, we knew it all along, it's unimaginable! we did imagine it! It's like a perfect Zizekian trap: impossible and inevitable/unavoidable at the same time.
Posted by: Jodi | May 25, 2006 at 08:29 AM
Jodi, I really do feel the same way. Everytime I see a glimmer of hope, I think the Republican Congress might actually challenge the absurd abuses of power, I am brought back to reality - the Senate intelligence committee has just given its blessing to the NSA telephone surviellance program by endorsing the nomination of the man who is in charge of it. Even the democrats on the committee overwhelmingly voted in favor of General Hayden (I think Feingold and one other voted against him.) There is no indication that even if the democrats were to win back either the house or the Senate that there would be signifcantly more oversight.
I recently saw "All the President's Men" again on PBS. What struck me was a moment near the end of the film when they realize that the cover-up had little to do with the break-in - it was really an attempt to hide the fact that Nixon was using the resources of the government to monitor and persecute his political enemies. Today, these concerns are completely absent from the public discourse - no one wants to impune the "integrity" or motivations of the administration. Why? I think it goes beyond fear of being seen as "soft" on terrorists - this might sound nuts but I think it is a view that government has the right to do anything in order to maintain its monopoly on violence. This view is shared by the elites in both parties - and civil liberties are largely irrelevant.
Posted by: Alain | May 25, 2006 at 09:38 AM
The comments by Gonzales about tracking down journalists who publish leaked information is just one more indication that the Bush administration is attempting to usurp the government via expansion of its constitutional powers. The legal rationale they use Article 2 of the US constitution to propose a unitary executive wherein the President, it's asserted, has powers in time of war that trump any other laws that Congress may have passed.
A blog that is very good at addressing the legal issues involved in this usurpation of power is Glenn Greenwald's blog. Glenn's nowhere near to being a Radical thinker; in fact, he's a former wall street lawyer. But the insight he brings to constitutional issues surrounding NSA domestic spying and the related issues of executive overreach are insightful and very well argued. His comments on imprisoning journalists is here.
I think that the Bush admin's hardball approach to press leaks exemplifies what Richard Sennett has called "soft fascism." Sennett writes: "Hard fascism rams home to the citizen that he or she is held in that iron grip, as in Mussolini's theatre of force or George Orwell's nightmare Nineteen Eighty-four. Soft fascism is not so much a velvet glove as an invisible hand, the operations of control hidden from scrutiny as Patriot Act II, and more, internal repression presented to the public as merely preventive action against threats that have yet to materialise. The Bush administration acted in this preventive way, for instance, by shutting three of the larger Muslim charities in America, not for anything they had done, but for what might happen, some time, somewhere. In hard fascism the state exploits concrete fear, in soft fascism the state exploits diffuse anxiety."
The Bush admin's anti-media campaign is just one more effort to discredit the major news media as purveyors of truth. By asserting that journalists are helping the terrorists, the Bush program of intimidating truth-tellers shuts down opposition from that quarter, as well as creates distrust of the information channels within the public at large.
In the same way that Reagan went after the unions, Bush and the Attorney General hope to pollute the stream of information so that its overall campaign to instill anxiety and fear in the public can proceed unopposed. Isn't that what a fascist state does? IE Instil an environment of distrust among people so that the government can exploit that distrust and fear to maintain control over the populace? If people are on the look out for terrorists among us, they will not question the very real socio-economic factors that the government uses to control them and to deflect discussion or awareness of the socio-economic injustices in the world and at home.
Posted by: cynic librarian | May 25, 2006 at 12:51 PM
Personally I don't think it's even that good for the Republicans that they allowed the kind of bottomless free pass the congress and democrats have given them. I think this is shown by the fact that they are off kilter. A correctional moment might be coming: the midterm elections. One does not have to have exaggerated expectations of such things to acknowledge that they play a role in the ever-developing drama of "which way for the U.S.?" But I am reminded of the Italian elections recently. In the recent April 9-10 Italian parliamentary elections, the long-running "center"-right coalition, led by the execrable, loathesome Silvio Berlusconi, lost -- but only by an incredibly small sliver of 23,000 votes. What happened was that everybody was completely sick of Berlusconi in the Fall of 2005. If the vote had been held then -- I think Berlusconi would have been decisvely rejected. But the left peaked early, and by mid-April the electorate had been absolutely soaked with a media assault organized and personally led by Berlusconi, and he almost pulled it off. Same thing happened to Germany's Merkel from the other end of the spectrum: she peaked early and was vulnerable to the late charge by Schroeder. I worry that the Democrats, too, are seeing a kind of peak of discontentment with Bush (especially among likely voters, including conservatives and republicans) that is coming too early. Rove and company have too much time to try their wiles on the American people for my liking.
Posted by: John S. Ransom | May 25, 2006 at 04:24 PM
If I may be allowed to add one more thing: I think republicans have seriously overplayed their hand, in part aided by the lack of opposition. Take the anti-war movement. A lot of republicans would have loved to have seen a more serious anti-war movement. It would've given them a target to shoot at. Here in Italy there is a bit of a social movement, though not very strong. Nothing like France (or rather, Paris), which has once again taken its rightful place in Europe as the place most likely to host popular battles against established powers. In Italy, what the right always does is say "well, look at these really violent no-global youths who smash shop windows and burn a few cars and sometimes also burn the Israeli flag -- they're a part of the center-left." And the center-left replies, "That's just a very small part of our coalition and we denounce violence." The reply of the left doesn't stick at all. With an anti-war, no-global movmment, the Italian right is able to smear the whole progressive left with rhetorical ease. I think Rush Limbaugh and others would love to have a bunch of anti-war hippies to scream about. But it's never happened. And I think that not all of that energy has simply leaked away. Freud and Nietzsche teach us that it's no problem for psychic energy if its original *object* of desire is unavailable or forbidden. It's simply transferred to another object, in a process we experts in Freudian psychology call -- 'transference.' And so instead of blowing all our psychic energy on a fruitless anti-war movement that provides more propaganda value for our enemies than for ourselves, the great American people will vote out a bunch of these horrible, horrible republicans and democrats will retake the house. That's why I don't feel as trapped as a few have commented above. Look, even for Hitler, the dice came up snake eyes one day. And he's got to be one of the luckiest persons who's ever lived.
In a word: we're due. For snake eyes, see here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/snake-eyes-1
Posted by: John S. Ransom | May 25, 2006 at 04:38 PM
I don't know why you're getting all exercised over these liberal rights. After the revolution there will be no need for a free press. The truth will set the press free. Isn't that what is called Leninism?
Posted by: bjk | May 27, 2006 at 04:19 AM
Digby
Posted by: mc | May 27, 2006 at 12:09 PM
The demagogues in Congress want to ram home to the press the fact that no one, no one, messes with the Prez. The NYT reports:
As I noted at Greenwald's blog, the demagogues are just playing to the polls. Sadly enough, a recent poll shows that a significant minorty of Americans think the press should have moderate to severe restrictions on its freedom:
Posted by: cynic librarian | May 27, 2006 at 04:40 PM
Hmmmmm.... (via)
Judging from the address left by 1:51:56, I hereby propose that "cynic librarian" is in fact Glen Greenwald. Discuss?
Posted by: Dasherland Egost | July 29, 2006 at 12:55 PM
Or perhaps just temporarily impersonating our friend cynic?
Posted by: Matt | July 29, 2006 at 12:59 PM