This perfect system
" Its main programme is called Total Information Awareness, which means
precisely what it says. The object is for the US to build the
biggest data-surveillance system ever, to know everything about
everyone, everywhere, just in case."
Matthew Engel
Tuesday November 19, 2002
The Guardian
The elite American press prides itself on its old-fashioned
inaccessibility: grey type, don't-read-me layout, and, on a bad
day, totally impenetrable prose. Perhaps the Washington Post
has already revealed that Osama bin Laden is working in an
attorney's office in downtown DC, but none of us have managed
to get to page A27 to read the story.
This tendency may partially explain the strange lack of reaction
to news of the return of one John Poindexter: a name that might
sound familiar, but which perhaps only the most obsessive pub
quizzer could immediately place.
Vice-Admiral Poindexter was national security adviser in the
Reagan administration before being named as "the
decision-making head" of the Iran-Contra affair, the scheme to
sell weapons to Iran to fund anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.
He was jailed, but eventually got off, solely because it was ruled
that his evidence had congressional immunity.
However, another relevant fact about Washington is that no one
disappears. Ambitious functionaries who have once glimpsed
the frilly underwear of power can never bring themselves to go
back to the winceyette nighties of Peoria. They linger around
town: in attorney's offices (with or without Osama) or thinktanks,
as lobbyists or academics. Then, when the time is ripe, they
creep back into government.
And with the Pentagon currently able to command as many
billions of dollars as Donald Rumsfeld demands, this is the
moment of opportunity for anyone with rightwing credentials and
a half-baked idea. Poindexter has re-emerged as head of a new
Pentagon operation - with a $200m annual budget - called the
information awareness office.
Its logo gives the flavour: an eye illuminating the world and the
slogan "Scientia est potentia" (Knowledge is power). Its main
programme is called Total Information Awareness, which means
precisely what it says. The object is for the US to build the
biggest data-surveillance system ever, to know everything about
everyone, everywhere, just in case.
Now you may be of the school of thought that thinks only a
terrorist or criminal could worry about the US Department of
Defence having access to every imaginable piece of data:
emails, credit card records, telephone bills, even - if Poindexter's
dreams come true - security camera sightings, whether in its
jurisdiction or not. If so, you appear to be in good company
because no one here seemed bothered either.
A news agency first put out a report almost a month ago. There
was no newspaper coverage at all until a story in the New York
Times three weeks later. Finally, on Thursday, the Times
columnist William Safire got into the subject with a ferocious
attack on the plan, headed "You are a suspect". This was
followed up on the front page of the Washington Times the
following day.
Bear with me: these names are significant. Safire, once Richard
Nixon's speech writer, is the leading Republican-minded
columnist on his paper, and the Washington Times - owned by
the Moonies - is almost certainly the most rightwing newspaper
on earth.
Where, you might ask, was the famous liberal press? Where
was the political opposition? If the Tories came back to power in
Britain and some old scapegrace - Jonathan Aitken or Neil
Hamilton - was quietly rehabilitated and handed oodles of money
to construct a scheme like this, wouldn't someone in the Labour
party ask a question or two?
In so far as they were awake at all, the Democrats turned out to
be implicated.According to the Washington Times, the proposal
was actually included in the Democrats' own version of the
homeland security bill, the final wording of which is still being
bickered over, though hardly debated, in the Senate.
As of yesterday morning, the only active politician on record on
the subject was Bob Barr, a Republican congressman also
associated with the extreme right, who called the whole thing
"outrageous", but added: "In defence of members of Congress,
many don't read the whole legislation and very few people read
the fine print." However, the New York Times' editorialists finally
woke up yesterday and advised: "Congress should shut down
the programme pending a thorough investigation."
What the fallout from September 11 revealed was that the US
government is not so much short of information, as incapable of
sifting what it has. You might have thought that rectifying this
situation would be an important question for full debate in the
legislature and media of a free society. Two weeks ago
someone at the Pentagon told me sharply that the American
political system "worked perfectly". Analyse and discuss.
matthew.engel@guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk |
