Reaction to Deep Throat’s unmasking highlights the double standards that apply in a world where truth is impeached
By Ian Bell
05 June 2005
sundayherald.com
IT didn’t take them long to emerge from the woodwork. Emboldened, no doubt, by the Bush ascendancy in Washington, the old cabal of Watergate conspirators reacted to the news that W Mark Felt had identified himself as Deep Throat last week by rushing towards unfamiliar territory, the moral high ground.
Some of them had gone to prison for assisting Richard Milhous Nixon in his attempts to undermine the constitution of the United States. Suddenly that was of no consequence: it was Felt, formerly of the FBI, who was “a traitor” for encouraging Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and the Washington Post in their pursuit of a president for high crimes and misdemeanours. Nixon had tried to cheat his way to an election victory and broken the law repeatedly while struggling to cover up the fact. Yet it was Felt who was in the wrong, said the old gang, because he reminded the journalists continually that such conspiracies matter.
Had we not become accustomed to George W and his little ways, the gall of it might have been breathtaking. Nixon resigned in 1974 because Congress was preparing to impeach him. He only escaped punishment because his stumbling successor, Gerry Ford, was handy with pardons. Many of his underlings served time, deservedly.
Yet here was Gordon Liddy, “a common crook” in the words of Ben Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein’s editor, complaining about a lack of honour. Liddy got four-and-a-half years for engineering the break-in at Washington’s Watergate building by a gang that was supposed to plant bugs in the Democratic National Committee’s offices. Now a hero of right-wing talk-shows, he felt entitled to be sanctimonious, apparently, because Felt went to the papers rather than a grand jury.
Then there was Leonard Garment, once Nixon’s chief legal counsel. His intimate knowledge of law and justice caused him to muse that Felt, once the FBI’s chief investigator, had kept quiet for 31 years only because his behaviour over Watergate “could well be considered dishonourable”. Meanwhile, Chuck Colson, erstwhile head of White House communications, popped up with the view that Felt had set out “basically to undermine the administration”. That administration’s attempt to undermine US democracy seemed to matter little.
Pat Buchanan, formerly Nixon’s speech writer, settled for “traitor”. If you followed his logic, FBI agents, bound by oath, have no business helping to bring crimes to light if the means required are secretive or underhand. The small business of Nixon and the oath he swore to uphold the constitution seemed, when you listened to Buchanan, like a clerical matter.
But such are the times we live in. In fact, those who are nostalgic for Nixon must look on the Bush administration with a certain envy. Dicky got done for dirty tricks, lies and illegal slush funds. Here’s George with his secret military tribunals, indefinite detentions without charge, kidnapping, torture, systematic breaches of international law, manipulation of the media, and a pile of lies that could dam the Potomac: nothing happens.
Nothing happens despite all the freedom of information laws introduced in the US in the aftermath of Watergate. Nothing happens when US courts rule that Guantanamo prisoners have rights after all, implying that their captivity is less than lawful. Thirty years ago, Judge John Sirica, the real hero of Watergate, broke the Nixon presidency by demanding the production of hundreds of hours of taped, incriminating White House conversations. These days, the very idea that Bush might face judgement is fantastic. Small wonder the old hoodlums from the Nixon years feel free to rewrite history: what else has George W been doing?
These are difficult times for whistleblowers. Tony Blair has shrugged off two official (but not unfriendly) inquiries into the Iraq escapade, and brushed aside talk of impeachment. Even if someone in Downing Street had a fit of conscience and remembered the conversation in which Blair said, “Yup, I know it’s illegal, but there you go”, nothing would follow. Watergate, above all, has had the effect of educating governments. They know how to insulate themselves from scrutiny and they know how to fight fire with media fire if an inconvenient truth does slip out. If Bush owns the Senate and Blair the Commons, no other court can touch them.
Our lower house is entitled to sit as a court, should the need arise, which – and why is this no surprise? – it never does. How many Labour MPs could be counted on to convict Blair as a liar and a criminal? How many whistleblowers would be capable of finding a way through Britain’s official secrecy laws? The legal mechanisms for disclosure simply do not exist; the illegal ones offer few hopes of success. When British ministers resign it is because of “pressure”, “honour” and bad publicity, not because they face the sort of sanctions Nixon faced.
Bush, these days, is no less secure. During the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton, Britain’s press got itself into a lather over the thought that a president might fall. In Washington, during those days, the people you spoke to who were not neo-con nuts made a contrastingly simple calculation. Who has a majority in the Senate? Since the answer was the Democrats, and since that party was not about to hand their opponents a gift unless the republic itself was at stake, the game was over. Clinton, never forget, lied to a grand jury and earned no more than a mild rebuke. Small wonder that Bush is always so relaxed.
Even if you find a reliable whistleblower, and even if that whistleblower has, as they say, the goods, what next? Bradlee, his reporters and their proprietor, Katherine Graham, ran against a media tide just in keeping the Watergate story alive. Would a modern whistleblower trust Rupert Murdoch to do the right thing if given indisputable proof that Bush had committed a crime? It is one thing to have the story. These days, getting the story out is harder than ever before.
The political machines are more sophisticated than they were in the 1970s. Crisis management, even when the crisis is only likely to affect opinion poll ratings, is second nature to them. The media, particularly in America, is meanwhile compromised as never before, and practised in the art of self-censorship. Ever since the fall of Baghdad, US newspapers – the respectable ones at least – have been confessing they were duped. Few have asked why so many powerful news organisations fell for so many transparent and obvious lies.
Whistleblowers can be defamed, silenced and destroyed. They cannot have their day in court because courts deal but rarely with presidents and prime ministers. They can put word of a conspiracy out on the net, but how many believe any of the many conspiracies they read about through that medium? We have a paradox: as the means of communication proliferate, the lines of communication are being closed down, one by one.
A Gordon Liddy can distort history because of the assumption, difficult to dispute, that everyone is at it. You choose what you believe and disbelieve according to political prejudice. That is why Liddy, like Oliver North, the fall guy in the Iran-Contra scandal, is a hero to many conservative Americans. They claim the excuse they would deny to W Mark Felt: they broke the law for the right reason. They had a higher duty.
Perhaps that is their sincere belief. If so, are they any less culpable than Felt, or any less heroic? The problem with whistleblowing, as with any sort of espionage (for that is what it is), is moral relativism. Some of those who spied for the Soviet Union were given to claiming that they did so for world peace. Could that be a crime? Or rather, could a sincere belief in your own decent motives ever make you a criminal? If Liddy and Felt both believed their causes were just, which one is entitled to be called a hero?
I would say that Liddy was attempting to destroy US democracy while Felt was striving to preserve it: if democracy is the issue, there is no contest. But Nixon and his acolytes, like Bush and Blair, would contend that they broke a few rules for the sake of a greater good, like generals ready to sacrifice a few regiments of truth, and perhaps lose a moral battle or two, to win truth’s war. It’s the reason why, they sometimes claim, politicians have to lie, and why whistleblowers who cannot grasp the wider issues can’t be tolerated.
The argument is seductive. It collapses, nevertheless, at a touch. We cannot judge unless we know what the truth is. And we cannot know the truth if those we elect claim the right to decide what we need to be told. Whistleblowers are hard to come by, but without them we are deaf and blind. That’s the way governments like it. All honour, then, to old W Mark Felt. |
