Official Deception

2)HISTORY)@ Offi cial Deception when presidents lie By Eric Alterman ies, like the poor and taxes, will apparently always be with us. Parents warn children against lying; most people know that lying is “wrong,” but most people do it anyway. And that in- cludes presidents of the United States. From George Washing- ton to George W. Bush – some have kept secrets, others have obfuscated, others have told outright whoppers. Democrats, Republicans, Fed- Leralists, Whigs: they all are guilty of this sin. But is it a sin? Lying is much more complicated than it looks, both morally and practically. We are all aware, as Michel de Montaigne observed, that “[t]he opposite of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and a limitless fi eld.” Postmodernism has called into question our ability to know the “truth” of any situation at any time, much less to accurately describe it. As Friedrich Nietzsche asks, “Do the desig- nations and the things coincide? Is language the adequate expression of all re- alities?” Our religious traditions teach that many great men have lied. Jacob lied to steal his father’s blessing away from Esau. Peter denies three times before the cock crows that he is one of Jesus’s disciples. Much of one’s social life is lubricated by a host of apparently (and often genuinely) harmless lies. Any number of daily occurrences inspire the telling of inconsequential lies in which the act of dishonesty is not merely morally justi- fi able but close to a moral imperative. Who among us would wish to condemn Tom Sawyer for lying when he takes responsibility for Becky Thatcher’s acci- dental tearing of a special page from her teacher’s book and accepts the whip- ping in her stead? In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, two slave-catchers, looking for Jim, call out to him from the shore, demanding to know if anyone is on the raft with Huck, and, if so, whether the person is black or white. “White,” Huck says. Who would dare advise the hero to betray his friend by re- plying “black,” thereby ensuring a life of misery and human degradation for him and his family? Tk 32 In Character AAlterman-History1.inddlterman-History1.indd 3232 44/14/07/14/07 99:36:46:36:46 AMAM Spring 2007 33 AAlterman-History1.inddlterman-History1.indd 3333 44/14/07/14/07 99:36:47:36:47 AMAM People lie, nobly, to protect loved ones. But they also lie, ignobly, in the course of doing business. In a lengthy examination of the role of truth and lies in the entertainment industry published in 2001, the late Los Angeles Times writer David Shaw reported, “In Hollywood, deception is, for reporters and those who depend on them, a frustrating fact of everyday life. It appears to in- volve everything from negotiations and job changes to casting, fi nancing and scores from test screenings.” In June 2001, a Newsweek reporter who had no- ticed that a number of Sony Pictures Entertainment productions were receiv- ing consistently enthusiastic blurbs from a fi lm critic named David Manning, of the Ridgefi eld Press, a small Connecticut weekly, discovered that Manning didn’t exist; he and his blurbs had been created by Sony’s marketing team. Ac- cording to one study, most people tell between one and two lies each day, with subjects admitting to lying to between 30 and 38 percent of the people in their lives. (And, of course, they lie to pollsters, too, so these fi gures themselves may be questionable.) In a society like this, how to judge politicians? How to judge the most ex- alted of all politicians, our presidents, who are public servants but are also privy to secrets that the public absolutely must not know? It’s a diffi cult question, but before we can fi nd an answer, we must at least face the facts head on: presidents lie. ny number of factors tend to interfere with a contempo- rary American president’s telling his constituents what he knows to be the unvarnished truth about almost any topic. Among the most Aprominent is the argument that average citizens are simply too ignorant, busy, or emotionally immature to appreciate the diffi cult reality that is political de- cision-making. The pundit and public philosopher Walter Lippmann, writing in 1924, famously likened the average citizen in a democracy to a deaf specta- tor sitting in the back row of a sporting event: “He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen; he lives in a world which he cannot see, does not understand and is unable to direct.” Echoing these musings in his 1969 memoir, Present at the Creation, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote: The task of a public offi cer seeking to explain and gain support for a major policy is not that of the writer of a doctoral thesis. Qualifi cation must give way to simplicity of statement, nicety and nuance to bluntness, almost brutality, in carrying home a point.... In the State Department, we used to discuss how much time that mythical “average American citizen” put in each day listening, reading, and arguing about the world outside his country. Assuming a man or woman with a fair education, a family, and a job in or out of the house, it seemed to us that ten minutes a day would be a high average. If this were any- 34 In Character AAlterman-History1.inddlterman-History1.indd 3434 44/14/07/14/07 99:36:51:36:51 AMAM where near right, points to be understandable had to be clear. If we did make our points clearer than truth, we did not differ from most other educators and could hardly do otherwise. Acheson’s view of the attention span of the average citizen appears opti- mistic today, given what appears to be a steady decline of Americans’ interest in politics and public policy, coupled with the news media’s increasing focus on tabloid fare and “soft” features. Political scientists estimate the percentage of the public that is both interested and knowledgeable about even major foreign policy issues to be in the area of 8 to 20 percent. Yet “clearer than truth,” in Acheson’s formulation, is a tricky term. Acheson means The argument frequently it to imply that a president was able to reach a higher level of truth in his public statements by not making a fetish of adhering heard in modern times is to what he knew to be accurate – which is another way of excus- that the government’s need ing a lie. So, too, is the argument, frequently heard in modern to act swiftly and in secrecy times, that the government’s need to act swiftly and in secrecy on on matters of diplomacy matters of diplomacy and national security makes such democrat- and national security makes ic consultation impossible, even were it feasible given the relative ignorance of the populace. democratic consultation These questions are signifi cant ones, however, as the founda- impossible, even were it tion of democracy is public trust. “How,” John Stuart Mill quite feasible given the relative rightly asked, could citizens either “check or encourage what they ignorance of the populace. were not permitted to see?” Without public honesty, the process of voting becomes an exercise in manipulation rather than the expression of the consent of the governed. Many a scholar has persuasively argued that offi cial deception may be convenient, but that, over time, it under- mines the bond of trust between the government and the people that is essen- tial to the functioning of a democracy. Presidents, too, know that lying to their constituents is “wrong,” both in the strictly moral and philosophical sense and in the damage it causes to the democratic foundation of our political system. Yet they almost always contin- ue to lie to us, because they believe the lies they tell serve their narrow political interest on the matter in question. When, in early 2002, the Pentagon was forced to retract a plan to create an Offi ce of Strategic Infl uence for the pur- poses of distributing deliberate misinformation to foreign media, President Bush tried to undo the damage by saying, “We’ll tell the American people the truth.” At the very same moment the controversy was taking place, however, Bush’s solicitor general, Theodore Olson, was fi ling a friend of the court brief in a lawsuit against former Clinton administration offi cials whom Jennifer Harbury – a young woman whose husband had been killed in Guatemala by a CIA asset – accused of illegally misleading her about the knowledge they Spring 2007 35 AAlterman-History1.inddlterman-History1.indd 3535 44/14/07/14/07 99:36:51:36:51 AMAM possessed about her husband’s killers. Olson’s brief argued, “There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information,” as well as “incomplete information and even misinformation.” The Supreme Court dismissed the suit and refused to rule on the legality of offi cial lies. Of course, presidential lying is hardly a new concern in American history, particularly where matters of war and peace are concerned. Excessive secrecy, a close cousin of lying and frequently its inspiration, has been a key facet of American governance since literally before the nation’s founding. Re- porters were barred from the Constitutional Convention in 1789, and Secrecy and sometimes delegates were forbidden to reveal their deliberations. The ultimate lying are occasionally success of the endeavor does not obviate the larger problem to which unavoidable in war- it points.

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