Walter Cronkite: Secrets and Lies Becoming Commonplace

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: April 6, 2004 10:10:26 PM PDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Walter Cronkite: Secrets and Lies Becoming Commonplace

Secrets and Lies Becoming Commonplace
  By Walter Cronkite
  King Features Syndicate
<http://staugustine.com/stories/040404/opi_2233122.shtml>

  The initial refusal of President Bush to let his national security adviser
appear under oath before the 9/11 Commission might have been in keeping with
a principle followed by other presidents -- the principle being, according
to Bush, that calling his advisers to testify under oath is a congressional
encroachment on the executive branch's turf.

   (Never mind that this commission is not a congressional body, but one he
created and whose members he handpicked.)

   But standing on that principle has proved to be politically damaging, in
part because this administration -- the most secretive since Richard Nixon's
-- already suffers from a deepening credibility problem. It all brings to
mind something I've wondered about for some time: Are secrecy and
credibility natural enemies?

   When you stop to think about it, you keep secrets from people when you
don't want them to know the truth. Secrets, even when legitimate and
necessary, as in genuine national-security cases, are what you might call
passive lies.

   Take the recent flap over Richard Foster, the Medicare official whose
boss threatened to fire him if he revealed to Congress that the
prescription-drug bill would be a lot more expensive than the administration
claimed. The White House tried to pass it all off as the excessive and
unauthorized action of Foster's supervisor (who shortly after the threatened
firing left the government).

   Maybe. But the point is that the administration had the newer, higher
numbers, and Congress had been misled. This was a clear case of secrecy
being used to protect a lie. I can't help but wonder how many other faulty
estimates by this administration have actually been misinformation explained
as error.

   The Foster story followed by only a few weeks the case of the U.S. Park
police chief who got the ax for telling a congressional staffer -- and The
Washington Post -- that budget cuts planned for her department would impair
its ability to perform its duties. Chief Teresa Chambers since has accepted
forced retirement from government service.

   Isolated incidents? Not really. Looking back at the past three years
reveals a pattern of secrecy and of dishonesty in the service of secrecy.
Some New Yorkers felt they had been lied to following the horrific collapse
of the World Trade Center towers. Proposed warnings by the Environmental
Protection Agency -- that the air quality near ground zero might pose health
hazards -- were watered down or deleted by the White House and replaced with
the reassuring message that the air was safe to breathe.

   The EPA's own inspector general said later that the agency did not have
sufficient data to claim the air was safe. However, the reassurance was in
keeping with the president's defiant back-to-work/business-as-usual theme to
demonstrate the nation's strength and resilience. It also was an early
example of a Bush administration reflex described by one physicist as "never
let science get in the way of policy."

   In April 2002, the EPA had prepared a nationwide warning about a brand of
asbestos called Zonolite, which contained a form of the substance far more
lethally dangerous than ordinary asbestos. However, reportedly at the last
minute, the White House stopped the warning. Why? The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, which broke the story, noted that the Bush administration at
the time was pushing legislation limiting the asbestos manufacturer's
liability. Whatever the reason, such silence by an agency charged with
protecting our health is a silent lie in my book.

   One sometimes gets the impression that this administration believes that
how it runs the government is its business and no one else's. It is
certainly not the business of Congress. And if it's not the business of the
people's representatives, it's certainly no business of yours or mine.

   But this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to
find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the
dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up
a disturbing image of a very different kind of society.

   Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies.


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/