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In the Shrouded Empire - Secrecy, Surveillance, and Subterfuge

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Doubtless the more worldly, disdainful view of secrecy evidenced by the temper of JFK's address derived less from his reading of spy fiction than it did from his recent experience of the catastrophically cocked-up Cuban invasion attempt that was the infamous Bay of Pigs, the pear shaped outcome of which it can safely be said went that way because so many of the planners -- mostly in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) -- kept far too many secrets, few of which they shared with the young president prior to his regrettable, and hugely regretted, decision to green-light this ill-fated, game changing mission.

Either way, it appears Kennedy and le Carre were kindred spirits. That the speech was presented before the then American Newspaper Publishers Association -- that august bastion at the time representing the so-called Fourth Estate, whose collective remit was purportedly holding to account those who publicly swear an oath to protect, preserve and uphold the Constitution -- provides us with another layer of substance to its content.

We will return to Kennedy's speech in a follow up piece, and with it more broadly [to] the role of the media -- specifically the role of investigative journalists and whistleblowers -- in "insuring" against "the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts" in the unequivocal support of a "free and open society". But first we need to fast forward to the here and now.

When a "new generation" of terminally hopeful Americans handed Barack Obama the keys to the White House, one of the pre-conditions in doing so was linked to the undertaking his administration would be more transparent and accountable than any previous one. Attendant with this promise was the expectation the U.S. government under Obama would be more protective of citizens' privacy and civil liberties, more inclined to safeguard whistle-blowers and investigative journalists, and reinstate and uphold a greater level of respect for the Constitution and the unalloyed freedom of the press. It was to be expected Obama would in fact 'delimit' "official censorship and concealment"; one might say a New Age of American 'glasnost' beckoned! (That a "New Age" of 'perestroika' might have also been expected is a story for another time.)

After eight years of sleight-of-hand governance, shell-game political expediency, and "excessive and unwarranted concealment" of information by president George W Bush, his vice-president Dick Cheney and their cabalistic caucus of secretive gatekeepers, most democracy-minded Americans were eagerly prepared for a new experiment in transparency and accountability -- a 'de-Bushification' of The Beltway, to coin a phrase -- in the way its government operated and functioned, and candour in the manner it communicated with "we the people" about its activities.

How's that "experiment" going then? By most objective accounts, not very well it would seem. The recent conviction of former CIA man Jeffrey Sterling for alleged offences under the ancient Espionage Act is ample testament to this, a case that we will return to in our follow-up piece.

At this point it is instructive enough to recall here that the recently re-elected Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Reince Priebus once reportedly declared that Obama was either "exceptionally naive or wilfully disingenuous" when he vowed to change the way Washington works. The way Priebus saw it,

"The very promise of 'hope' and 'change' was rooted in uprooting the Washington modus operandi. But instead of rejecting it, [Obama] embraced it all -- the secrecy, the closed doors, the political favors, the near-criminal negligence."

With a nod of fairness to Obama herein, one is compelled to wonder if the estimable RNC Chair was critiquing the degree of the president's perceived lack of integrity on righteous moral or ethical grounds for, as he defined it, embracing "it all", or that GOP wunderkind Priebus simply preferred the Republican 'embrace' of "the Washington modus operandi". And at all events Obama to a large degree took his cue from those who had already set the bar pretty high, something even Priebus would be hard pressed to repudiate with a straight face.

As it stands though, even a superficial knowledge of George Orwell's classic 1984 would lead one to believe that, in the secrecy and surveillance stakes, Obama indeed would be showing Big Brother -- and one suspects, both 'Dubya' and possibly even his 'Grand Vizier' of Stealth Cheney -- a clean pair of heels. In this Priebus may after all have a point, especially the bit about "the secrecy" and "the closed doors". And like many others he made, Obama's explicit promise in these matters is up there with our most memorable examples such as, "Yes, I will still love you in the morning!" and "Your cheque is in the mail!", to name just two of the three perennial 'family favourites'.

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Greg Maybury is a Perth (Australia) based freelance writer. His main areas of interest are American history and politics in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military and geopolitical affairs, and both US domestic and (more...)
 

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