Information control under bogus “national security” claims
Editing, re-reporting, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
Some journalists risk intimidation, detention, even their
lives simply for exercising their right to seek, receive and impart information
and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers ─ UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon
On the “Democracy Now” program this week Pentagon Papers/New
Times attorney James C. Goodale called attention to the Obama government’s insidious
breaches, regressive actions toward the U.S. Constitution and the Fourth Estate.
Wikipedia
note: The “Pentagon Papers” were first brought to the attention of the
public in 1971 on the front page of The New York Times.
A 1996 article in The New York
Times said that the Pentagon Papers ‘demonstrated, among other things, that the
Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the
public; but also to Congress about a subject of transcendent national interest
and significance’. The report was declassified and publicly released in June
2011.
The “official” title of the U. S.
Department of Defense’s history of the United States’ political-military
involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 (generally referred to as the Pentagon Papers)
was “United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the
Department of Defense.”
In the immediate news stream of the Obama government’s
spying on the Associated Press and the rising secrecy in foreign relations and corresponding
restraint of a free press, Goodale brings past to present and raises the alarm
on a dangerous regression ─ especially for the promise and potential of a
democratic state.
The “Pentagon Papers” was a “case about censorship” and when
it was concluded, the people and the press thought progress had been achieved.
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell
─ notorious for pushing the Nixon administration’s
‘law-and-order’ positions against anti-war demonstrators and whose participation
in the Watergate scandal earned him some prison time ─ “got very excited about
prosecuting The New York Times,” James Goodale said. “So he (Mitchell) convened
a grand jury in Boston, because there was some evidence that the Pentagon
Papers had been circulated in the antiwar community before they were published
by The New York Times.
“…The theory was that the New York Times reporter [had] conspired
with those antiwar protesters, and (Mitchell) was going to indict them for conspiracy.”
What was that line about “liberty”
and perpetual
“vigilance”?
“vigilance”?
Fast forward 40+ years: Obama charges “conspiracy”
The Obama government “has convened a grand jury we haven’t
heard about,” Goodale said, “[but] it’s still there.” He said he thinks that
grand jury may have in secrecy “indicted [Julian] Assange.” The charge, “Conspiracy
…, [a claim] that is very easy to prove; [unlike] espionage, which is very hard
to prove under the Espionage Act.” So this president, Goodale said, “is doing an
end run: trying to get an easy case against Assange ─ after he has convicted Bradley
Manning.”
Regression: Supercharged-Nixonesque Obama
We have “gone full secret, the full circle,” Goodale said. When
the Pentagon Papers were published, “all the journalists and publishers said
it’s a new era. The government is not going to be able to keep the secrets
anymore.” Goodale points out that “they are not secrets, anyway.” Publishing
the Pentagon Papers means, he explained, that “they [government officials] are not
going to be able to hold back the information. We’ve had this great victory.” Nixon
was the thirty-seventh president; then comes the forty-fourth.
 |
| Press Freedom Day May 3 |
“We’ve got Obama who has indicted six journalists [and] in
the AP situation he is trying to find the seventh source to indict.
Secrecy has increased during the
Obama administration.
We have gone nowhere in terms of
that.
Whether the claim or pretext is “terror” or “terrorist” or “terrorism”
or whether it is “national security”, whatever and whenever any president or head
of state pronounces it as such ─ there's something seriously wrong here.
7 MILLION AND COUNTING
The Obama government in a single year, Goodale said, has “classified
seven million documents. Everything is
classified.”
That gives “the government the ability to control all its
information on the theory that it is classified; and if anybody asks for it and
gets it ─ they are complicit and they are going to go to jail. This means:
The process of news gathering is criminalized. The
dissemination of information, which is inevitable, out of the ‘classified’
sources of that information ─ is ended.
The controversy today concerning the government’s surveillance
of the Associated Press “is about a ‘national security’ exception to press
privilege,” Goodale says.
Great Danger prompts urgent call to action
Julian Assange is “quite right in talking about the threat
to journalism with respect to the way [the Obama government] is going about
prosecuting Assange.” If this prosecution goes forward, Goodale says, it will, in
fact, “criminalize news gathering.…” It
goes like this, he says:
I talk to you and ask you to give
me a secret or anything, but in fact that ‘anything’ may be ‘classified’; and
Givers, receivers, and disseminators
of that information are going to go to the hoosegow.
Seven million and counting — everything is classified. Government
is enabled to control all government information on the theory that it is “classified.”
With the Pentagon Papers he says, “We have a very good
precedent in that [the current president] cannot stop the press before
printing.” But in the digital age, “no one cares about that …” and the issue
becomes “what the government will do after publication.… What are the
rules there? This is a new chapter in the history of the Pentagon Papers.”
There is great danger here. And though journalists “may not
like” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, they must “wake up!” because “the First
Amendment is going to be damaged” if the Obama government proceeds with
prosecution. If this president succeeds, Goodale says, “He will have succeeded
where [President] Nixon failed.”
“
|
Some journalists risk intimidation, detention, even their
lives simply for exercising their right to seek, receive and impart information
and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” ─ UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon
World Press Freedom Day (3rd day of May) was declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The declaration's intent is to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and to remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Sources and notes
Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP
Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution, Friday May 17, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/obama_worse_than_nixon_pentagon_papers
Goodale’s book Fighting for the Press, http://www.jamesgoodale.net/
James Goodale
James C. Goodale of the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton,
LLP first came to public prominence during the Pentagon Papers case of 1971. He
is an American lawyer, author and teacher.
His latest book “about what really took place in the
Pentagon Papers case … and the perils facing the press today” is Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of
the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. In approximately 200 articles
published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, he addresses “the role of
the press in the Information Revolution.”
Goodale is a leading First Amendment lawyer who has represented
The New York Times in all of this newspaper’s cases to go to the Supreme Court:
the Pentagon Papers case (The New York Times Co. v. The U.S.); The New York
Times Co. v. Sullivan (libel); Branzburg v. Hayes; and The New York Times Co.
v. Tasini, (digital rights).
He has been a professor since 1977 on various U.S.
university faculties and has been a member of the law firm of Debevoise &
Plimpton in 1980 where he and others have represented scores of media and
communications companies: The New York Times, the Hearst Corporation, NBC,
Cablevision, WNET/Channel 13, Infinity Broadcasting, the New York Observer, The
Paris Review, and others. He was outside general counsel for Channel 13/WNET
and a founding officer (secretary) of the New York Observer. http://www.jamesgoodale.net/biography.html
Pentagon Papers (briefly)
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States –
Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is
a United States Department of Defense history of the United States’
political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.
The papers were first brought to the attention of the public
on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York
Times said that the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things,
that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only
to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national
interest and significance". The report was declassified and publicly
released in June 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell
John Newton Mitchell (September 15, 1913 – November 9, 1988)
was the Attorney General of the United States from 1969 to 1972 under President
Richard Nixon. Prior to that, he was a noted New York municipal bond lawyer,
director of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, and one of Nixon's closest
personal friends; after his tenure as Attorney General, he served as director
of Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign.
Due to his involvement in the Watergate affair, he was
sentenced to prison in 1977 and served 19 months. As Attorney General, Mitchell
was noted for personifying the ‘law-and-order’ positions of the Nixon administration,
amid several high-profile anti-war demonstrations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell
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