It’s Not News, It’s Propaganda, Part 2

“You said that the F.B.I. cleared Edward Snowden of acting with anyone else or as part of a spy ring.  Why are we even talking about this then?  How can Mike Rogers pretend the F.B.I. report doesn’t exist, go on TV, and accuse Snowden of being a spy for the Russian secret police?”

“When you’re trying to sell a lie,” said Tom, “you don’t acknowledge the truth and apologize.  You don’t shut your mouth and slink away.  You ignore the truth and boldly repeat the lie.  You repeat it over and over, and in this case Snowden’s attackers got TV talk shows to offer them a forum to spew their falsehoods on three major networks on one Sunday.  Tell me, doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange--this massive, one-sided, simultaneous attack on Snowden?” 

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “it does seem weird.  It’s just too great a coincidence to think that three networks all decided independently to feature attacks on Snowden on the same day.  Somebody had to have coordinated it.  Orchestrated it.  To pretend it just happened accidentally is as likely as numerous Japanese planes all just happening to descend on Pearl Harbor at the same time on the same day in 1941.”

Tom nodded agreement.  “I think of it as ‘the sound of one tongue flapping’,” he said.  “The congressional leadership on intelligence, the NSA,  the administration, and the main stream media have formed a chorus, all singing the same melody with the same lyrics, trying to drown out Mr. Snowden’s message.”

“I don’t know if many people have followed all the details, though, Tom.  It’s a lot to keep up with.”  

“I’m not sure people have to, Ace.  Besides looking at the evidence, which we’ve already done, there’s a different method people often use to decide who’s likely to be telling the truth.  It’s not based on a legal model, with evidence and witnesses, but it’s a rough-and-ready method that people have been using for centuries.” 

“You mean torture?” I gasped.

“No, no,” he said, startled.  “I mean just asking yourself what people stand to gain in a situation.  That often makes pretty clear who’s likely to be lying.”

“Ah, I’ve got it now.  Sure.  Shoot,” I said.

  “Not a good choice of words, Ace,” said Tom.  “Several anonymous members of our spy agencies have said they’d like to kill Mr. Snowden.”

“Oh, right.  Sorry,” I said.

“Anyway,” Tom went on, “What did Mr. Snowden gain when he decided to take his knowledge of the NSA’s secret surveillance to the public?”  Again he started ticking off points on his fingers.  “It cost him his well-paying job and his career.  It threw him into exile, separated him from his family and girlfriend, held a strong likelihood of capture and long-term imprisonment, exposed him to personal attacks and slander, and--as I mentioned--drew predictable threats of assassination.”

“That’s a lot to sacrifice,” I said.

“Those are losses--enormous losses,” agreed Tom.  “So what did he gain?  He’s poorer, lonelier, isolated, and under attack.  He knew full well what the consequences would be when he made his decision.  His only gains are intangibles: a clear conscience and the knowledge that he has offered the public a chance to make an informed decision on living under a surveillance state.  He says that if he ends up in a ditch somewhere, it still will have been worth it.”

“When you lay it out that way, he’s somebody you just have to admire,” I said.  “I don’t think I could do what he did.”

“Don’t think badly of yourself,” Tom said kindly.  “Cesar Chavez once said that ‘To be a man is to suffer for others.‘  I don’t think Chavez meant that in a sexist way; I think he meant that shouldering your responsibilities to your family, your community, or your country, even at great personal cost, is the price you must be willing to pay if you want to hold on to your self-respect and your integrity.  I’m sure that, faced with a similar choice, you’d make the right decision.”

I didn’t know what to say for a minute.  I hadn’t expected his last comment.  It may have been the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me--and I wasn’t sure he was right.  “Thanks, Tom,” I managed.  

“You’re welcome, Ace,” he said.  “You know, integrity isn’t easy or cheap.  If it were, there would be a Hallelujah Chorus of whistleblowers in the NSA, and congress would be an honored gallery of respected public servants.  Edward Snowden was in a position where he had a choice to make, but in some respects, everyone he worked with was faced with the same choice.  He could continue to be a faceless part of an enormous secret bureaucracy that is striking at the very heart of our democracy.  Or he could be a man, expose the secrets and lies, and suffer the consequences.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So you've laid out what Snowden lost and gained.  But what about his attackers?”

Tom paused and thought for a moment.  “We can only make guesses as to what Mr. Rogers, Ms. Feinstein, and Mr. McCaul stand to gain,” he said, “but they stand to lose nothing--with the possible exception of self-respect.  They have cast their lot with the powers that be, and there’s safety and security in that.  They’ve received publicity and an additional measure of fame.  Their political fortunes will continue to prosper, since they’ve proven to be reliably on the side of  secrecy, control, and authoritarianism.  At the worst, they will remain well paid, powerful, and ‘respectable’.”  

“So they made out pretty well in the deal,” I said.

He held me with his eyes.  “That’s the world’s way of looking at it, Ace.  There’s another way.  ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” 

That’s what makes conversations with Tom so unsettling.  You’re having a conversation at a normal level about some topic, and then suddenly he takes you to a different place entirely.  I didn’t feel corrected exactly.  More like uncomfortably enlarged.

“We can’t read their minds or hearts,” Tom went on.  “We don’t know what their motives were or what pressure was brought to bear on them.  Still, from the outside, it’s hard not to be skeptical.  Perhaps they were attempting to divert the public’s attention from their own collusion in hiding the extent to which the NSA is spying on all of us.  The Constitution expects congress to put a check on attempts by the executive branch to grab dangerous power.  Instead, these leaders have acted as bipartisan enablers for the dismantling of democracy.  It goes against the grain to speak of people that way, but what else is there to do when they’re apologists for the construction of a police state that makes 1984 look like Summerhill?”

“You seem to be describing them not as real leaders or powerful decision makers, but as servants of someone or something else,” I said.

“I guess I am,” said Tom.  “Despite the high offices Mr. Rogers, Ms. Feinstein, and Mr. McCaul hold, I believe it would be a mistake to see them as anything other than pawns in the hands of the national security state.  Mr. Snowden has challenged the nature and the intentions of the security apparatus, so he must be condemned, slandered, discredited, or silenced by any means necessary.  Now, in both a geographic and a spiritual sense,  he's beyond their control, and that must infuriate them.  In a way few of us can claim to be, he is a free man.  He has been willing to risk everything to share that freedom.  I just don’t know if the rest of us are willing to take the risk of joining him.”

“Why’s he doing it, Tom?  What motivates him?”

“That’s a good question, Ace.  Who knows?  It’s hard to discredit him in the usual ways, because his critics can’t pin a label on him and pigeonhole him. I’ve come to think of him as an ‘odd prophet.’  He’s leading a solitary, almost cloistered life, devoid of luxuries and even ordinary things most of us think of as necessities.  He’s living the lifestyle of a monk, but doesn’t seem to be religious.  He’s not preaching fire and brimstone, nor is he a political firebrand, out to destroy capitalism on the one hand or to promote socialism or communism on the other.  He’s not a Democrat or a Republican.” 

“So we’re stuck with thinking of him with negatives?  What he’s not?”

“I don’t think so, Ace.  He’s an honest man and a courageous man.  He seems patriotic; he has been careful not to damage our country.   The best way I can come up with to describe his motivation and faith is that they’re those of a good systems analyst: ‘garbage in, garbage out.’   He approaches democracy as if it’s a kind of computer for making decisions.  Citizens need clean data coming in.  Instead, we were getting bad numbers and lies, and that was something he ultimately couldn’t tolerate.  So he provided us with clean data--the truth about the NSA’s spying--and said now the decision is up to us.” 

He stopped.  “Thanks for listening to all that, Ace,” he said.  “That was almost as good as shoveling snow.”

“You’re welcome,” I told him.  “If you’ll hand me that shovel and hold my dog for a minute, I think I could use a dose of that manual meditation myself.”

© Tony Russell, 2014

It’s Not News, It’s Propaganda, Part 1

I was out walking my dog the other morning, and my neighbor Tom--known locally as “the gentle radical”--was out shoveling the snow from his walk.  He was puffing, and I asked him if he’d like to take a break and give me a turn at the shovel.

“Thanks for the offer, Ace,” he said with a smile, “but I need to do things like this to work off my frustration.  If I couldn’t shovel snow, rake leaves, and tend to my garden, I think the top of my head might periodically blow off.”

The dog had lain down at my feet and wasn’t in any hurry to get anywhere, and Tom seemed ready for some friendly conversation.  “What’s challenged your blood pressure this time?” I asked.

“The media,” he said.  “Especially TV at the moment.  The way they handle this Snowden affair is so unprofessional and unjust that they ought to be ashamed to call themselves part of the ‘free press.‘  Present company excepted, of course.  Your sports reporting seems unhindered by any constraints.”

“Ah, thanks, Tom.  I guess.  What about Snowden coverage has you so upset?”

“Most recently, the Sunday talk shows.  Last week they allowed themselves to be used in an attempt to smear Mr. Snowden by alleging that he’s a Russian spy.   That happened on  all three of the old mainstream networks.  NBC’s Meet the Press,  CBS’s Face the Nation, and ABC’s This Week.”

“I don’t get it,” I admitted.  “Why would they do that?”

“It was one colossal diversion,” said Tom, “a desperate attempt to make Snowden the issue and turn attention away from the massive secret spying on all of us that he has exposed.”

“I never watch those Sunday talk shows,” I said.  “What exactly went on?”   

“Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Intelligence; Michael McCaul, Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee; and Diane Feinstein, the  Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, all took a swing at Mr. Snowden.  Mr. Rogers was the one who weighed in most heavily, if you could use that phrase to describe such an empty case.”

“What do you mean, ‘an empty case’?”

  “Well, for starters, there was no evidence offered, mind you.  Nor were there any demands for evidence by the hosts.  Nor was any person with an opposite viewpoint there to respond.  How unfair can you get?  It’s one-sided, and it’s an abdication of the networks’ responsibility to the public.  It’s not news, it’s propaganda.”

The more Tom talked, the redder his face grew.  “Excuse me for a minute,” he said, then turned and began shoveling.  After a couple of minutes he stopped, heaved a sigh, and said, “Where were we?”

“You were just criticizing  the Sunday talk shows.”

“Ah, right.  You know, I don’t blame you for not watching them.  That kind of dishonest political theater can tear your heart out, if you really care about your country.”

“But suppose they’re right and Snowden actually is a Russian spy?” I worried.

“That’s a good question, Ace.  We have a problem here, don’t we.  Clearly, somebody is lying to us ... either Edward Snowden, or all of the powerful figures lined up against him.  Who should we believe?  The honorable thing to do is to give a fair hearing to both sides.  Let’s look at the evidence, shall we?”  And he began to sum up the evidence, ticking off the points on his fingers.

“One, despite revelation after revelation from Mr. Snowden of the scope and nature of NSA spying, no one has ever denied that his revelations are accurate.  In fact, they appear to have been chosen with extreme care to do just what he claims they were intended to do: give the people of the U.S. the information they need to make an informed choice about whether the NSA’s total surveillance is really the kind of society they want to live in.

Two, despite a lot of loose talk about Mr. Snowden’s endangering people’s lives, not a single instance has been produced where that has actually occurred.

Three, Mr. Snowden’s itinerary clearly shows he had no intention of staying in Russia.  He was trapped there when the U.S. invalidated his passport.

Four, he ended up stuck for forty days in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.  As Mr. Snowden joked--accurately, I think--, ‘Spies get treated better than that.’

Five, with the NSA having the surveillance capacity Mr. Snowden has described, they should already have been able to locate any phone calls, e-mails, or other contacts he had with Russian spymasters.  No such evidence has been produced, which is a strong indication that such contacts never took place.

Six, nobody talks about Edward Snowden’s politics.  Do you know why?  Because he’s a libertarian, a free-market advocate, even an opponent of Social Security.  He’s to the right of Ted Cruz!  To think he’d spy for the Russians strains credulity.  Beyond that, he appears to have been a hard-working, honest, model citizen.  Believe me, if he had major skeletons in his closet, the administrations wouldn’t have waited five minutes before they posted them on billboards in Times Square. 

Seven, the F.B.I. has already concluded that Mr. Snowden acted alone, and its conclusion was reported last week in the New York Times.”

“That’s a long list,” I said.  “It’s always hard to prove a negative, but the case against his being a secret operative for a foreign power sounds awfully convincing.  What’s the case on the other side of the argument? “ 

“Well, first, we looked at Mr. Snowden’s track record.  His information has been accurate.  He has been open about what he found and why he felt obliged to expose it.  Now let’s look at the record of those attacking him.  Snowden’s revelations made it clear that the NSA has lied in sworn testimony about the nature and extent of its spying.”

“They lied to Congress?  To the people who are supposed to be representing us?”

“They sure did.  James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, lied under oath to Congress back in March of 2013, when he was asked whether the NSA collected ‘any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans‘ — and Clapper said, ‘No, sir ... not wittingly’.  Then Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, admitted last October that his testimony that NSA surveillance had foiled 54 terrorist plots was bogus. One Republican congressman told Alan Grayson that he doesn’t even attend intelligence briefings anymore because ‘they always lie’.  Grayson says that many congress members believe that the congressional intelligence committees go right along with the NSA, and are more loyal to the ‘intelligence community’ than to the Constitution.  These committee chairs who attacked Snowden are working hand in glove with the NSA they’re supposed to be overseeing.”

“What evidence did these intelligence committee chairs offer on Sunday then?  They must have had some good stuff if they’re so close to the spies.”

“No evidence, but a good amount of innuendo--which makes you think that there isn’t any evidence.  Mr. Rogers implied that, because the U.S. government stopped Mr. Snowden’s flight in transit, resulting in his being stranded in Russia, he must have been spying for the Russians.  Is that logical?”

“I’ll admit that sometimes I’m logically-challenged,  but no, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Mr. Rogers also implied that Mr. Snowden’s having a go-bag ready was proof that he was a spy.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you lost me there.  What’s a go-bag?” 

“Some people call them ‘bug-out bags,’ or ‘GOOD bags,’ for Get Out Of Dodge’,” explained Tom. “ They’re kits that people keep packed full of the things they would need to get through the next 72 hours if there’s an emergency or disaster.  It would have been pretty standard for anyone in a position like Mr. Snowden’s to have one while working with the CIA and the NSA.  If you arrested everyone who had a go-bag, the CIA and NSA would be half-empty.”

“That’s pretty thin, then,” I said.  “What else?”  

“I’m afraid that’s it.”   

“That’s it?  That’s nuts!” I said.  “If you could convict people on flimsy stuff like that, you could sentence anyone for anything.  I’ve got a scope-mounted Remington 700 for deer hunting.  Does that mean somebody could accuse me of planning to assassinate the President?”

“Very good, Ace,” he said, with a slight look of surprise.  “That’s precisely the kind of thinking I was talking about.”  

© Tony Russell, 2014