Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology

by Howard Zinn

  must do its dirty deeds in secrecy. The phrase covert operations was defined in National

  Security Council memorandum #5412 of March 15, 1954, as "al activities … which are so

  planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to

  unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any

  responsibility for them."94

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  When the Doolittle Commission made its report, covert actions had already begun. The CIA had already tried to influence elections in Italy (that had to be secret; wasn't this country always talking about "free elections"?). In 1953 the CIA successful y engineered a coup in Iran to overthrow the nationalist leader Mossadegh, because he was too unfriendly to our oil

  corporations. And in the very year of the report, the United States was preparing to

  overthrow the government of Guatemala.

  The excuse for covert action is that tel ing the truth wil endanger the country, while secrecy

  wil save lives. But secrecy may result in the taking of people's lives, behind the backs of the public, which if it knew what was happening, might stop it. People were kil ed in the

  coup that put the shah back on the throne of Iran; many more were kil ed by the shah's

  police afterward. The secret operation in Guatemala resulted in a police state that later

  kil ed tens of thousands of Guatemalans. In the invasion of Cuba, thousands died. Secrecy

  did not save lives.

  Nor did it save lives in Vietnam. The secret undermining of the elections that were supposed

  to take place in 1956 to unite Vietnam led to a hard division between North and South, and

  ultimately to a war that cost over a mil ion lives. What if the American public had been told

  what the government recorded secretly in the Pentagon Papers—that the South Vietnamese

  government whose independence we were supposedly defending was "essential y the

  creation of the United States"? And that "only the Viet Cong had any real support and

  influence on a broad base in the countryside"? Perhaps the movement to stop the war would

  have started sooner and saved countless lives.

  The covert actions in Chile that overthrew the democratical y elected government of

  Salvador Al ende in 1973 was, in part, a conspiracy between the CIA and IT&T, according to

  a 1975 Senate report.95 It led to a murderous regime whose death squads kil ed thousands

  of Chileans and engaged in torture and mutilation. Suppose the American people had known

  that our government was interfering in an honest election and putting a military dictatorship

  in place? Might there not have been a public protest, and perhaps a change in policy?

  Is not that one of the purposes of the First Amendment, to enable the free flow of

  information, so that policies in the interests of the citizenry can be pursued, so that a few

  people at the head of government cannot secretly, with no accountability to the public, do

  things that later make the citizenry ashamed of its own government?

  It was the World War II experience that led influential American journalist Walter Lippmann

  to distrust public opinion, and, therefore, to support government secrecy: "The unhappy

  truth is that the prevailing public opinion has been destructively wrong at the critical

  junctures. The people have imposed a veto upon the judgments of informed and responsible

  officials.”96

  Years later, when the United States began military action in Vietnam, Lippmann knew it was

  wrong. His old words must have haunted him. Because here was a case when public

  opinion, once it learned what was happening in Vietnam, was right in wanting out, and the

  "informed and responsible officials" were continuing an unspeakably brutal war.

  A huge mythology has been built up in the public mind about secrecy. Perhaps it is the

  fascination of spy stories or the childhood delight in secrets. But most of the secrets nations

  make a big fuss about are either not secret at al (the secret of the atomic bomb could not

  be secret for long) or, if disclosed, would hardly make any difference in the world

  situation.97

  The cold war atmosphere after World War II has produced a kind of hysteria about secrecy.

  It led to the execution of the Rosenbergs for al egedly passing atomic information to the

  Soviets when such information could not have made any significant difference to the Soviet

  making of an atomic bomb.

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  Similarly, the press went wild over the "pumpkin papers"—documents supposedly stolen by Alger Hiss and given to Whittaker Chambers—but there was nothing of value, no important

  secrets, in those famous pumpkins, although they contributed to Hiss spending four years in

  prison.98

  The arms race, the fascination with nuclear weapons, has led to secrecy that is dangerous

  to the public. From the New York Times:

  The Department of Energy said today that it was responsible, along with its

  predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, for keeping secret from the

  public a number of serious reactor accidents that occurred over a 28-year

  period at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina.

  The Energy Department said the failure to disclose the problems il ustrated a deeply rooted

  institutional practice, dating from the days of the Manhattan Project in 1942, which

  regarded outside disclosure of any incident at a nuclear weapons production plant as

  harmful to national security.99

  The Iran-Contra Affair

  Covert action and "plausible denial" once again became prominent news stories during the

  second Reagan administration. A dispatch in the foreign press led to disclosures that were

  enormously embarrassing to the White House. It is not a tribute to the American press that

  aside from a few isolated stories here and there, it did not do the kind of investigative work

  that would have exposed the "Iran-Contra" affair earlier.

  The root of the situation was the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, in which the rebel

  Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime, a family dictatorship that was long the darling of

  the U.S. government. The revolutionaries were named after the Nicaraguan rebel Sandino,

  who in the 1920s and 1930s had led a guerril a force against the dictatorship and against

  the occupation of Nicaragua by the U.S. Marines. Sandino signed a truce, then was lured to

  a spot where he was executed by the National Guard headed by Colonel Somoza, who

  established the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua.

  The Sandinistas, a coalition of Marxists, left-wing priests, and assorted nationalists, set

  about to give more land to the peasants and to spread education and health care among the

  very poor and long-oppressed people of Nicaragua. Almost immediately, the Reagan

  administration began to wage a secret war against them, hoping to get rid of a government

  that would not play bal as submissively as the Somozas did.

  The covert war against Nicaragua consisted of organizing and training a

  counterrevolutionary force, the contras, many of whose leaders were former National Guard

  officers under Somoza. The contras seemed to have no popular support inside Nicaragua

  and so were based in Honduras, a very poor country dominated by the United States and

  dependent on U.S. economic and military aid. From Honduras, they moved across the

  border into Nicaragua, raiding farms and vil ages; kil ing men, women, and children; and

  comm
itting many atrocities.

  When one of the contras' public relations people, Colonel Edgar Chamorro, learned what

  they were doing—essential y acts of terrorism against poor Nicaraguan farmers—and saw

  that the CIA was behind the whole operation, he resigned, tel ing his story to the

  newspapers. He also testified before the World Court:

  We were told that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas was to use the

  tactics the Agency [the CIA] attributed to Communist insurgencies elsewhere:

  kil , kidnap, rob and torture… . Many civilians were kil ed in cold blood. Many

  others were tortured, mutilated, raped, robbed, or otherwise abused… .

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  When I agreed to join … in 1981, I had hoped that it would be an organization

  of Nicaraguans, control ed by Nicaraguans … . [It] turned out to be an

  instrument of the U.S. government, and specifical y of the CIA."100

  One of the reasons for the secrecy of Reagan's operations in Nicaragua was that public

  opinion surveys showed that the American people were not in favor of U.S. military

  operations in Central America. He decided he could do certain things openly, like strangling

  the Nicaraguan economy with an embargo, which the law permitted him to do if he declared

  the situation a national emergency.

  But other actions were to be taken secretly. In 1984 the CIA, using Latin American agents,

  put mines in the harbors of Nicaragua to blow up ships. Secretary of Defense Caspar

  Weinberger told ABC news, "The United States is not mining the harbors of Nicaragua." The deceptions multiplied after Congress, responding perhaps to common sense, public opinion,

  and the memory of our embroilment in Vietnam, passed the Boland Amendment in October

  1984, making it il egal for the United States to support "directly or indirectly, military or

  paramilitary operations in Nicaragua."

  The Reagan administration decided to ignore this law and to find ways to fund the contras

  secretly, by looking for "third-party support." Reagan himself solicited funds from Saudi Arabia, at least $32 mil ion. The friendly government of Guatemala was used to get arms

  surreptitiously to the contras. Honduras was used, as always, for the final passage to the

  contra army on its soil. Israel, so dependent on the United States and, therefore, so

  dependable, was also used.101

  Al of this was il egal, but the only ones prosecuted were several of Reagan's aides. Reagan

  himself was kept out of it. It was a perfect example of plausible denial, where an operation

  is conducted by underlings, so that the president can simply deny he was involved and no

  one can prove it.

  At Reagan's news conference November 19, 1986, when asked about the disclosure that

  weapons had been sent to Iran (supposedly a bitter enemy of the United States) and profits

  from this given to the contras, he told four lies: that the shipment to Iran consisted of a few

  token antitank missiles (it turned out to be 2,000), that the United States didn't condone

  shipments by third parties, that weapons had not been traded for hostages, and that the

  purpose of the operation was to promote a dialogue with Iranian moderates (the purpose

  was to help the contras).

  In October 1986 when a transport plane that had carried arms to the contras was downed

  by Nicaraguan gunfire and the American pilot captured, the lies multiplied. Assistant

  Secretary of State El iot Abrams lied. Secretary of State Schultz lied ("no connection with

  the U.S. government at al "). There was so much nonsense being told the public that even

  the patient New York Times became irritated and wrote in an editorial, "It may cross the reader's mind that Americans are learning more of the truth from Managua than

  Washington."102

  The whole Iran-Contra affair is a perfect example of the double line of defense of the

  American establishment. The first defense is to lie. If exposed, the second defense is to

  investigate, but not too much; the press wil publicize, but they wil not get to the heart of

  the matter.

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  Neither the House-Senate committee that investigated the scandal (once the scandal was out in the open) nor the press nor the trial of Colonel Oliver North, who oversaw the contra

  aid operation, got to the critical questions: What is U.S. foreign policy al about? How are

  the president and his staff permitted to support a terrorist group in Central America to

  overthrow a government that, whatever its faults, is a great improvement over the terrible

  governments the United States has supported there over the years? What does the scandal

  tel us about democracy, about freedom of expression, about an open society?

  Out of the much-publicized scandal came no powerful critique of secrecy in government or

  of the erosion of democracy by actions taken in secret by a smal group of men safe from

  the scrutiny of public opinion.103 The media, in a country with a First Amendment, kept the

  public informed only on the most superficial level.

  There are scholarly pundits who shake their heads sadly at the idea that the public should

  be told the truth about foreign policy operations. In the midst of the Iran-Contra affair,

  Harvard professor James Q. Wilson came forward to warn that too much was being

  exposed. Wilson, a member of Reagan's Foreign Intel igence Advisory Board, wrote in the

  New York Times, "We may disagree over foreign policy, but hardly any American interests are served by extensive leaks about every sensitive operation we may wish to

  undertake."104 Wilson did not like the Democratic party acting like an opposition party, as if it were a true two-party system. He had little to fear. The limits of Democratic opposition

  were revealed by a leading Democrat, Sam Nunn of Georgia who, as the investigation was

  getting under way, said, "We must, al of us, help the President restore his credibility in

  foreign affairs."

  But Wilson seemed to deplore the fact that some Democrats were somewhat critical. He looked back nostalgical y to a "bipartisan consensus" (the equivalent of the one-party

  system in a totalitarian state). What he worried about most was "a lack of national resolve

  to act like a great power."

  Machiavel i would have agreed.

  Taking Our Liberties

  If the government deceives us and the press more or less col aborates with it—to keep us

  from knowing what is going on in the most important matters of politics: life and death, war

  and peace—then the existence of the First Amendment wil not help us. Unless, of course,

  we begin to act as citizens, to put life into the amendment's promise of freedom of

  expression by what we do ourselves. British novelist Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) once

  said, "Liberties are not given; they are taken."

  We, as citizens, want freedom of expression for two reasons. First, because in itself it is

  fundamental to human dignity, to being a person, to independence, to self-respect, to being

  an important part of the world, and to being alive. Second, because we badly need it to help

  change the world and to bring about peace and justice.

  We should know by now that we cannot count on the courts, the Congress, or the

  presidency, to assure us the freedom to speak, to write, to assemble, and to petition. We

  cannot count on the government or the mainstream press to give us the information

  necessary to be active, critical citizens. And we cannot 'count on those who own the medi
a

  to give us the opportunity to reach large numbers of people.

  Therefore, it seems Huxley is right; we wil have to take our liberties. Historical y, that has always been the case. Despite the Sedition Act after the American Revolution, in which

  some people were jailed for criticizing the government, hundreds of other pamphleteers and

  writers insisted, at the risk of prison, on writing as they pleased. They took their liberty.105

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  We need to remind ourselves of individuals who have insisted on their freedom to speak their minds. Emma Goldman was a feminist and anarchist of the early twentieth century

  whose views on patriotism, (agreeing with Samuel Johnson, "the last refuge of a

  scoundrel"), on preparedness for war ("violence begets violence"), on marriage ("it has nothing to do with love; it is an insurance contract"), on free love ("what is love if it is not free?") and on birth control ("a woman should decide for herself whether or not she wants a baby") outraged many people and certainly the authorities.

  She lectured al over the United States, and wherever she went, the police were there to

  stop her. In one month, May 1909, police broke up eleven meetings at which she spoke.

  She was arrested again and again. But she kept coming back.

  In San Francisco, she spoke to 5,000 people on patriotism; the crowd stood between her

  and the police, and the police retreated. When she came back to San Francisco the fol owing

  year, the police broke up the meeting, using their clubs on members of the audience.

  In East Orange, New Jersey, police blocked the entrance to the lecture hal . She spoke to

  her audience on the lawn. In San Diego, a mob kidnapped her lover and manager and

  tarred and feathered him. She insisted on coming back to San Diego to speak the next year.

  When she lectured on birth control and the use of contraceptives, she was repeatedly

  arrested. But she refused to stop.

  She opposed U.S. entrance into World War I, as most Socialists and anarchists did. She

  knew she was in danger for encouraging young men to resist the draft, but she continued to

  speak. She was tried and imprisoned for two years, and when she came out of prison she

  was deported from this country. But she continued to speak her mind on American events—

  the Tom Mooney case and the case of Sacco and Vanzetti—flinging her thoughts across the