John Dean: How Does President Bush Compare with Other Wartime Presidents With Respect to Free Speech Issues?
Lately, the Bush Administration has been talking of using the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute the New York Times and the Washington Post. Yet these veteran newspapers' "crimes" consist merely of publishing Pulitzer-Prize-winning articles on the CIA's secret prisons, and the NSA's secret surveillance programs.
Not even Nixon sank so low. He might have initiated criminal prosecutions against the Times for printing the Pentagon Papers, yet did not.
And in other respects, the Bush Administration makes Nixon look like a piker when it comes to free speech, as well as other civil liberties issues: Its electronic surveillance of American citizens has been done in utter defiance of the law.
Does the "war on terror" justify the Administration's incursions on civil liberties? Putting this Administration's actions in historical perspective suggests the answer is a resounding no.
Drawing on Professor Geoffrey Stone's Work on Wartime Presidents
Opportunistic president have, from our founding, exploited public fears during wartime for their political advantage. Yet other presidents have recognized the dangers to civil liberties in time of war.
In 2004, University of Chicago law professor (and former dean) Geoffrey Stone published his timely and telling study Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1789 to the War on Terror. Stone's work traced the general pattern of repressive action undertaken against civil liberties by the United States government in six periods of American history, so-called "perilous times."
Professor Stone called attention to widely recognized and acknowledged mistakes of the past because he could see that the emerging pattern in the current war against terror was ignoring history. The so-called Patriot Act, for example, was the first sign that America was about to repeat its "long and unfortunate history of overreacting to the dangers of wartime." Stone, obviously, was hopeful that history would not repeat itself.
It turned out, however, that the Patriot Act was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. History, of course, never repeats itself exactly. But what does occur is that patterns of behavior are repeated.
In his 800-page work, Professor's Stone addressed President John Adams's use of the Sedition Act of 1789; Abraham Lincoln's command during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson's suppression of dissent relating to World War One; Franklin Roosevelt's forcible internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent; the Cold War loyalty hysteria of Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee; and Nixon's suppression of anti-war criticism and protests.
Stone's work strongly suggests that history's mistakes are only being repeated now, in different guises....
It's true that Bush and Cheney did not call for the arrest of Howard Dean in 2004, as Woodrow Wilson did with Eugene Debs during World War One - an analogy Stone offers to suggest some progress is being made. But as more and more comes out about what they have done, it is clear that they plan to outdo all their predecessors when it comes to dramatic infringements of civil liberties in the name of wartime necessity. Stone may have been premature in believing progress has been made. The facts suggest otherwise.
Rather than suspend habeas corpus, Bush and Cheney declare people "enemy combatants" and keep them out of the jurisdiction of federal courts. No one knows how many Arab Americans (or Middle Easterners) have been rounded up, but rather than create internment camps, they are deporting them, sending them to secret prisons, or turning them over to countries where civil liberties do not exist, in a process delicately known as "diplomatic rendition" but better described as "torture by proxy." .
More generally, Bush and Cheney have surely topped all their predecessors in their unbridled support for and use of torture. They have outdone all their predecessors, too, in their high-tech, relentless fear-mongering. In their claim of strengthening the presidency, they have shown they are cowards hiding behind the great power of the offices they hold, the prerogatives of which they are determined to abuse.
Professor Stone quotes Justice Louis Brandeis, who wrote "Those who won our independence … knew that … fear breeds repression and that courage is the secret of liberty." There is no such courage in the Bush and Cheney presidency.
Read entire article at findlaw.com
Not even Nixon sank so low. He might have initiated criminal prosecutions against the Times for printing the Pentagon Papers, yet did not.
And in other respects, the Bush Administration makes Nixon look like a piker when it comes to free speech, as well as other civil liberties issues: Its electronic surveillance of American citizens has been done in utter defiance of the law.
Does the "war on terror" justify the Administration's incursions on civil liberties? Putting this Administration's actions in historical perspective suggests the answer is a resounding no.
Drawing on Professor Geoffrey Stone's Work on Wartime Presidents
Opportunistic president have, from our founding, exploited public fears during wartime for their political advantage. Yet other presidents have recognized the dangers to civil liberties in time of war.
In 2004, University of Chicago law professor (and former dean) Geoffrey Stone published his timely and telling study Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1789 to the War on Terror. Stone's work traced the general pattern of repressive action undertaken against civil liberties by the United States government in six periods of American history, so-called "perilous times."
Professor Stone called attention to widely recognized and acknowledged mistakes of the past because he could see that the emerging pattern in the current war against terror was ignoring history. The so-called Patriot Act, for example, was the first sign that America was about to repeat its "long and unfortunate history of overreacting to the dangers of wartime." Stone, obviously, was hopeful that history would not repeat itself.
It turned out, however, that the Patriot Act was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. History, of course, never repeats itself exactly. But what does occur is that patterns of behavior are repeated.
In his 800-page work, Professor's Stone addressed President John Adams's use of the Sedition Act of 1789; Abraham Lincoln's command during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson's suppression of dissent relating to World War One; Franklin Roosevelt's forcible internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent; the Cold War loyalty hysteria of Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee; and Nixon's suppression of anti-war criticism and protests.
Stone's work strongly suggests that history's mistakes are only being repeated now, in different guises....
It's true that Bush and Cheney did not call for the arrest of Howard Dean in 2004, as Woodrow Wilson did with Eugene Debs during World War One - an analogy Stone offers to suggest some progress is being made. But as more and more comes out about what they have done, it is clear that they plan to outdo all their predecessors when it comes to dramatic infringements of civil liberties in the name of wartime necessity. Stone may have been premature in believing progress has been made. The facts suggest otherwise.
Rather than suspend habeas corpus, Bush and Cheney declare people "enemy combatants" and keep them out of the jurisdiction of federal courts. No one knows how many Arab Americans (or Middle Easterners) have been rounded up, but rather than create internment camps, they are deporting them, sending them to secret prisons, or turning them over to countries where civil liberties do not exist, in a process delicately known as "diplomatic rendition" but better described as "torture by proxy." .
More generally, Bush and Cheney have surely topped all their predecessors in their unbridled support for and use of torture. They have outdone all their predecessors, too, in their high-tech, relentless fear-mongering. In their claim of strengthening the presidency, they have shown they are cowards hiding behind the great power of the offices they hold, the prerogatives of which they are determined to abuse.
Professor Stone quotes Justice Louis Brandeis, who wrote "Those who won our independence … knew that … fear breeds repression and that courage is the secret of liberty." There is no such courage in the Bush and Cheney presidency.