Eric Alterman, When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences (New York: Viking, 2005).

Roundtable Editor: Thomas Maddux

Reviewers: Carolyn Eisenberg, Lloyd Gardner, Tom Nichols, Melvin Small, Randall Woods

Introduction by Thomas Maddux, California State University, Northridge

When did the first U.S. President lie to the American public about matters of war and peace, the focus of Eric Alterman’s study? Since George Washington did not have to face an investigative press, an independent prosecutor, or 24/7 television commentators, he probably relied more on withholding information on negotiations with England and France than public deception. Since I haven’t visited my lecture notes on Washington’s diplomacy for sometime, I welcome examples from H-Diplo members. I do recall Bradford Perkins’ lectures at the University of Michigan, particularly the degree to which he could get “warmed up” over Thomas Jefferson’s maneuvers but Jefferson also didn’t explain very much to the public or Congress. Perhaps the first major felony with respect to lying to Congress and the public took place in James K. Polk’s war message to Congress in 1846 over the outbreak of hostilities along the Rio Grande. In the context of the 1960s and Vietnam, Polk’s diplomatic maneuvering with Mexico over the Rio Grande boundary and the movement of U.S. troops from the Nueces to the Rio Grande looked like a undesirable precedent for Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Tonkin Gulf incidents in 1965. In neither case did the President provide a full explanation of the context for the incidents, particularly the role of U.S. forces in precipitating conflict. The incidents served their larger objectives so they used them to gain public support for war with Mexico and escalating conflict in Vietnam. Critics, however, never accepted their misleading accounts and hold it against them to this day.

Eric Alterman focuses on four 20th century Presidents with an epilogue on “George W. Bush and the Post-Truth Presidency.” His focus is on their lies and deceptions and the consequences of this behavior. His first case study examines Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Yalta Conference and the issue of whether or not FDR’s failure to provide a realistic explanation on the agreement and possible consequences. In this analysis Alterman suggests that FDR’s misleading depiction of the agreement significantly contributed to the origins of the Cold War. A second chapter examines John F. Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and focuses on JFK’s determination to keep the secret exchange with Nikita Khrushchev over the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey out of any public discussion. A third chapter reviews LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents and emphasizes how LBJ and his chief advisors withheld any of the contradictory information on these incidents as well as the larger context of OPPLAN 34A harassing raids on North Vietnam from Congress and the American public. In this example, Alterman notes a precedent for continuing deception about U.S. escalation in Vietnam and its consequences, a deception not only of the public but a deception running from the after-action body count reports in Vietnam to the Oval Office. In a final chapter Alterman reviews President Ronald Reagan’s Central American policy from El Salvador to the Iran-Contra scandal.

The commentators have raised a number of questions that certainly merit further discussion including

1.) Does the U.S. political system and the level of public knowledge in international relations allow the degree of open discussion that Alterman calls for as an American ideal? What would FDR have accomplished if he abandoned his hopes on postwar cooperation with Josef Stalin and admitted that he and Winston Churchill could not get very much of the Atlantic Charter in Eastern Europe versus Stalin and the Red Army? Do domestic political calculations necessarily limit the candor that Alterman recommends?

2.) An alternative perspective is that Presidents have lied because they want to carry out policies that the public would not support if they knew the truth. Are the policies of Alterman’s Presidents at odds with the preferences of the electorate and Congress? And what role does Congress play in Alterman’s pattern of deception and lying?

3.) Are the U.S. Presidents in Alterman’s case studies engaged in lying and deception? It is deceptive to not explain the terms of the Yalta agreement or to leave out the secret deal on the Jupiters in Turkey, but is there lying by the President to the public? FDR privately admitted that he got as much as he could from Stalin. Does he lie to the public or try to present the agreement in the best possible light?

4.) What are the consequences of the deception by U.S. Presidents? Alterman gives FDR considerable credit for starting the Cold War over the depiction of Yalta; JFK’s presentation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to the author, contributed to a reliance on using force to solve Cold War problems such as Vietnam. LBJ’s lies and deception mutate and undermine his personal reservations about jumping into the Vietnam mess and have very serious consequences on the domestic, international, and strategic policies of the U.S.

5.) Ronald Reagan would seem to offer a pretty conclusive case for Alterman considering the exhaustive documentary evidence that Reagan and his advisers mislead Congress and the public at times about U.S. objectives and methods in Central America as well the Iran-Contra affair. Reagan, however, remains more illusive than Alterman’s other Presidents and much more capable of self-deception about what he believed and what his administration was doing. It is more difficult to isolate him in this case study. The public expressions of some U.S. objectives in Central America shifted from preventing Nicaragua from aiding the insurgency in El Salvador to pressure on Managua for elections and regime change. The Reagan administration also remained somewhat divided on methods as well as engaged in a constant struggle with Congress. Some questions may also persist on Alterman’s suggestion of a link between Reagan and George W. Bush pushing ideological conviction on advisers to take the “nation to war in Iraq on the basis of arguments and evidence it knew—or easily could have known—to be false.”

Participants:

Eric Alterman received a B.A. in History at Cornell University where he completed a senior honors thesis with Walter LaFeber, and an M.A. in International Relations with Paul Kennedy. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University under the direction of Barton J. Bernstein. His dissertation focused on two of the sections in the book under review, Yalta and the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the eleven years from start to finish of the dissertation, he has been a very prolific writer of magazine and internet columns as “The Liberal Media” columnist for The Nation, the “Altercation” weblogger for MSNBC.Com (www.altercation.msnbc.com), and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he writes and edits the “Think Again” column. In his spare time Eric has also written five books including The Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), which won the George Orwell Award, Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy (1998), It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999) which won the Stephen Crane Literary Award, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003, 2004), and The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America with Mark Green, (2004). Eric is Professor of English and Journalism, Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

Carolyn Eisenberg is a professor of diplomatic history at Hofstra University. Her book Drawing the Line: the American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-49 (Cambridge University Press, 1996) was awarded the Stuart Bernath Book Prize and the Herbert Hoover Book Prize. She has also written extensively on the American occupation of Iraq. Carolyn was previously a fellow at the NYU International Center for Advanced Studies and is writing a book on the national security policy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

Lloyd Gardner is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University, where he has taught since 1963. A specialist in 20th Century foreign policy, Gardner is the author or editor of 15 books on American foreign policy including Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (1964), Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949 (1970), Creation of the American Empire 2 vols. with Walter LaFeber and Thomas McCormick, (1973), Wilson and Revolutions, 1913-1921 (1976), A Covenant with Power: American and World Order from Wilson to Reagan (1984), Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams (1986), Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913-1923 (1984), Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu, 1941-1954 (1988), Spheres of Influence: The Great Powers Partition in Europe from Munich to Yalta (1993), Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (1995), and The Search for Peace in Vietnam, 1964-1968 (2004) with Ted Gittinger.

Thomas M. Nichols is Chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College, where he also holds the Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy. He holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, and the Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University. He is author of The Sacred Cause: Civil-Military Conflict Over Soviet National Security, 1917-1992 (1993), The Russian Presidency: Society and Politics in the Second Russian Republic (1999), and Winning the World: Lessons for America’s Future from the Cold War (1999).

Melvin Small is Distinguished Professor of History at Wayne State University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan under Bradford Perkins. Among his recent publications that deal with liars and lying are The Presidency of Richard Nixon (1999), Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (2002), and At the Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War (2005). His publications that focus on public opinion, the media, the impact of domestic politics on U.S. foreign policy, and studies on war include Public Opinion and Historians; Interdisciplinary Perspectives (1970), The Wages of War, 18161965: A Statistical Handbook (1972) with J. David Singer, Was War Necessary?: National Security and U.S. Entry into War (1980), Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 18161980 (1982) with J. David Singer _et al_, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (1988), editor with William D. Hoover, Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (1992), Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement (1994), and Democracy and Diplomacy: The Impact of Domestic Politics on U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789-1994 (1996).

Randall Woods is Professor of History at the University of Arkansas and a specialist in Afro-American history and U.S. Diplomatic History. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Fulbright Institute at the University of Arkansas. His recent publications include A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990), The Dawning of the Cold War: America’s Quest for Order, 1945-1960 (1991) with Howard Jones, and Fulbright: A Biography (1995) which received the 1996 Robert H. Ferrel Prize for Best Book on American Foreign Relations.

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