Martin F. Nolan: A secrecy obsession can ruin the powerful
On June 1, 1972, White House Counsel Charles Colson wrote a memo to President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, saying, "I hate the (New York) Times as much as anyone else and would like to be in the first wave of Army shock troops going in during the second term to tear down the printing presses."
Colson and Haldeman hated the Times because the newspaper had more credibility than Nixon did. "The press is the enemy," Nixon said many times, according to his speechwriter, William Safire.
Americans need not feel sorry for the press today, no more than they did during a similar beat-the-press episode more than three decades ago. History seldom repeats itself, but obsession with secrecy can be fatal.
The Pentagon Papers saga, like the Times coverage of the role of banks in anti-terrorism, revealed no important secrets. In both cases, the stories could have been seen as pro-administration. When the powerful rage against the press, it's not about secrets, but about secrecy for its own sake, secrecy as a source of power. Dick Cheney worked in the Nixon White House with the secrecy-obsessed Henry Kissinger. The future vice president watched and learned.
In the spring of 1971, Nixon faced a long, unpopular, unexplainable war. "Vietnamization," withdrawing U.S. troops, was moving slowly. By the end of the year, 2,357 more Americans would die in Vietnam. On March 29, Army lieutenant William Calley was convicted of killing 20 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.
Nixon enjoyed a break from routine at the White House wedding of his daughter Tricia. On June 13, 1971, when he read his New York Times, he found Tricia's nuptials eclipsed by a report on a 47-volume study on U.S. decisions in Vietnam. Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and classified top secret, it documented mistakes made by presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
In the White House, the immediate reaction was mild. Haldeman called the story "gobbledygook," although he fretted that "the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this." Colson saw it as "a compendium of memos" indicting Democrats.
Their attitude changed when Kissinger returned from a trip, seething about secrecy and knowing which button to push if Nixon did not act. He told his boss, "It shows you're a weakling, Mr. President."
The Justice Department moved to stop newspapers from publishing the papers. It was an unprecedented injunction, which the Supreme Court overruled June 30 by a 6-3 vote....
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Colson and Haldeman hated the Times because the newspaper had more credibility than Nixon did. "The press is the enemy," Nixon said many times, according to his speechwriter, William Safire.
Americans need not feel sorry for the press today, no more than they did during a similar beat-the-press episode more than three decades ago. History seldom repeats itself, but obsession with secrecy can be fatal.
The Pentagon Papers saga, like the Times coverage of the role of banks in anti-terrorism, revealed no important secrets. In both cases, the stories could have been seen as pro-administration. When the powerful rage against the press, it's not about secrets, but about secrecy for its own sake, secrecy as a source of power. Dick Cheney worked in the Nixon White House with the secrecy-obsessed Henry Kissinger. The future vice president watched and learned.
In the spring of 1971, Nixon faced a long, unpopular, unexplainable war. "Vietnamization," withdrawing U.S. troops, was moving slowly. By the end of the year, 2,357 more Americans would die in Vietnam. On March 29, Army lieutenant William Calley was convicted of killing 20 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.
Nixon enjoyed a break from routine at the White House wedding of his daughter Tricia. On June 13, 1971, when he read his New York Times, he found Tricia's nuptials eclipsed by a report on a 47-volume study on U.S. decisions in Vietnam. Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and classified top secret, it documented mistakes made by presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
In the White House, the immediate reaction was mild. Haldeman called the story "gobbledygook," although he fretted that "the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this." Colson saw it as "a compendium of memos" indicting Democrats.
Their attitude changed when Kissinger returned from a trip, seething about secrecy and knowing which button to push if Nixon did not act. He told his boss, "It shows you're a weakling, Mr. President."
The Justice Department moved to stop newspapers from publishing the papers. It was an unprecedented injunction, which the Supreme Court overruled June 30 by a 6-3 vote....