Ruminations, Sept 7, 2008

Ruminations, September 7, 2008

Spies among us
In his 2006 novel The Foreign Correspondent set in pre-World War II Europe, author Alan Furst muses that “spies and journalists were fated to go through life together, and it was sometimes hard to tell one from the other. Their jobs weren’t all that different: they talked to politicians, developed sources in government bureaux, and dug around for secrets. Sometimes they talked to, and traded with, one another.”

Of course, a spy clandestinely passes his secret information on to his operators. A journalist can pass his secret information to his operators and the rest of the world by publishing it. One major difference between them is that a spy like FBI double agent Robert Hanssen, when caught, can be sentenced to prison. A journalist, in the United States anyway, can cite the first amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom…of the press,” and can escape prosecution.

Perhaps one of the most egregious examples of journalistic spying occurred in 1942. Colonel Robert McCormick owned and ran the Chicago Tribune, hated President Franklin D. Roosevelt and opposed U.S. involvement in World War II. In 1942, a Tribune reporter, Stanley Johnston, while aboard a Navy ship, copied information from the cabin of executive officer Commander Mort Seligman. From that information, Johnston deduced that the U.S. Navy had broken the secret cipher of the Japanese Navy and had used the information to help win the Battle of Midway. So the Tribune ran the story with the headline:

“Navy Had Word Of Jap Plan To Strike At Sea.”

Roosevelt, who hated McCormick as much as McCormick hated him, wanted McCormick tried for treason (the maximum penalty during war time is death). A grand jury was convened but the U.S. Navy wouldn’t cooperate; they felt that the less said in a public forum about code breaking, the better. So the Tribune was never indicted.

The “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a failure for several reasons. One was that the Cubans knew the attack was coming. They learned of the plans by reading The Nation, the Guatemalan newspaper Hora and The New York Times. This prompted President John F. Kennedy to remark, "Every newspaper now asks itself with respect to every story: ‘is it news?' All I suggest is that you add the question: ‘is it in the interest of national security?' "

After the September 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush ordered the National Security Agency to survey phone calls from, or to, suspected or actual members of al Qaeda operating outside the U.S. The president has the constitutional authority to gather foreign intelligence but, if you focus on the fact that the other end of the call was to the U.S. and may have been to a U.S. citizen, you can call this “domestic eavesdropping.” On December 15, 2005, New York Times editor Bill Keller and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger decided to call the phone monitoring “domestic eavesdropping” and by publishing it, to pass the information to al Qaeda and the rest of the world despite a request from the White House not to do so. One can assume that al Qaeda has become more circumspect in their communication to the U.S. since then.

On June 23, 2006, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal published articles detailing the U.S.’s monitoring of international financial transactions involving terrorists. By tapping into the Swift system (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) in Belgium, the U.S. was able to cull pertinent information from the 11 million daily financial transactions among 7,800 banks and financial institutions from 200 countries. The news articles stressed that there was nothing illegal in the monitoring and New York Times Editor Bill Keller said that the revelation would have no effect on U.S. efforts to monitor financial transactions. Nevertheless, after the June 23rd publication, the European Union began an investigation to determine any conflicts in EU laws that would stop the U.S. from continuing to monitor these transactions. Even if the EU and Swift continue to cooperate, al Qaeda now knows enough to be more covert in their financial transactions.

And last week, journalist Bob Woodward claimed that the U.S is spying on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He may be right, but if he is, what does revealing the information accomplish – other than to enhance Woodward’s reputation as a journalist? Maybe Woodward should have considered Kennedy’s admonition, “Is it in the interest of national security?” before going public.

Author Furst may have hit the nail on the head when he said that spies and journalists are not that different. One difference is that at least when the KGB got information from Robert Hanssen, they had to pay him. Others get their intelligence gratis courtesy of journalists.

The Yale connection – Not

Here’s a bit of electoral trivia for you. This is the first presidential election since 1972 in which neither major party offers a presidential or vice presidential candidate who attended Yale University (as a graduate or undergraduate).

And, had young Richard Nixon the money to travel from California to New Haven, having been offered a scholarship, he could have attended Yale as well and that would changed the date in the trivia to 1964.

And that information, plus two bucks, will get you a latte at Starbuck’s.

The case for Barack Obama

Presidential candidates John McCain, Barack Obama, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are all Americans. There is no doubt that they share many values with the rest of us and want what is best for this country.

It seems strange then that we often can find little good to say about the candidate who is opposing our favorite. In fact, some often stoop to irrelevant and shallow attacks: he’s got a smirk, he talks to lobbyists, he has a funny name, can she take care of her children yadda, yadda, yadda.

There are strengths in each candidate and I think the strengths should be recognized. While it is no secret that I favor John McCain, this week I am going to make a case for Barack Obama and list what a person with my convictions sees positive in an Obama presidency that a McCain presidency will not bring.

As the first black person to hold that office, he would be a role model for black youth. This is no small factoid. There are millions of disaffected young black people who feel that everything is stacked against them and they have no chance. Accordingly, they drop out of mainline society and live in their own subculture. An Obama presidency would change many of these attitudes and could have profound effect on American society.

He is an excellent communicator. While this skill won’t get Vladimir Putin to pull troops out of Georgia or get NATO to increase troop commitments in Afghanistan, it does have an effect. Think of Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” or John Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Furthermore, Americans want to like their president and follow his lead. If President Bush had been able to speak of the war in Iraq with the same skill that Obama used when he spoke of his minister Jeremiah Wright, Bush, I think, would have had more support.

Obama proposes creating a Civilian Assistance Corps (CAC) of 25,000 as an adjunct to the military. One of the difficulties we had in Iraq was not a military weakness but that our military is not constructed to initiate, operate or transition a defeated country to a new civilian state with an operational infrastructure. The proposed CAC would be designed to transition a failed state to an operational one. The Obama idea is a good one and is similar to a proposal made by the Department of Defense.

Obama has called for the youth to volunteer for community service to the nation. I believe that youth will respond to Obama’s call and volunteering to do community service is a good thing.

There is more to Obama’s positions than I’ve mentioned here. (To see his positions in full, link to http://www.barackobama.com/issues/.) There are more good things, like simplifying the tax code, reducing waste in Medicare, making health care “affordable” – but how many times have you heard those promises? Then there are the pure boilerplate (e.g., work with the Palestinians and Israelis for peace, work toward a democratic Cuba) that every presidential candidate for the past 50 years has espoused. And then, of course, there are positions with which I disagree.

But this is the case for Obama. And the above points are those by which an Obama presidency would make this a better nation.

The Republican Convention

Did you watch the Republican Convention last week? The Republicans nominated Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska and, as her running mate they nominated what’s-his-name.

Quote without comment
Jay Leno commenting on Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech: “Last night, Barack Obama got beat up by a girl.”

Leno on Palin again: “That’s all we need: another vice president who hunts.”




Robert J. Kulak
West Hartford, Connecticut

Note: Ruminations can also be found at www.irish-american-news-opinion.blogspot.com