Where have you gone,
Dwight David Eisenhower?
A nation turns its lonely
eyes to you. . . .
Forgive me for snagging one of Paul Simon’s songs, but we could use a shot of Ike right about now.
The former president knew the value of what he called “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” and it wasn’t the Mad magazine-ish Spy vs. Spy program — excuse me, the Terrorism and Information Prevention System — that was talked up by our current President before it was blessedly deep-sixed by W’s fellow Texan, Dick Armey.
The late, great general who walked the talk of defending freedom before becoming president meant that it is important for regular folks to know what’s being done in the name of national security. He put it brilliantly in a speech that made famous the phrase “the military-industrial complex.”
I want to reacquaint you with Ike’s words, because I think they are eerily prescient and chillingly appropriate in current America, which could find itself at the mercy of a homeland security-industrial complex. But more on that in a moment. First, here’s Ike waxing very prophetic in his 1961 farewell address:
“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.”
But, boy, he saw the rub. He believed in a strong defense and he knew the horrors of war, but he also envisioned a different nightmare when secret power ran unchecked:
” . . . We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. . . .”
Same goes for homeland security, which is why Ike’s long-ago warning matters so much today and why I use the words “homeland security-industrial complex.”
Congress is working on President Bush’s Homeland Security Act, which has been billed as the biggest reorganization of government since the Depression and will create the Department of Homeland Security. The Senate and the House will dicker over the particulars that separate them after Labor Day.
What this act means and how it will all play out remains to be seen. But given this administration’s love affair with secrecy (don’t get me started) and given the nation’s bovine acceptance of most everything touted in the name of security since Sept. 11 (ditto), it’s not much of a leap to assume that we are vulnerable to at least some exploitation of the national situation. Witness the late, unlamented TIPS.
Here’s the rub now: Buried in the Homeland Security Act are proposals that have alarmed journalists, and should be of concern to all Americans. The proposals have to do with curbing the Freedom of Information Act.
FOIA, signed by President Lyndon Johnson on July 4, 1966, is every American’s tool to be the alert and knowledgeable citizen Ike talked about.
Imperfect as it is, FOIA is our best method to stay on top of what government officials are doing, allegedly in our name and in our best interest. Journalists routinely use FOIA to try to get at truth. So do regular citizens. The information belongs to us, and the act is our insurance that government belongs to us, too.
In the recent past, Congress has tinkered with the act in the name of the CIA (pardon my cynicism, but fat lot of good that did) and the war against drugs (ditto).
This time around, exemptions would protect companies that volunteered “critical infrastructure information” to the new department about their operations. Such “critical” information would be exempt from FOIA requests.
Proponents see this measure as encouragement of the private sector to act in concert with government. They say it is needed to fight terrorism, and to protect companies that join in that fight.
Critics call it a “super exemption” without beginning or end. They also believe it’s unnecessary, as national security exemptions already exist. Their fear: that crucial health and safety information would be withheld from the public. Another potential for abuse: that corporations would use the exemption as a big, convenient umbrella to hide deeds and misdeeds from the public.
Al Cross, a Courier-Journal columnist and political writer who also is president of the national Society of Professional Journalists, says, “It’s not unreasonable to have some safeguards at a time when the country is under some threat. It is unreasonable to go this far.”
Charles Davis, the executive director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri, agrees. He calls this type of incursion into the public’s realm of access “the creeping crud” that must be “fought at every turn.”
“We’re outgunned and outrun, but we’re right. This is the public’s business,” he said.
Speaking of business, given the poor showing of late by some of the leading lights of corporate America, the disposition to trust — even in such dire times — has been severely eroded and the presumption of good faith on the part of sucker-punched investors has been all but KO’d. But maybe that’s just my view.
While most people of good will would agree that national security is important and that terrorism should be eradicated, most people of good will also would agree that we should not give away the store to those who might issue us chits in return.
FOIA is a weapon in a never-ending battle against cronyism and complexes that arise when mammoth sectors do business at the unwitting public’s expense.
As Davis said of citizens and their FOIA, “It’s the only affirmative right they have to knock on the door of government and say, ‘I want to look around.’ ”
It’s what makes athletes of us all, for democracy is not a spectator sport.
But don’t take my word for it.
Two parting thoughts from presidents.
James Madison: “A popular government without popular information, or the means to get it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern. And the people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power, which knowledge gives.”
And one more time, let’s hear it for Ike: “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
I suspect I’m not the only American, past or present, who would consider some of our homeland security proposals profoundly un-American.
To read more about the bill, visit www.asne.org and click on the FOIA alert in the left margin. It will link you to the bills themselves and to interpretations of the bill by American Society of Newspaper Editor lawyers.
