There are various things that threaten democracy, but one of the clearest threats is any group who seizes power for themselves and thwarts the people being able to change the government, however much window dressing they use to try to claim that they are following democracy. The 'security state' describes this situation where there are agencies beholden to those in power, but out of the reach of the people and their representatives.
Consider which of the members of the governing body were going to stand up to a Stalin or a Saddam and point out a lie. It was a state of tyranny - with a facade.
In the US, we have quite properly tried to create protections against any such 'security state' from placing its own interests ahead of those of the people (as represented by Congress).
While we create powerful military units who can occupy masses of people, we pass the posse comitatus law prohibiting them from operating on US soil, evn under the cover of 'helping' with some civil unrest or disaster, with some careful rules. While we create organizations to effectively propagandize masses, we prohibit their propagandizing US citizens. While we create massive spying operations, we prohibit them spying on US citizens.
Metaphorically, it's a little like wanting to create a powerful monster to dominate others, but ensure that its creator is safe.
So, when the threat appears of any such organization getting a little too much power and secrecy here in the US, concerned citizens are interested (unconcerned, well, are not.)
This is a long issue in various forms. In one of the simplest, it goes back to John Adama signing the law that allowed him to imprison any critic he wanted (and he wanted with several hundred), opposed by Jefferson who ended the law. But it was the same thing in WWI when the government hired thousands of people to 'sell' their fellow citizens on the nation's entry in the war - to propagandize - and again decided it could imprison anyone who disagreed. But the issue here is not that simple situation.
With the creation of the OSS and then the CIA, the US began to control groups who manipulated public opinion and operated in secret. There were tensions early on.
While Congress is especially sensitive to the President having too much power, even Presidents have had concerns. FDR wanted the Pentagon to be a temporary war building because he feared the military becoming too powerful and able to resist the rule of its civilian masters if it could grow there. Eisenhower warned the nation that its democratic processes were threatened by the interests of the 'military-industrial(-congressional) complex.
More pointedly, though, JFK experienced a 'rogue CIA' that undermined his policies - trying to force him to engage in a conflict (the Bay of Pigs), manipulating and lying to him; JFK thought that the culture at the time was such that the military could remove him in a coup, and he encouraged the movie "Seven Days in May" about such a coup to be made from the book to raise awareness of the danger. He had said he'd like to 'cut the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds'. He created the Defense Intelligience Agency in large part to gain some control over the intelligence functions he found it so hard to control - even while the CIA was continuing rogue operations in Cuba they'd been ordered to cease.
All this is just a prelude to the topic to say that there is a justified sensitivity to the public's right to control and monitor its own agencies who can so easily see the public as a threat.
The current system - right or wrong - is that there is a law that the agencies must disclose their operations not only to the President, but to eight members of Congress, the leading members from each party in the leadership and on the intelligence committees in both houses. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of protection for the situation where something is not disclosed. How would they know?
And that leads us to the news story at hand - that Dick Cheney personally ordered the CIA not to disclose a major operation to the eight members they were required to.
We don't have a lot of facts yet, including the nature of the program.
In a locked thread, this NY Times story on Cheney ordering the concealment is reported.
In that story's 'related stories' links, the same events are discussed in this story, titled "Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress", based on the CIA Director stating, as the story begins:
While the program is not known, the question whether this is a significant matter or not was addressed by one of the members involved:
On the type of misleading, the chairman said:
Now, this is a news even itself - but I'd like to add a response to the comments in the other thread by Common Courtesy about the issue of 'lying by omission'.
His comments, posted as a member, implied that there's a 'big difference' between lying directly and omitting information.
Given the nature of the Congress's reliance on the agency to disclose, as required by law, its operations, I'd say it's pretty obvious why he's wrong in this situation.
"We are not working on a device to control the brains of members of Congress" is a lot less likely to be said directly, rather than for the program to simply not be disclosed.
And it's still *a lie* when it's not disclosed in meetings whose purposes are for the programs to be disclosed and the agency says they have disclosed the programs.
An analogy that hit me would be that if a man has an affair, if he does not tell his friend about it, it falls in that gray area, of 'lie by omission', where the friend may feel he's been misled about who the guy is by the omission, but he never denied it either. But when you move to his relationship with his wife, it gets dicier - he's made a promise to her, and broken it, and it could be said that his 'omission' is a lie as a violation of the promises he's made to her. But now add in the idea that he sits down with her explicitly to discuss whether he's had any affairs, and he hands her a folder titled "full disclosure of every affair-related activity", and says to her that he swears any affair information is fully disclosed in the folder, and it makes no mention of the affair he had, that's lying.
And when the CIA sits down with the gang of 8 in a meeting for them to disclose as required by law the operations and they do not include a significant operation because the executive branch - Dick Cheney - has ordered them not to, it's a lie. Common courtesy is IMO an apologist for the Bush administration to say otherwise and defend their lying.
The American people are already threatened by all sides, in a way - because the US is so powerful, and the American people have so much power with their vote in saying who controls that power, they are the targets of massive pressure in the form of propaganda. Their media - five companies owning nearly all outlets - fails them regularly. Their representation in the political system is undermined by the system requiring expensive campaigns funded by interests at odds with the public.
And so, when you have the Vice-President hiding a security state program from the Congress and the American people - already extremely limited to only eight members who are told that they are being notified, not asked for an opinion - it's a problem. We need the system erriing on the side of over-informing the elected representatives, not allowing for the security state to mushroom in secret, ripe for abuse to be turned on the American people, much less to do things to other people the American people would not approve.
It's been said 'the price of liberty is eternal vigilance'. Stories like this are what the vigilance is about.
Consider which of the members of the governing body were going to stand up to a Stalin or a Saddam and point out a lie. It was a state of tyranny - with a facade.
In the US, we have quite properly tried to create protections against any such 'security state' from placing its own interests ahead of those of the people (as represented by Congress).
While we create powerful military units who can occupy masses of people, we pass the posse comitatus law prohibiting them from operating on US soil, evn under the cover of 'helping' with some civil unrest or disaster, with some careful rules. While we create organizations to effectively propagandize masses, we prohibit their propagandizing US citizens. While we create massive spying operations, we prohibit them spying on US citizens.
Metaphorically, it's a little like wanting to create a powerful monster to dominate others, but ensure that its creator is safe.
So, when the threat appears of any such organization getting a little too much power and secrecy here in the US, concerned citizens are interested (unconcerned, well, are not.)
This is a long issue in various forms. In one of the simplest, it goes back to John Adama signing the law that allowed him to imprison any critic he wanted (and he wanted with several hundred), opposed by Jefferson who ended the law. But it was the same thing in WWI when the government hired thousands of people to 'sell' their fellow citizens on the nation's entry in the war - to propagandize - and again decided it could imprison anyone who disagreed. But the issue here is not that simple situation.
With the creation of the OSS and then the CIA, the US began to control groups who manipulated public opinion and operated in secret. There were tensions early on.
While Congress is especially sensitive to the President having too much power, even Presidents have had concerns. FDR wanted the Pentagon to be a temporary war building because he feared the military becoming too powerful and able to resist the rule of its civilian masters if it could grow there. Eisenhower warned the nation that its democratic processes were threatened by the interests of the 'military-industrial(-congressional) complex.
More pointedly, though, JFK experienced a 'rogue CIA' that undermined his policies - trying to force him to engage in a conflict (the Bay of Pigs), manipulating and lying to him; JFK thought that the culture at the time was such that the military could remove him in a coup, and he encouraged the movie "Seven Days in May" about such a coup to be made from the book to raise awareness of the danger. He had said he'd like to 'cut the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds'. He created the Defense Intelligience Agency in large part to gain some control over the intelligence functions he found it so hard to control - even while the CIA was continuing rogue operations in Cuba they'd been ordered to cease.
All this is just a prelude to the topic to say that there is a justified sensitivity to the public's right to control and monitor its own agencies who can so easily see the public as a threat.
The current system - right or wrong - is that there is a law that the agencies must disclose their operations not only to the President, but to eight members of Congress, the leading members from each party in the leadership and on the intelligence committees in both houses. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of protection for the situation where something is not disclosed. How would they know?
And that leads us to the news story at hand - that Dick Cheney personally ordered the CIA not to disclose a major operation to the eight members they were required to.
We don't have a lot of facts yet, including the nature of the program.
In a locked thread, this NY Times story on Cheney ordering the concealment is reported.
In that story's 'related stories' links, the same events are discussed in this story, titled "Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress", based on the CIA Director stating, as the story begins:
While the program is not known, the question whether this is a significant matter or not was addressed by one of the members involved:
On the type of misleading, the chairman said:
Now, this is a news even itself - but I'd like to add a response to the comments in the other thread by Common Courtesy about the issue of 'lying by omission'.
His comments, posted as a member, implied that there's a 'big difference' between lying directly and omitting information.
Given the nature of the Congress's reliance on the agency to disclose, as required by law, its operations, I'd say it's pretty obvious why he's wrong in this situation.
"We are not working on a device to control the brains of members of Congress" is a lot less likely to be said directly, rather than for the program to simply not be disclosed.
And it's still *a lie* when it's not disclosed in meetings whose purposes are for the programs to be disclosed and the agency says they have disclosed the programs.
An analogy that hit me would be that if a man has an affair, if he does not tell his friend about it, it falls in that gray area, of 'lie by omission', where the friend may feel he's been misled about who the guy is by the omission, but he never denied it either. But when you move to his relationship with his wife, it gets dicier - he's made a promise to her, and broken it, and it could be said that his 'omission' is a lie as a violation of the promises he's made to her. But now add in the idea that he sits down with her explicitly to discuss whether he's had any affairs, and he hands her a folder titled "full disclosure of every affair-related activity", and says to her that he swears any affair information is fully disclosed in the folder, and it makes no mention of the affair he had, that's lying.
And when the CIA sits down with the gang of 8 in a meeting for them to disclose as required by law the operations and they do not include a significant operation because the executive branch - Dick Cheney - has ordered them not to, it's a lie. Common courtesy is IMO an apologist for the Bush administration to say otherwise and defend their lying.
The American people are already threatened by all sides, in a way - because the US is so powerful, and the American people have so much power with their vote in saying who controls that power, they are the targets of massive pressure in the form of propaganda. Their media - five companies owning nearly all outlets - fails them regularly. Their representation in the political system is undermined by the system requiring expensive campaigns funded by interests at odds with the public.
And so, when you have the Vice-President hiding a security state program from the Congress and the American people - already extremely limited to only eight members who are told that they are being notified, not asked for an opinion - it's a problem. We need the system erriing on the side of over-informing the elected representatives, not allowing for the security state to mushroom in secret, ripe for abuse to be turned on the American people, much less to do things to other people the American people would not approve.
It's been said 'the price of liberty is eternal vigilance'. Stories like this are what the vigilance is about.
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