From Essays After Montaigne
Now me thought it very strange, that it should lie in the power of an Ambassador to dispence with any point, concerning the advertizements he should give unto his Master, namely of such consequence, comming from such a person, and spoken in so great an assembly, whereas me seemed it should have beene the office of a trustie servant, truly and exactly to set downe things as they were, and in what manner they had succeeded: to the end the libertie of disposing, judging and chusing, might wholly lie in the master. For to alter and conceale the truth from him, for feare he should conster and take it other than he ought, and lest that might provoke him to some bad resolution; and in the meanewhile to suffer him to be ignorant of his owne affaires, mee thought should rather have appertained to him that giveth the law, than to him that receiveth the same; the Master or overseer of the schools, and not to him who should thinke himselfe inferior, as well in authority as in wisdome and good counsell.
As my wife can attest, there are few things that make me as insensibly angry as when I ask a question of someone and that person responds with something other than an answer to my question. If this stems from my failure to phrase the question clearly, then I accept full responsibility; if it's a result of the person not paying sufficient attention to respond properly, then I become increasingly annoyed; but if it's a case of the person believing that I need or should want some other information than that which I'm requesting, then I become positively incensed. I strive to be a humble person of good will, but I'm absolutely unwilling to accept that any other person is in a better position than I am to decide what I want or need to know. I'm not saying that I'm always right, but I am saying that I'm more likely to be right on this particular matter than any other person. This attitude is the product of an upbringing that required a form of self-reliance that would have given even Emerson pause.
Fortunately for me, I find myself in relatively few situations where I'm forced to rely on someone else's assessment of my need to know. But this week, I've been reminded of one such situation. In his State of the Union address, President Bush told us that despite his failure to present anything credible in the past, he has proof of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that he can't tell us about just yet. He also told us that there is an unspecified number of terrorists around the world who "are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies," but about whom he can't give us any details. Let us leave aside the fact that if he were lying, he would probably make similar claims. (Brad says the President sounds like a high school football player. I say he sounds like a junior high school student just back from summer vacation telling tales of his fabled girlfriend in Canada.) Instead, I would like to focus on the offensive notion that the President is fit to know these things and I'm not.
We live in a republic, which I take to mean that voters are the masters and overseers and elected officials are inferior in authority and even in wisdom and good counsel, and that their underlings in our intelligence agencies are more inferior still. As a master and overseer, why can't I know the names and crimes of suspected terrorists or terrorist supporters who have been executed or assassinated in my name? Why can't I examine the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda over which our nation will go to war, sullying our standing in the world community, putting soldiers in harm's way, killing untold numbers of innocent Iraqis, and increasing the threat to our citizens of retaliatory terrorist attacks? I'm not advocating government by referendum. But history strongly suggests that activities undertaken furtively are most often not appropriate. I would much prefer to see our intelligence efforts carried out not in the open (as that would render them ineffective), but with the intention of being fully described as soon as is practical after their completion.
In modern times, the term diplomatic has gone from describing tact and skill in negotiation to describing deception and dissimulation. And that shift in meaning has mirrored a similarly unpleasant shift in our understanding of the role of the intelligence community. It's now generally accepted that our intelligence agencies exist to clandestinely pursue ends that we as a nation should not be pursuing, but have been forced to pursue by the grim realities of international relations. Yet since the code-breaking efforts of World War II (which were kept secret to deceive our enemies, not because they were immoral or distasteful, and which were fully disclosed once secrecy was no longer operationally necessary), I'm not aware of any intelligence efforts that have been successful.
On the other hand, I'm aware of many intelligence efforts in that same period that were extremely inappropriate and proved disastrous both here (spying on civil rights leaders) and abroad (from the Bay of Pigs to the arming of Iraq and Al Qaeda). And those misguided efforts were facilitated at least in part by the belief that the public would never know all of the details. Any subsequent attempts to disclose those details have met with persistent and determined resistance because our intelligence agencies would very much like to reserve the ability to pursue such follies in the future. I think it very strange that it lies in the power of our intelligence agencies to dispense with whatever formalities and reporting they see fit. It seems to me that it's their role as our servants to tell us precisely what they have done and where they have succeeded and failed as soon as it's operationally practical to do so. They are acting on our behalf, and if we won't understand or accept what they're doing, they shouldn't be doing it.
8:27:25 AM 
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