Yoni Rosenzweig: A presidential hostility for truth

You might just say that the whole idea that government comes from the people has seen better days. Toward the beginning of the war on terror, Attorney General John Ashcroft accused all people who dare question the government's handling of prisoners of "providing support for the enemy." Presumably, we should follow their lead without question, because the government, unlike us, would never support the enemy (aside from that Iran-Contra thing).

Last week, the White House announced that an underground executive government exists: a "shadow government" composed of bureaucrats who will be poised to take over in an emergency. In shadow land, the Attorney General need not even respond to questions about the war.

This emergency government is housed at an undisclosed location, doing undisclosed things, composed of undisclosed people, being paid an undisclosed sum of taxpayer money. Terrorists take note, do not "hide in the shadows" -- the Bush government operates there.

The "secret government" will face no suits from the General Accounting Office, as does the Vice President today, because it does not include a legislature; no checks and balances means blank checks on budget balances. But rest assured -- the IRS is ready to get your post-Armageddon e-filing.

Having no place in the hidden government, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle never received word of these plans and only read about them in The Washington Post. The pattern has been striking for Senate leader, who complained also that the government left him in the dark about U.S. military action in the Philippines, Georgia and Yemen. The complaint brought the Ashcroft-smack-down from Trent Lott, who presented the "not-patriotic-enough" hand that Republicans have assembled.

If Congress, the press, or the public wants information about the expanded war in eastern Afghanistan or anywhere else, they have two governments to turn to -- one which is unanswerable and one which is unanswering. Should it be a surprise that the latter invented the former?

The situation realizes an opaque Bush utopia: no Congress and no press to even ask about the emperor's clothes, just a war with acceptable ends and ambiguous means.

As one columnist has quipped, this is actually "a shadow of a shadow government," one that only further buries information and shields the public from its already detached leaders. The secretive war and hidden government are the continuation, rather than the end, of Nixon-style public relations.

In an unprecedented decision, the Pentagon keeps journalists away from the battle site, despite their eagerness to provide essential information. The President does not want us to know any more about this war than his simple optimistic boilerplates and rallying calls, and no journalist is going to stop that.

What is more, official secrecy recently met its first cousin disinformation with the creation of The Office of Strategic Influence. This Office promised a cadre of officials employed to "strategically inform" foreign and domestic media outlets about the war. That is, they anonymously leak tidbits about the war, some of which are false, to the press.

The creation of this new office seemed to imply that our enemies are not evil enough -- they need to have more pinned on them. Or perhaps that our efforts to save humanity from terrorism are not quite blameless and need embellishing. After significant criticism, this office was abolished; now the governments' disinformants are hiding in other bureaucracies, only without the euphemistic title of "strategic influencer." This amounts to nothing less than spying against accurate information, the foundation of good democracy.

This hostility for truth should be no surprise, coming from a president who declared that the State of the Union "has never been stronger" despite a recession, the return of budget deficits and the most deadly attack on U.S. soil ever. It looked like harmless hopefulness then, now we know it is something else.

When endless optimism and propaganda are all the news, and efforts to shroud and insulate the executive are persistent, a terrible brew is stewing. Our government is demanding $4.7 trillion over 10 years for a war and they refuse to acknowledge its conduct, intensity or the names of those people working for an underground government. "Secrecy and a free open government," Harry Truman wrote, "do not mix."

The President and his Cabinet want us to follow their light as they shine it in our faces. They want to put a war past us while we sit like deer in propaganda headlights. No one, not the press, not the public, and not our allies should ignore this assault on free information.

As George Bush Sr. once said, "this will not stand, this aggression will not stand." Yoni Rosenzweig is a Senior History and Philosphy, Politics and Economics major from Sherman Oaks, Cal., and founder of the Penn chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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