Secrecy Is for Losers
What Biden’s classified document scandal reveals about power in America
What were President Biden’s lawyers doing digging around in storage boxes a few days before the midterm elections last November? The official story—that they stumbled on secret documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement while they were “packing files”—is improbable on its face. Who sends high-level lawyers to pack boxes unless they’re worried about what’s going to turn up? Even if the initial files were discovered by accident, there is no plausible, non-political explanation for why the White House waited two months, until well after the midterm elections, to acknowledge the discovery. The one certainty so far is that the pertinent information necessary to form a reasonably informed judgment about the severity of the infraction is being withheld from the public. Rather than provide American citizens with a working knowledge of their own government, the White House and Justice Department drip half facts out to the public, in a method similar to water torture.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reason to sidestep what may be behind the secrets. It is worth shifting the focus to secrets as tools of bureaucratic obfuscation, techniques by which bureaucrats preserve their niches.
Wherever the truth lies in the Biden case, it’s obvious that administrative secrecy is routinely used as a veto on democracy and the rule of law. The same opaque network of bureaucrats and security officials who still have not explained to the public why they raided Trump’s compound can’t be expected to play it straight now. Being transparent with the public might put them out of business...
One begins to suspect that behind the bureaucrat’s fanaticism is the knowledge that the country simply doesn’t need him. If the whole structure crumbled tomorrow, America would be just fine.
5 comments:
Elsewhere in the article Siegel makes the point that "The more reliant the press has become on secrets and leaks, the more sycophantish and naive its attitude toward the security agencies. "
I think we all recognise that the Media regularly spice up the news to generate more readers/viewers and hence justify more revenue from advertisers. Well now we realise that 'news' is a limited resource and the Media compromise their integrity (if they still had any) by seeking it from tainted sources. And they are increasingly keen to do so.
Perhaps Trump made many more enemies than we realise by putting the phrase "fake news" into circulation? That, and "draining the swamp", made him unwelcome in elite society.
A very thought-provoking piece. The point from Max Weber at the end is interesting - secrets exist because the bureaucracy as a class of people need them in order to justify their existence. I suspect most of the "secrets" that excite the press are in this category. The politician's trick is to know how and when to weaponise them in order to discredit opponents.
And another thought. There used to be a clear-cut distinction between politicians and the rather boring administrators who did their bidding. In America, they were very keen on this as it was evidence of the "separation of powers" that allegedly guaranteed freedoms. But the more bureaucratic systems get, the more this distinction is eroded. The key players and powerful people are the ones who know how the system works and how the secrets are dribbled out, not the senile old figurehead.
DJ - yes, the big media players do seem attracted to tainted sources. It's understandable too, because they feed on drama in a world where caveats and uncertainties suck the drama out of any story. As ever, it is difficult to see this changing unless news consumers change first.
Sam - "The key players and powerful people are the ones who know how the system works"
That's it, plus those who will be here when the politicians are long gone. As if senior bureaucrats exploit their permanence more ruthlessly than ever.
"the White House waited two months ... to acknowledge the discovery"
Is that a crime of itself? Come to that, to whom did the searching shysters report their trove? Might they have committed a crime by reporting it to the wrong people?
Anyway the chap is right. Hiring lawyers to pack up some papers tells its own story.
dearieme - seems unlikely to be a crime in itself, just suspicious. Even then it is easy to imagine a slow process due to much buck-passing and arm-twisting. Yet as you say, hiring the lawyers tells its own story.
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