“Untruths are not Lies”
Published by Hanno Kaiser October 21st, 2006 in Law and SocietyBrian Tamanaha tells the following cautionary tale…
about a young federal public defender handling a case, United States v. Rewald, which involved the CIA and several hundred documents containing classified information. One day, about a month into the trial, following a grueling cross-examination by the defense attorney of a witness from the CIA, which clearly harmed the government’s case, the federal prosecutors asked the judge for a closed hearing. In the closed hearing, with only the lawyers and the judge present, the lead prosecutor, from the U.S. Department of Justice, requested that the judge hold the defense attorney in criminal contempt for asking questions of the CIA witnesses that elicited prohibited classified information in open court.
It turns out that the classified information was made up by the CIA specifically to mislead another federal agency (the IRS).
The official admitted that none of the stories were in fact true. However, he insisted that they were not “lies.” He said that they were “creative stories.” When I asked him to tell me the difference between “lies” and “creative stories,” given that both are untrue, he said (I paraphrase):“Untruths are not ‘lies,’ but ‘creative stories,’ when they are made up in the interest of protecting the country. And the CIA is protecting the country.”
This was the testimony of a high ranking CIA official, under oath, in federal district court. This kind of mindset, needless to say, can justify almost anything.
On the basis of that evidence, the judge went on to find the defendant guilty as charged, and Wilson spent the next twenty years in jail — until his conviction was overturned by another federal district court judge. What happened to Tamanaha? Well, head over to Balikinization and read for yourself.
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I’ve come across another instance of CIA propaganda, as described in the BBC documentary film ‘The Power of Nightmares’, which relates the following story:
William Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987, was strongly influenced by a best-selling book ‘The Terror Network’ in the early 1980s. The book apparently alleged that what appeared to be isolated separatist and terrorist groups dispersed across the globe - from the PLO to the IRA - was actually a “coordinated strategy of terror” being run by the Soviet Union. Casey soon thereafter called a meeting of the CIA’s Soviet analysts and requested that they generate a report for the President detailing the existence of this hidden terror network. But the analysts told Casey that much of the information in the book was “black propaganda” invented by the CIA itself to smear the Soviet Union. Melvin Goodman, the head of Soviet Affairs in the CIA from 1976 to 1987, claimed that the book contained “very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda - clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers - were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.” Goodman further claimed that Casey had “made up his mind” and didn’t believe the CIA analysts or “operations people”. As Goodman said, “He knew the Soviets were involved in terrorism, so there was nothing we could tell him to disabuse him. Lies became reality.”
The film goes on to claim that Casey was eventually able to find “a university professor who described himself as a terror expert” (although no name is given) who “produced a dossier that confirmed that the hidden terror network did, in fact, exist.” And that the influence of these individuals in the Reagan administration eventually led to the administration’s policy of funding covert wars against the “hidden Soviet threat around the world,” although hard facts are omitted on this point.
—
If true as sold, this series of events raises interesting questions on several fronts: To what extent is the global information environment (or “history”, for that matter) tainted by disinformation from the world’s security agencies? To what extent is our collective factual universe resilient (ie, firmly truth-oriented) in the face of these contaminations? What does Casey’s intense denial say about the confirmation biases that are latent within all of our worldviews? And how much do those same biases pollute America’s current foreign policy?
I refrained from posting anything in reaction to this news item because I have nothing to say except “holy Jesusy crap, that’s so corrupt that it blows my mind”. And I don’t have much to say about Matt’s questions either, except that the world’s best philosophers (Hume, for example) have tried to answer questions about social testimony, and their answers have by and large been pitiful.
Rather, on the subject of black propaganda. I recently came across some of it in an unlikely place: my inbox. I received a forward called “THE SECRET BEHIND THE NUMBER 11″. It’s a kooky chain mail, but with a 9-11 twist; most of the email is about all the different ways that a series of 9-11 related numbers or letters fortuitously equal “11″ when added together or counted. (i.e., did you know that “New York City” has 11 letters? It’s true! Woah!) Silly and harmless.
But then it ends off with:
“The most recognized symbol for the US, after the Stars & Stripes, is the Eagle. The following verse is taken from the Quran, the Islamic holy book: “For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced: for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace.” That verse is number 9.11 of the Quran.”
Of course, the quote was entirely manufactured. Verse 9.11 of the Koran says nothing of the sort. It reads: “But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith; and We make the communications clear for a people who know.” Sounds more like an ad for Sprint than a Nostradamusian prophecy.
The point though is the quote itself, especially the last line: “the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace”. Some idiot is obviously trying to play with the brains of the mystically inclined to give a pro-war message.
I wouldn’t be worried, if only it weren’t for the fact that this ridiculous forward was given to me by a good friend, critical thinker, philosophy-psych student, who called it “spooky”.