Lies as an Instrument of Governing

...The legislation, sponsored by the late Senator Henry M. Jackson (D.-Wash...

...All of this may be a result of the lameduck factor...

...Since Bush is totally sold on a missile defense system and Putin is totally opposed, it looks like some chilly times ahead in Russian-American relations...

...An unconvinced Vladimir V. Putin firmly declared he would do everything he could to counter a missile defense system, especially one based in part in nearby countries...

...True, under the Russian Constitution he can’t run for a third consecutive term next March...

...While traveling in the region and trying to put together a similar conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November, Rice was stymied by the doubts and reservations of Arab nations...

...Maybe the news guys should be introduced as follows: This is the CBS Evening News, read by (insert anchor’s name) and researched, reported, written, and edited by actual journalists...

...He met with Bush’s least favorite Iranian, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and invited him to Moscow...

...During the Cold War and the Vietnam War, you were a hawk or you were a dove...

...Unlike Jackson-Vanik and the Captive Nations resolution, there is nothing concrete to be accomplished by labeling the killing of Armenians in 1915 as genocide...

...Well, nothing specifically...

...Pravda said it should impress upon the United States—meaning the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration— the need to end the Cold War and stop the arms race...

...Be that as it may, perhaps it is time to level with viewers...

...Moreover, despite having voted for two sets of UN sanctions against Iran because of its unwillingness to permit full international inspection of an ongoing uranium enrichment program, on this trip Putin announced that he would veto a third sanctions resolution...

...All that is gone now, as evidenced by a recent exchange between Senators BarackObama and Hillary Clinton about who was willing to talk peace with unfriendly leaders during their first term in the White House...

...Nor need much be said about President Bill Clinton’s lies concerning his sexual activities that got him impeached...

...This was an example of Congressional meddling in foreign affairs that produced results...

...Captive Nations Week may have done little for the captive nations, but it was a forthright declaration of American policy...

...Fifty years later it is no more, and the Pentagon has announced the successful test of an antimissile defense system, causing severe heartburn in the Kremlin...

...I hope I am not revealing a trade secret here by pointing out that anchors read from a marvelous invention called the TelePrompTer...

...I’m not speaking of lies to shield military action, as in the cases of both President Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada and President George H.W...

...President Bush has warned of serious harm to American relations with Turkey, a vital ally—and the outrage expressed there has confirmed his fears...

...Evidently they considered premature disclosure inconvenient...

...Many who have served in this loyaltyobsessed Administration, however, no longer keep their lips sealed when they feel the President has done them wrong...

...The Soviet press portrayed Sputnik as a peaceful scientific venture...

...It is the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia, and California is where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi comes from...

...In the Nixon-John F. Kennedy encounter, the mother of all television debates, it was who would brandish more intercontinental missiles in Khrushchev’s face...

...It was rendered less useful in the television age, though, because viewers could judge the manner in which it was said...

...On November 1 last year, just prior to the midterm elections, President Bush said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was under fire, would stay on...

...On CNN’s Larry King Live, Rather said he played only a supervisory role in the story, although Josh Howard, one of the fired producers, had previously said Rather played a more active role...

...Many lined up at newspaper bulletin boards to get the latest word on the satellite...

...They called their ambassador home from Washington, ostensibly for consultations...

...And his successor, Condoleezza Rice, has yet to tell the story of her tensions with Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld...

...A vintage case of mendacity was President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate coverup, and the statement of his White House spokesman, Ronald L. Ziegler, that previous denials of involvement had become inoperative...

...Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill quit after disagreeing with the President about tax cuts...

...Some anchors insist on having the title of managing editor in their contracts, to create the impression that they are working reporters...

...The Communist regime went all out to exploit its propaganda advantage over capitalist America...

...One personal note: I met Khrushchev at many receptions and on foreign trips...

...He said he would send American forces into Pakistan to deal with the terrorist threat if President Pervez Musharraf failed to take adequate measures...

...I recall being struck by how average Russians reacted...

...That kind of Congressional meddling in foreign situations has a history...

...But Rather could not bring himself to say, essentially, don’t blame me, blame my writers, because that would have exposed the whole omnipotent anchor charade...

...The Turks were furious anyway...

...But there are a half million Armenian-Americans in California...

...President Eisenhower had the last week of July designated as Captive Nations Week...

...Those were the glory days for the Soviet Union...

...Missing Boundaries Ah, For The olden days of Presidential politics, when foreign policy lines were sharply drawn and you took your pick...

...If we can get some honesty about how television newscasts are put together, maybe some good will come out of Rather’s lawsuit yet...

...That year I had to interview him for CBS’ Face the Nation during his visit to Austria...

...After all, I left CBS in 1976 with some hard feelings on both sides...

...In fact, the attorney general and President George W. Bush had agreed on Friday that the resignation would be announced Monday...

...Since Jackson-Vanik, more than a half million refugees, many of them Jews, evangelical Christians and Catholics, have resettled in the United States...

...Then, at 6 A.M...

...The U.S., it charged, was conspiring to destabilize Moscow satellite states...

...Things were quiet in Moscow early in October 1957...

...and the USSR after the first Gulf War...

...When did that happen...

...This despite the great pains the Bush Administration has taken to reassure Moscow that the antimissile system— elements of which are to be positioned in Poland and the Czech Republic—will not be targeted at Russia...

...The prime minister wields executive power in a country like Britain, of course, and Khrushchev had that title when he called the shots in the Soviet Union...

...Chief Justice Roberts lost no time in having a statement issued from the Supreme Court pressroom saying, briefly and bluntly, the chief justice did not suggest Miers to the President...

...The anchor, even if called managing editor, is only the public face of a news collection enterprise...

...on October 5, Radio Moscow proclaimed that the first ever artificial satellite had been launched the day before, was visible to the naked eye on a clear night, and was emitting a beeping signal you could hear on a radio...

...Bremer promptly f ired back by releasing to the New York Ti m e s a May 2003 letter he had sent the President promising more robust measures to dismantle the Iraqi military...

...What complicates the debate about the use of force is that global terrorism presents no clear boundaries, such as the Maginot Line or the Iron Curtain...

...After the election, on November 8, Bush announced Rumsfeld’s resignation, saying he had not wanted to inject a major decision about the Iraq War into the final days of the campaign...

...But undoubtedly it also reflects a sapping of authority that the Iraq War has brought about...

...It was certainly a lot easier to follow the argument when there were hawks and doves...

...The Kremlin was furious...

...Although Obama got more applause in the auditorium, opinion polls indicated that Clinton had managed to frame the issue as freshness versus experience, and experience had more takers among the American public...

...tough guy argument...

...Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Lies as an Instrument of Governing Former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure in office was a tissue of deception and evasion, found a way to tell a parting lie...

...Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was unwittingly made to deliver a misleading statement about Iraq to the United Nations, has held his tongue...

...Significantly, as I write Speaker Pelosi has not yet brought the bill to the floor...

...The Anchor Charade I HAVE DECLINED media requests that I comment on Dan Rather’s lawsuit charging CBS with cutting his promised airtime on 60 Minutes upon removing him as the Evening News anchor because of a controversial story he did about President Bush’s Air National Guard service...

...But it may be the best remembered exchange of the Democratic campaign so far...

...It was an innocent-sounding question delivered via a YouTube video during the Charleston debate...

...Although it’s hard to believe, most people alive today had not been born when the Russians sent their little vehicle into orbit and startled the world...

...He could have said that he was the victim of a sloppily researched script...

...A new book by Robert Draper, Dead Certain, quoted the President as saying Bremer was solely responsible for the disastrous decision to disband Iraq’s Army...

...It denounced the mass killing of Armenians by the Turks as genocide...

...In the seething antimissile system controversy, a flight to Moscow by Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates failed to persuade President Putin to accept a European-based shield...

...They are instructed to glance down every few minutes to create the impression that they are checking their notes, which may not be there at all...

...It has to do with the role of the anchor, who is often paid millions of dollars less for reporting skills than for charisma...

...They spoke in ter ms of pride in their government, which was rare for Soviet citizens...

...Remarkably, such lies have come to be treated as routine instruments of governing, with no reason to apologize...

...If the Administration has been thinking it won’t have to contend with Putin much longer, it may have to think again...

...Putin and Bush Head to Head I WA S REPORTING for CBS News from Moscow when the Russians launched their Sputnik...

...But I would like to make one point...

...Bush replied by praising Bremer’s positive and significant impact...

...And what does the resolution do...

...It’s a myth...

...But routine untruthfulness appears to be on the increase...

...But Putin has announced that he will run for a seat in the December Parliamentary election...

...America is no longer the leading force in organizing alliances and peace initiatives...

...All the participants in the October 16 Caspian nations summit held in Tehran—who included Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan—agreed not to let the territory of any one of them be used against another...

...Perhaps this explains why, to an extent not witnessed in the past, ex-Bush underlings have taken to refuting the boss...

...The most recent confrontation involved L. Paul Bremer, the first Bush administrator in conquered Iraq...

...He shot back in his own book and on television that the White House had ruined his career and reputation...

...The Soviet news agency TASSstressed that Sputnik was crossing over America seven times a day...

...During World War II, you were an isolationist or you were an internationalist...

...As I circulated among his entourage, he pointed to me and said, “There is correspondent Schorr—my Sputnik...

...Former CIA Director George J. Tenet was the target of White House complaints of faulty intelligence...

...That adds an unwelcome complication to the war in Iraq...

...Then Putin flew to Tehran to forge closer Russian-Iranian ties...

...Bush has not ruled out the possibility of military action against Iran...

...Indeed, when Dan Rather found himself in trouble for narrating the story about Bush’s National Guard record, he could have taken the easy way out...

...The object was to make an issue of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe...

...Bush’s invasion of Panama...

...When New York Times reporter Philip Shenon phoned the Justice Department on the Saturday and again on the Sunday before Gonzales’ departure to ask about reports that he was stepping down, a spokesman said the attorney general had authorized him to say the reports were totally untrue...

...In one of the more unusual episodes contradicting the President, the Draper book quoted him as saying it was Judge John G. Roberts who made the ill-fated suggestion to nominate White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court...

...Congressional Meddling Theresolution was in the grand tradition of Congressional actions that displease some foreign country but please domestic constituents...

...This presented a new wrinkle in the peacenik vs...

...In addition, more than a million Soviet Jews have immigrated to Israel...

...A Sapping of Authority As Bush’s Tenure winds down, he finds his influence in international affairs waning on a broad front...

...In opposing the Iraq War, Obama was not being a softy, he was not against fighting, he simply wanted to fight some other place—Afghanistan for one, maybe Pakistan...

...Others have swallowed their pride and gone without protest...

...What is astonishing is that now deliberate lies are told by people who espouse values that are supposed to include honesty...

...But he may find himself facing another kind of coalition—of the unwilling...

...In my early days as a reporter, I became acquainted with “no comment” as a way of parrying undesired questions...

...A confident Khrushchev told me the Soviets were willing to put satellites and missiles under international control, but only as part of a comprehensive arms control agreement...

...Lying as a matter of convenience has become almost a conventional tactic...

...Clinton, perceiving an opportunity, said she would not promise any first-year summits with unfriendly leaders because she did not want to be used for propaganda purposes...

...And he might have added, there is no Russian law that would prevent him from shifting power to the prime minister, with the president reduced to a ceremonial role...

...From there, he said, becoming prime minister is a realistic idea...

...Not only were they turned down flat, but Putin their host, showed up 40 minutes late for their meeting—surely a calculated insult...

...But it did not take much imagination to conjure up a Russian military satellite that could carry a lethal payload down from space...

...He can no longer count on a loyal ally like Turkey heeding him when he urges it not to invade Iraq in a hunt for Kurdish rebels...

...Obama said he would talk to unfriendly countries because it’s ridiculous to act as though not talking is punishment...

...In 1915, during the last days of the Ottoman Empire...

...Only then did Bremer issue the order to completely dissolve Iraq’s Army...

...The Administration has had a difficult time assembling a Middle East summit along the lines of the 1991 Madrid conference organized by the U.S...

...Jackson-Vanik may seem a relic of the Cold War, but it is still enforced today, a testament to its impact...

...Later Obama, seeking to underscore his toughness, shifted the emphasis of a question on the Iraq War to the broader battle against Islamic extremism...

...and the late Representative Charles A. Vanik (D.-Ohio), denied Most-FavoredNation treatment to countries that kept their citizens from emigrating...

...Soviet Party chief Nikita S. Khrushchev and most of the Politburo were on vacation...

...Then there was the famous JacksonVanik amendment to the 1974 Trade Act...

...Pravda proclaimed Sputnik a victory of Soviet Man, with his Bolshevik boldness, clearness of purpose and energy...

...In a television interview followed by a book, O’Neill described the President as acting at Cabinet meetings like a blind man in a room full of deaf people...

...So on October 10, the Foreign Affairs Committee disregarded President Bush’s appeals to drop the matter and sent a resolution to the full House for a vote...