The Word From Washington
The Word from Washington As if Attorney General John N. Mitchell didn't have enough to do, what with trying to repeal the First Amendment and all, he is also roam- ing the countryside explaining...
...Well, we think we have it all figured out, and we offer some guidance, free of charge, to our colleagues in the press: The "national security" is not jeopardized by printing lies...
...No appeal shall lie from a decision voiding an identification card...
...The card, says the Federal Register, "may be declared void, without notice, by an immigration officer for proper cause...
...It has been diverting, therefore, to read Brother Alsop's recent fulmina- tions against what he calls The New York Times' "collection of stolen Pen- tagon documents," and his denunci- ations of attempts to understand the roots of American involvement in Viet- nam as "an orgy of public hypocrisy" and "a revival of McCarthyism...
...Well, Taylor's list might not be yours or ours, but here, for what it's worth, it is: "Division in the minorities, loss of patriotism, degradation and defama- tion of all virtues which made us a great country in the past, the use of our own media to destroy us internal- ly...
...What of "the principle of the people's right to know...
...Walt Rostow indignantly rejected the suggestion (advanced by James Reston in The New York Times) that he and his colleagues in the national security establishment had failed to examine the morality of the war...
...From time to time back in 1966, 1967, and 1968 we would slip down to the White House basement to receive our latest consignment of secret Viet- nam papers...
...The man who dispensed all these goodies was Walt Whitman Rostow, President Johnson's special adviser on national security affairs, and he handed them out with genial magnanimity to any member of the press corps who took the trouble to ask...
...victory was just around the corner...
...He asked the Virginia lawyers, "Are we, then, to trust the courts to fulfill their oath of office without abusing it but not trust the President in fulfilling his oath...
...Predictably, the first word from the brooding exile at the LBJ Ranch was that it was all a Kennedy plot...
...Sen- ator Hubert H. Humphrey also ran true to form, making it known at once that he had not the foggiest notion of what was going on while he served as Vice President...
...On re- quest, he "shall appear in person be- fore an immigration officer in the United States for examination under oath or affirmation upon the applica- tion...
...a television interviewer asked, and Taylor replied: "I don't believe in that as a general principle...
...Perhaps other Government agencies ought to devise their own lovable little animals to help pave the way for their own monstrosities...
...It is his contention that the Gov- ernment ought to be free to eavesdrop on "dangerous" radicals, without even the formality of a prior court order, because "the threat to our society from so-called 'domestic' subversion is as serious as any threat from abroad...
...Citizen Identification Cards," which will be used "to facilitate identification in the United States by immigration officers and entry over land borders from for- eign contiguous territory...
...Nor does he pay much mind to the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and sei- zure...
...Not the least of the beneficial results of the Vietnam disclosures was the reminder they provided to reporters that they need not spend all their days rewriting official handouts...
...Potomacus...
...And how about "The Indochina Iguana...
...Another alumnus of the Johnson Administration, John P. Roche, in- sisted that Vietnam was destroyed in the interests of preserving peace...
...As they hurried off to mysterious rendezvous to pick up their parcels of documents from equal- ly mysterious intermediaries, the re- porters displayed a kind of enthusiasm we have not observed for a long time...
...Perhaps the Department of Transportation was merely trying to prepare the kiddies, gently, for the horrors with which they'll have to try to cope when they grow up...
...Bombing of North Vietnam was seen as a way of avoiding war," he ex- plained, displaying the marvelous logic that still seems to inhabit the White House...
...The assumption was that the good news would promptly find its way into print, and usually it did...
...That's right...
...We'd like to read aloud to our own children the adventures of "The Anti- ballistic Anteater," "The Multiple In- dependently Targetable Muskrat," and "The Recession Raccoon...
...Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk acknowledged that he had "un- derestimated the persistence and the tenacity of the North Vietnamese," but added in the next breath that he was sure "they're continuing to come" only because of "the divisions here at home...
...Well, we're not so sure...
...They show, after all, that America's foremost policy plan- ners were every bit as misguided and irresponsible in private as Alsop was in public through all those long years...
...Maybe it was worth it, though, "to discover our weaknesses in time to correct them be- fore we're faced with a major crisis...
...He was by far the steadiest and most faithful customer for secret pa- pers, needing frequent reassurance that the Government was doing all it could to win his war...
...Senator William Proxmire of Wis- consin, ever vigilant against waste of the taxpayers' money, has exposed the fact that the Department of Transpor- tation spent $12,800 to print 50,000 copies of a children's booklet featuring such characters as "The Supersonic Pussycat" and "Shaky the Helicop- ter...
...Mitchell maintains that the Pres- ident, "by virtue of his office and sources of information, is in a far better position" than the courts to de- termine whether wiretaps ought to be imposed in domestic political cases...
...The greatest hazard one was likely to encounter on those periodic trips to W. W. Rostow's bargain basement was to bump into Joseph Alsop on the stairs...
...The Word from Washington As if Attorney General John N. Mitchell didn't have enough to do, what with trying to repeal the First Amendment and all, he is also roam- ing the countryside explaining why he ought to be allowed to repeal the Fourth...
...Like the Bour- bons of France, America's decision- makers seem blessed with the gift of remembering everything while learn- ing nothing...
...I believe it immoral to walk away from our treaty commitments, which other nations and human beings have taken as the foundations for their lives in the most literal sense...
...For the first time in twenty years," one correspondent told us, "I'm proud to be a journalist...
...Senator Proxmire says he sees "abso- lutely no justification for this type of expenditure, however small it may be...
...Us- ually there were charts and graphs, too—handsome full-color productions showing steady and impressive increas- es in enemy casualties, Vietcong sur- renders, villages pacified...
...There were, needless to say, no warnings against breaching "national security," no mid- night huddles at the Department of Justice, no frantic calls pleading with publishers to stop the presses, no ap- peals to the courts to impose censor- ship...
...The North Vietnam- ese, we suspect, sometimes read about "captured documents" in Alsop's col- umn before Hanoi even knew they had gone astray...
...Big Brother Department (Let-Me- See-Your-Papers Division) : According to an announcement in the good, gray pages of the Federal Register, the Jus- tice Department's Immigration and Naturalization Service is promulgating rules for the issuance of "U.S...
...Invariably they were "progress reports" proving conclusively that U.S...
...Mitchell's speech to the Virginia lawyers was a peculiar exercise in sev- eral respects, the first of which was that he delivered it at all...
...Perhaps the most revealing com- ments of all came from General Max- well Taylor, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former ambassa- dor to Saigon, and perennial adviser to Presidents, who was distressed by what he called the "deliberate betrayal of Government secrets...
...A citizen should know the things he needs to know to be a good citizen and discharge his function...
...We'll bet that would be a cute one...
...And so when all those things started happening with publication of the Pentagon's Vietnam papers in June, we wondered what it was that sudden- ly made all the difference...
...It makes no reference whatsoever to other environmental problems, such as excessive sideline noise or upper atmospheric pollution...
...Not long ago he was in Ro- anoke, Virginia, telling the Virginia State Bar Association all about the "firm legal basis" which, in his view, supports the doctrine that the Govern- ment may tap the telephone conver- sations of anyone it deems to be a threat to the national security...
...You can only get into trouble for telling the truth...
...Some who for- got to ask were reminded: "President Johnson wants you to see these," Ros- tow would say, pushing a pile of classi- fied documents across his desk...
...Some of the reactions to publication of the Pentagon's Vietnam archives have been almost as illuminating as the documents themselves...
...The year is 1984 minus thirteen, and counting...
...He calls it "little more than an at- tempt to propagandize our children as to the virtues of the SST," and notes that the booklet "minimizes—indeed, almost dismisses—the problem of the sonic boom...
...The Attorney General has apparently ascertained that the radical priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, like the Soviets, are armed with nuclear missiles...
...Often they were buttressed by extracts from "captured enemy doc- uments" demonstrating that the other side was on the brink of collapse...
...We would think, to the contrary, that Alsop would welcome the Viet- nam disclosures...
...And what are those weaknesses...
...It was good to see newspapermen scurrying after scoops again...
...In the past, as The New York Times pointed out, "when matters have been pending before the Supreme Court, Justice Department officials have avoided making statements that might be regarded as exerting pressure upon the justices...
...Possession of the card by other than the rightful holder, loss of citizen- ship by the person to whom the card was issued, or a determination that the card was obtained by fraud shall be grounds, though not exclusive, for voidance...
...For a great nation to make the commit- ments we have to Southeast Asia in- volves a moral commitment to stay with them," he wrote in rebuttal, pre- tending that the fraudulence of those commitments had not been exposed...
...The rules stipulate that a citizen who wants to be properly identifiable may obtain a card by submitting an application, proof of citizenship, a photograph, and a modest fee...
...It praises the virtue of speed to the hilt, but without mentioning that few- er than three per cent of us might ever be able to take advantage of it...
...What is a citizen to do after reading these documents that he wouldn't have done otherwise...
...You have to talk about cases...
...General Taylor said he "wouldn't know" about the morality of the war, but he did know that America had paid "a very heavy price...
...The Attorney General doesn't pay much mind to such niceties...
...The issue is to come before the Supreme Court next fall, on appeal from the Sixth Circuit which found the Govern- ment's contention to be "breathtak- ing" but constitutionally unsound...
Vol. 35 • August 1971 • No. 8
