Deep Throat Returns:


NEWSFLASH!  Deceit and Secrets Small Price to Pay, Say Some Public Servants

 

3 December 2002

 

Donald Rumsfeld is 70 now and going strong.  And Henry Kissinger just got hired to lead the investigation into what went wrong before, during and after 9-11.  Henry’s 79.

 

They’re still doing their thing, pumping out that wonderful public service year after year, ever humble, placing the country’s needs before their own, even in their golden years.  It would almost be altruistic, if they hadn’t made so much money along the way. 

 

Guys like Rumsfeld and Kissinger make you want to read more history.  I mean, what do we really know of the formative years of our energetic gerontocracy?  

 

Well, Robert Stinnett published a best-seller a few years ago called Day of Deceit:  The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor.   Stinnett has a fantastic premise – he describes Pearl Harbor as no accident, not an intelligence failure and not the result of a brilliant enemy plan.  Instead, he makes a case that it was “the result of a carefully orchestrated design, initiated at the highest levels of our government.”  Just crazy stuff, I bet. Not to worry, though. Don was only nine in 1941, and Kissinger had just arrived in New York from Germany.    

 

Another new book sheds some light on the generation that leads us today  -- oh so bravely --  through the dark and mysterious alleyways of national policy and defense.  It’s an eyewitness account of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, written by James Ennes, Jr.  It’s called Assault on the Liberty, and it is absolutely fascinating. 

 

Assault on the Liberty has everything a great story needs – action, suspense, intrigue, even scandalously indecent romance if you consider the wicked affairs between Israel and the United States.  And lots of secrets. This one will definitely help us understand Don and Henry’s ideas of public service better. 

 

The latest book contributing to our quest to more fully appreciate the sacrifices made by our current leadership in national security is Daniel Ellsberg’s Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.  The original Pentagon Papers were published in 1971.  Hmmm, 1971.  Don was 39 and Henry was 48, both in Washington, serving the public and making important sacrifices.

 

Well, I guess public service has a price. 

 

A Pentagon friend of a friend told me that when you do something for 35 years or more, even if it is not good for you, you get in the habit and can’t break it even when you know better.  Skills you might have had don’t get developed.  He was talking about active duty flag officers in the Pentagon, and probably a lot of senior civilians.

 

He was talking about skills like telling the truth even when it can cost you your job.   Habits like creative manipulation of the “public” and even more creative secrecy within the organization.  Habits like making all those little sacrifices required of a major policy maker in Washington – sacrifices of honesty, of law, of young men’s lives.  Habits that waste moral courage and eliminate moral outrage.  Habits of fear that replace habits of duty, honor  and country.

 

Well, they say public service has a price.

 

Day of Deceit author Robert B. Stinnett served in the United States Navy under Lieutenant George Bush from 1942 to 1946.  James Ennes, Jr. served on the USS Liberty, and Daniel Ellsberg served in the Pentagon as a civilian employed by the Rand.   All ridiculed, made pariahs, denied and discounted by the Public Servants of Don and Henry’s generation.  

 

Well, everyone knows public service has a price. 

 

And just like in the ballpark, looks like the cheap seats are at the very top.