ideological criminal

Last night, I rented The Pentagon Papers, the 2003 (made for TV?) movie about Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the top secret 7,000 page history of the war in Vietnam, prepared by the Pentagon. The document, colloquially known as the Pentagon papers, exposed widespread deception by the government that spanned four presedential administrations. Although being one the most compelling stories of whistle blowing in the history of the U.S., it’s hard to imagine the movie being worse than it is—it is quite possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in years. And yet, when the New York Times Co. v. United States Supreme Court decision was read, in which the press’s right to publish the classified report was affirmed, I couldn’t help from being moved. Justice Black wrote in his opinion (emphasis added):

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

Our contemporary press is negligent in this paramount responsibility. We’ve seen the withholding of stories of illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens, circular corroboration with the administration in the mythical threat of WMD in Iraq, withholding of stories of illegal prisons overseas and “extraordinary rendition”. We now see the New York Times headline: Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says. The press has cowed under powers of the governed and the consquences have been apparent.