Since the Vietnam War, we have witnessed a system of congressional acquiescence and judicial tolerance. Congress has acquiesced in the questionable actions of both the Bush and Obama administrations since 2001, permitting foreign policy to be the sole preserve of the executive branch and not the shared responsibility of the president and the Congress. Instead of serving as rigorous watchdogs, congressional intelligence committees have become advocates for the CIA. The Supreme Court only intervenes on foreign policy matters to endorse the policies and powers of the president. This deferential attitude has led to an absence of judicial scrutiny of illegalities, including warrantless eavesdropping and the destruction of the CIA’s torture tapes. The destroyer of the 92 videotapes, Jose Rodriguez, ignored a White House order not to destroy the tapes and published a book sanctioned by the CIA that maligns the Office of Inspector General for its supposed “holier-than-thou attitude and the prosecutorial ways they routinely treated fellow CIA employees.”
In addition to the failure of Congress and the courts to provide necessary oversight of national security, the media have been complacent about their investigative watchdog role in a democracy. The media are an essential partner in the whistleblowing process, but they typically ignore the reprisals taken against the people who risk all to challenge the authority of state and corporate power. Often, media disdain the information provided by whistleblowers that is critical of the establishment—preferring, instead, to side with official versions of events for the perks that doing so affords them.
There has been a great deal of vindication for the whistleblowers, however. Pulitzer Prizes were given to journalists (Barton Gellman, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras) from the newspapers (Washington Post and The Guardian US) that published Snowden’s revelations. Forty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg’s efforts led the Pulitzer’s board to give its public service award to the New York Times. Like Ellsberg, Snowden has been portrayed as a traitor; the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian US have been vilified by congress members and even some journalists as enabling espionage and harming U.S. national security.
Representative Peter T. King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, termed the Pulitzer Prize “disgraceful” and charged that “enabling a traitor like Snowden is unjustifiable.”12 King stated that news organizations should be prosecuted for violations under the Espionage Act of 1917, which makes it illegal to disclose classified material that aids a foreign enemy. It took the nation several years to realize that the Pentagon Papers represented no threat to national security and that it was important to expose the official chicanery that led to the horrors of the Vietnam War. We are a long way from realizing that an intrusive national surveillance grid does far more harm to U.S. national security than Snowden’s leaks do.
As a result of the imbalance in the process of foreign policy decision-making, we have come full circle from President Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to make the “world safe for democracy,” to Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, who find the world too dangerous to permit honoring constitutional democracy. The excesses of the Vietnam War, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Terror Wars have contributed to the creation of a national security state and a culture of secrecy. Whistleblowers can help all of us decide whether the ends justify the means regarding these excesses.
Meanwhile, secrecy itself has fostered ignorance in the United States. The overuse of secrecy limits necessary debate on foreign policy and deprives citizens of information on which to make policy and political judgments. Only a counter-culture of openness and a respect for the balance of power can reverse the damage. As long as Congress defers to the president in the conduct of foreign policy; the courts intervene to prevent any challenge to the power of the president in making foreign policy; and the media defer to authorized sources, we will need courageous whistleblowers.
The Senate’s response to disclosures regarding the culture of secrecy in the United States has been to resort to greater secrecy. In 2012, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved misguided legislation that would further limit news coverage of national security issues. The provisions, part of the intelligence authorization bill for fiscal 2013, were drafted in secret without public hearings; they were designed to deny Americans access to information essential to national debate on critical issues such as the extent of government spying activities and the use of torture. Under the measure, only the director, deputy directors, and designated public affairs officials of intelligence agencies would be permitted to provide background information on intelligence activities to the media. Briefings on sensitive topics by lower-level or career officials would be prohibited, shutting off routine news gathering that provides insight into policy. These measures weaken democracy and strengthen the trend toward authoritarianism in the United States.
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At no point in my congressional testimony in 1991, or in my publications and speeches since then, have I believed that I was anything but patriotic in revealing political corruption at the CIA. Only time will tell if the American people conclude that the actions of such whistleblowers as Drake, Snowden, and Manning were patriotic efforts to awaken a sleeping nation to the extent of the criminal misuse of state power at home and abroad. National security whistleblowers are typically vindicated, but it often takes public opinion many years to catch up.
Far too often the secrecy of the national security state has been used to conceal miscalculations and malfeasance. The CIA tailored intelligence in the 1980s to justify enormous U.S. weapons spending in peacetime. Two decades later, the CIA falsified intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion, which cost more than 4,500 American lives, trillions of dollars, and the radical destabilization of the entire region. The CIA violated constitutional and international law when it engaged in torture and abuse and operated secret prisons. Excessive secrecy within the CIA and the absence of oversight permitted these crimes.
Dissidence in the intelligence community should not be considered controversial, let alone subversive. It is not criticism that is cynical, but the absence of criticism among public servants that undermines the integrity of any organization, particularly a secrecy-bound community like that of U.S. intelligence workers and officials. In looking back, I am thankful for my mentors at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University, who encouraged critical inquiry in pursuit of truth. The CIA itself (as well as Johns Hopkins) prides itself on the biblical wisdom that “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” inscribed in the lobby of the CIA’s headquarters and on my college ring.
The intelligence failures regarding the Soviet Union and Iraq were marked by the absence of sufficient critical inquiry, which the academic community might have provided, as is its traditional role. Indeed, there should be no fundamental contradictions in the worlds of liberal education and intelligence, even though education depends on openness and universal access and intelligence requires secrecy and the “need to know.” But strong critical skills and integrity are required in both worlds. I tried to break down the insular culture that dominates the CIA, taking advantage of every opportunity to bring educators into the intelligence process.
Ultimately, however, it is the American people, not the academic elite, who must demand that the systemic failures of the U.S. intelligence community be addressed by public officials, politicians, and presidents. The intelligence community, particularly the CIA, has accumulated far more power than the Founding Fathers would have