notes@ucbcad.UUCP (11/03/83)
#N:ucbesvax:7500044:000:3522 ucbesvax!turner Nov 3 04:05:00 1983 Some news breaks here on the national meta-flame front over access to reliable information on Grenada. The first bit has to do with the White House press liason. Les Janka, a White House press official, has just been fired, apparently for "leaking" an memorandum of a discussion with Larry Speakes over the possibility of Speakes' resigning in response to being misled on Grenadan invasion. (For those of you who haven't kept up, it now appears that the Grenadans had about a day's more notice of the invasion than the American people.) Speakes maintains that no such memo existed. Janka also had "complained forcefully that the credibility of White House press officials had been compromised..." since even Speakes admits that he was deceived about the existence of the invasion even as it proceeded. The second meta-flame is from William Safire, in a column entitled "Paranoia in the White House." Recall that Safire, who writes the brilliant and funny neo-Orwellian "Wordplay" column, used to be a speech- writer for Richard Nixon. (I don't hold this against him, any more than I would think less of Malraux for being a Gaullist toady. Well, maybe that's stretching *two* comparisons...) "The same vicious virus that infected the Nixon White House and caused its ruin is now raging through the Reagan administration," he begins. And I thought the *title* was a zinger! "....That contempt and hatred for an unelected elite [the press] led to the bunker mental- ity of `Us against Them,' and then to an obsession with leaks and the excesses of Watergate. The same baleful mood permeates the White House and the Pentagon today." He goes on to list the various forms of thought-control going on in the executive branch, including the use of lie-detectors, censorship of memoirs, what he calls "the control of questioning", and last but hardly least, "The Blackout of War News". The invasion of Grenada, "...a timely invasion, which I favor and applaud..." was, to his mind, attended by altogether too little information, even for his purposes. He calls the issue of safety (for Marines who supposedly might have faced a forwarned enemy had a "press pool...blabbed and cost American lives") the "nastiest reason" for the security measures taken, in view of recent revelation about how the "enemy" was already forewarned. Finally, he has some sharp words for "my old friend Cap Weinberger .... and intelligent human being, a good man, a patriot; . . . professing his abdication of control of the military on a matter of public policy, and --in my sorrowful opinion--lying through tight lips about why he barred the press from the battlefield in Grenada." Whew. Hats off to Bill--he metaflames with the best of them. But what does all this mean? Could it be that the Reagan administration is starting to duplicate the trajectory of Nixon's? This is Safire's reading of it. There is some reason to believe that extra-national sources of information about the incident are being "pinched off" in insidious ways--after all, the first report of civilian casualties in Grenada (the accidental bombing of a mental hospital) came through Canadian sources, not American ones, despite the larger U.S. press contingent on the island. The pattern of lies is getting thicker and more tangled by the day. Eventually, perhaps, the administration will have ensnared only itself, rather than public opinion. [all quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle, 11/1/83] --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)
smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin) (11/04/83)
Newsweek warned of a possible invasion of Grenada in an issue that came out before anything actually started. I first heard about the possibility on Sunday night; CBS carried reports of many US troops in Barbados, and speculated that that was what they were up to. I think we can assume that Cuban/Soviet intelligence forces monitor such major publications. I don't quarrel with the need for tactical security, especially on what's supposed to be a surprise attack. (I should note, of course, that invading without a formal declaration of war is technically a war crime, and the U.S. enforced this clause against Japan after World War II. But the world seems to have given up on such formalims these days.) However, once the invasion had started the only reason for keeping the press out was a blatant attempt to manipulate public opinion. Damnit, if this is a democracy we're at least supposed to be informed. I heard on the radio today that the Administration is upset that a Congressional delegation is going to Grenada. Isn't Congress allowed a say in public policy? --Steve Bellovin