I've been reminded a few times over the past month or so of Daniel Ellsberg's book "SECRETS," one of the best books I've ever read, fiction or non-fiction. It's a riveting suspenseful story of events around the Vietnam War and the release of the Pentagon Papers. It's a tale of hubris, lies, incompetence, as well as a compelling story of the transformation of a man from hawk to dove, a journey lived on the very front lines of both distinctions. If you haven't read it, go get it NOW.
The part that has been coming back to me is the relationship between Ellsberg and Kissinger. Ellsberg started out being a close advisor to Kissinger, and briefed him even as he was copying the Pentagon Papers at night. It's fascinating that he started as an advisor to Kissinger, someone that he depended on, and ended up becoming "the most dangerous man in the world" to him. Ellsberg had a warning for him on the eve of Kissinger's rise to the NSC that rings very true for today's "leaders" as well:
"You've been a consultant for a long time and you've dealth with a great deal of top secret information. But you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret....I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn't previously know they even
existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.
"First you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all - so much! incredible! - suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information...You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn't have it, and you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't...and that all those other people are fools...
and here's the part that really RINGS A BELL, if you know what I mean:
in the meantime it will have become very hard for you to
learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. Because you'll be thinking as you listen to them: "What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations? And
that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I've seen this with my superiors, my colleagues... and with myself.
"You will deal with a person who doesn't have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you'll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You'll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you'll become something like a moron. You'll be incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours."
Remind you of anybody????The Top Secret Moron Syndrome has clearly affected Cheney - it describes him to a T. He has become incapable of NOT manipulating people, and to him, EVERYONE is a fool. He's had super top secret clearance for years and has clearly been corrupted by it, and so has Bush, although clearly Bush came into this never having had clearance but had a PREDISPOSITION for the SYNDROME.... But I think it has affected Woodward, too. He has heard the siren song, felt the pull, and it has made the rest of the world, even the paper he is an editor for, a fool.
The other part that is significant here is that judging from history, in NO WAY would Congress have the SAME classified information as Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. I'm sure some/many in Congress knows that some of this type of information exists, especially those who have been there for a while, but as Sen Rockefeller said on CNN a week or so ago they can't even acknowledge its existence:
M. O'BRIEN: When you heard about these prisons and you became aware of them in a classified forum, what did you do?
ROCKEFELLER: I'm -- Miles, I'm -- I'm sorry, this makes me a terrible interview, but I'm in a position where I cannot answer your question by saying -- when you say when you heard about these prisons, if I said anything I would either be confirming them or not, and it's embarrassing. I apologize.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes. No, I understand. I'm putting you on the spot. I apologize. I guess the question...
ROCKEFELLER: Can I say something more, though?
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, feel free.
ROCKEFELLER: I think that -- that these so-called secret briefings, or whatever, on whatever subject are used too much by the Bush administration as a way of suppressing information, because they know that if I'm told something about any subject by a high official in certain types of locations, that I can never say anything about it for the rest of my life. And the same with Pat Roberts. He has that same problem.
So it's a very difficult situation.
Link to Ellsberg's SECRETS