Secrecy
Peter Schultz
L. Fletcher Prouty in his excellent book, The Secret Team, has some interesting things to say about secrecy. For example: “a peculiar and dangerous characteristic … [is] derived [from] secrecy.” It those agents working on Pakistan, for example, are not doing so, but are working on another program, a cover story needs be developed. The story “is false – a lie.” The lie is permissible, necessary, and justified. “So if you are on a classified project, it is all right, in fact … essential, for you to lie. So you lie. The other man lies, everyone lies.” [472]
“In the Pentagon there are many offices established to do one thing. They really do not do that thing at all, but something entirely different. As a result, [many] cannot say what they are doing; or if they are forced to say something they lie.” [ibid]
When these persons lie to policy makers about their alleged analyses, they are guaranteeing failure for the simple reason that those policies undertaken are based on lies, i.e., they are not “reality based.” So, for example, a war on drugs, which is actually a way of controlling certain groups of people, e.g., blacks, is bound to fail as a war on drugs because that war is a fantasy; it is not real. It will never be successful vis-à-vis drugs, although it may be successful in incarcerating huge numbers of black people.
The Vietnam War, billed as an anti-Communist war, was bound to fail because the “communists” in Vietnam weren’t real. They were a figment of American imaginations, a label pinned on some Vietnamese to justify the war that American elites wanted to wage there. The war was real, but the communists were not. Ho Chi Minh was not, except in the imagination of some Americans, a communist, just as bin Laden to many Muslims was not a ”terrorist.” And, so, a war on terror and terrorists was bound to fail, just as the war on communism and communists in Vietnam was bound to fail.
No doubt this will sound strange to most people. But the longer you look at politics, the stranger the world becomes. For example, why is it that otherwise decent people are perfectly willing to engage in or support what have to be described as indecent, even savage acts? Why did decent, god-fearing Brits, for example, support the brutality that took place in Kenya in the 1950s? Why is it that decent, god-fearing Americans supported slavery and wars against indigenous people? How can such duplicities coexist and do so frequently? Is such duplicity intrinsic to the political? Considered empirically, that would seem to be the case.
In order to hide such duplicity, cover stories are needed, just as they are needed to hide the duplicitous character of the actions of government agencies and officials. American elites wanted to make war in Vietnam, to demonstrate their power there, and they needed cover stories which took different forms, e.g., anti-Communism or the domino theory. As Prouty pointed out with regard to the Pentagon, America elites could not say why they were making war Vietnam and, so, when they were forced to say something, they lied. Although deadly and destructive, this was merely normal political behavior. In fact, it was so normal that some politicians, like Ronald Reagan, did not even know they were lying. They believed their lies, which is more frightening than being bald-faced liars.
Truth-telliing plays no role in government and politics. Political success, such as it is, is impossible without duplicity, without lies, without making the truth disappear. And, so, those who speak the truth are subversives, are intrinsically and always enemies of the state, enemies of the establishment. Hence, Socrates’ fate, which he accepted and even counseled others to accept, e.g., Crito. Insofar as duplicity is intrinsic to the political, there is no way out, which Socrates recognized. Unless he lied, he knew he would be found guilty – because, truth be told, from a political viewpoint he was. And Socrates always sought and told the truth.
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