The Spymaster, Lawrence Wright’s January 21 New Yorker article on Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, has received some coverage due to McConnell’s laughable attempt to evade stating that waterboarding is torture. For those who haven’t read it, the money quote is:
“I know one thing. I’m not a water-safety instructor, but I cannot swim without covering my nose. I don’t know if its’ some deviated septum or mucus membrane, but water just rushes in….If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”
While torture is one of the threads Wright explores, the ongoing expansion of government surveillance is other. The opportunism and overreaching the infuse both programs are startling. McConnell begins his case by arguing that existing wiretapping regulations cripple efforts to monitor potential terrorists, using as an example three soldiers who were kidnapped in Iraq and red tape that held up surveillance in the search. Except, as Wright reveals, McConnell is lying. “The record shows that the intelligence community had immediately assigned all available assets to search for the missing soldiers.”
The exchange later becomes personal as Wright states that he has been a subject of surveillance through the course of his work; his information was maintained in a government database, even as it was supposed to be redacted due to his status as a U.S. citizen. His daughter even became implicated, being placed on “the FBI’s link chart as an Al Qaeda connection.”
The justification given for all of this overreach is the prospect of lives being saved. “This debate is going to cost American lives!” McConnell shouts at one point. But even as we’re told of the increasing burdens we have to bear in the name of saving lives—from the existential (torture, illegal detentions, warrantless surveillance) to the mundane (not being able take liquids onto planes, having our electronics confiscated as we re-enter the country)—there’s little evidence that any lives have actually been saved.
Guy Lawson of Rolling Stone has recently written about the illusory nature of the terrorist plots the government claims to have foiled, most of which, it turns out, were tactically impossible and spurred on by government informants. Instead of chasing shadows, we’re enabling them to chase us.
In the face of our fear, the American people have chosen to cling to whatever our government has offered us, regardless of whether its immoral, laughable or utterly unproven to work. The 2008 election will be a referendum on these methods. Without hyperbole, our nation’s future is dependent on the electorate staring down the echoes and whispers and start acting like adults again. “You’re gonna die if you question us!” is no way to run a country.