Heeere's Johnny!
The famous and eerie Jack Nicholson line from the movie "The Shining," taken
from Johnny Carson's Tonight Show
There's more good news from the White House following the election results. In
point of fact, Britain's Guardian reported the news in February but the American
media missed it until last week. The news was that Adm. John Poindexter has been
a U.S. government employee since early February 2002.
Adm. Poindexter is a man of impeccable credentials and a round cherubic face
that, at another time and place, would have made him an ideal Santa Claus. Adm.
Poindexter graduated top of his class at the Naval Academy in 1958, got a Ph.D.
in physics at the California Institute of Technology and in later life became
a vice-admiral in the United States Navy. Upon leaving the ocean he became, for
Ronald Reagan, what Condoleeza Rice is for George Bush — national security
adviser. Like Ms. Rice, he found the position heady and, like Ms. Rice, took it
upon himself to make foreign policy.
He and another military man, Oliver North, got together and began breaking
the law. In what was known as the Iran-Contra affair, the two men arranged for
Iranians to buy arms from the United States and the money from the sale ended
up in the hands of the Nicaraguan Contras instead of the coffers of the United
States. Normally when defense parts are sold to foreign countries a review is
required to determine if the sales will impact the readiness of the military.
Messrs. North and Poindexter bypassed that review and neglected to mention the
sales to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president. When Adm.
Poindexter was asked why he took it upon himself to make foreign policy by conducting
clandestine sales of arms and funneling the proceeds to the Contras, he replied:
"I made a very deliberate decision not to tell the president so that I could insulate
him from the decision and provide some future deniability for the president if
it ever leaked out." It would be hard to find more patriotic sentiments anywhere.
The only soft spot in the admiral's vitae is his criminal conviction for lying
to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing congressional inquiries
into the Iran-Contra affair and who among us hasn't had one or two things happen
we wish we could go back and do over? And what's more, that conviction was subsequently
overturned, not because the admiral wasn't guilty as charged but because in exchange
for telling Congress about the various things he and others had done that were
criminal, he was granted immunity from prosecution.
Fortunately for the country, the fact that Mr. Poindexter had a brief criminal
career does not mean that George W. Bush is being deprived of his services. In
February it was reported by the Guardian (and in November by much of the rest
of the press) that Mr. Poindexter had once again been summoned to labor in the
vineyards of his country. This time he was appointed to head a new agency whose
aim is to "counter attacks on the U.S." His office is called the Information Awareness
Office and its creation was in fact proposed by the admiral. The office is funded
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at about $200 million
a year.
Mr. Poindexter has explained that the IAO, as it is called, will provide intelligence
analysts and law-enforcement officials with instant access to information from
Internet mail and telephone calling records and credit card and banking transactions
and travel documents. That information will be obtainable without the need for
search warrants, a time- consuming and sometimes futile task.
In a speech in California Adm. Poindexter said: "We must become much more efficient
and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from
the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert
it to knowledge, and create actionable options."
When this program is fully operational, analysts will be able to see what is
being written on email by all of us and what we are talking about on the phone.
Analysts can check for what the Washington Post described as "improbable medical
activity, such as the treatments of anthrax sores." Since most Americans write
innocuous emails, have innocuous (and frequently inane) phone conversations and
almost certainly are not treated for anthrax sores, the program will not affect
most of us and will serve to protect those of us who are innocuous from the wiles
of those who are not.
There are those who think Adm. Poindexter's transgressions (incurred, it should
be noted, when acting in the best interests of his country) disqualify him from
future government service. They fail to realize that his minor transgressions,
demonstrating as they do that he is unencumbered by constitutional inhibitions,
make him the ideal candidate for this position.
Others go further and question the very existence of this new agency. Marc
Rottenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington
commenting on the new agency said: "This could be the perfect storm for civil
liberties in America. The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology
is DARPA and the agency is the FBI. The outcome is a system of national surveillance
of the American public." Gary Hart said that he thought the program was "an Orwellian
concept."
I might have used Mr. Hart's word did I not have complete confidence that Attorney
General John Ashcroft (who after the recent court decision easing requirements
for wiretaps said the Justice Department would use its new powers "with a serious
respect for the Constitution") will be looking over the admiral's shoulder to
make sure there is no overreaching. Given that, there is no reason for the rest
of us to be nervous.
Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder lawyer and and writes a weekly column
for the Knight Ridder news service. He can be reached at brauchli1@attbi.com
Copyright 2002, The Daily Camera
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