This is Democracy – Episode 190: Secrecy, Deception, and Presidential Leadership

[00:00:00] Narrator: This is democracy, a podcast about the people

of the United States, a podcast about citizenship,

about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:25] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.

This week, we are going to discuss, uh, the issues related to deception secrecy, and the doctoring of evidence by presidents and other figures in the executive branch. Uh, we’re not talking about. Conspiracies today. We’re talking about the prevalence of actors in the executive agencies using their power to affect distort and color the historical record.

Uh, this is a recurring theme and it has been. To our attention yet again, in recent days, by the evidence that on January 6th, 2021, there were about six hours of president Trump’s phone logs of his, uh, accounts of his phone conversations that are empty indicating that, uh, while he was on the phone with many different individuals during the insurrection, something we know he was doing.

Nonetheless, there were no records of those phone conversations. And so this is one of many examples we’ve had over the last 50 years of presidents, uh, erasing or trying to erase part of the historical record. We’re going to talk today about why this happened. About its implications and how we as a democracy should address these issues, why it’s important to have accurate records of presidents and other figures of authority and how we can do a better job of preserving those records to better understand and keep account of those in the office.

We’re joined by a historian who has written, I think more about these issues or at least the issues of secrecy and executive leadership. That almost anyone else. Uh, he’s really done some of the most fantastic and interesting work also on the role of propaganda and presidential leadership. This is Kenneth Osgood.

He’s a professor of history at the Colorado school of mines. He’s the author and editor of five books. My favorite is called total cold war. Uh, it’s Ken’s. On the Eisenhower administration and its uses of propaganda for American foreign policy. During the 1950s Ken’s books range, uh, through U S political history, diplomatic history, how presidents sell war civil rights in the conservative movement, international public diplomacy, and as.

Propaganda and politics in the cold war. So I don’t think there’s anyone better situated to talk about this issue today, uh, than can Osgood, uh, Ken, thank you for joining us.

[00:02:55] Kenneth: Hey, it’s a pleasure and hello to you and to Zachary

[00:02:58] Jeremi: and Ken and I have published an article on this topic in the hill. We will place a link to that article in the description for this episode, Zachary is here of course, with his poem to start us out.

What is the title of your poem this week?

[00:03:12] Zachary: Forwards

[00:03:13] Jeremi: forwards. Let’s hear it.

[00:03:15] Zachary: It can be as simple as the man riding his bicycle down the lane, gripping onto the handlebars, not to say that there is anything here that wouldn’t make him go crazy and start up with the songs of nesting birds and the blood soaked streets, but just that there remains, after all has been blown to smithereens.

One way to go. Forwards. It is all about not looking down at your feet or staring up at the cold blue sky. When they come to you and list out your indiscretions, your indescribable in decencies, you must look them in the eye. As you will, when others come to tell you of their dead truth is a powerful thing, a vacuum.

It sucks you back into its cruel chambers. Even when you have, have escaped and sold your soul to the sticky ground, and you cannot really escape it. Even documents torn apart can be sewn back together. It will only make us read them closer. It can be as simple as the man riding his bicycle between the iron hedgehogs, keeping himself straight and upright on the seat.

Even as he holds back tears and sees out of the corner of his eye. The hefty question of the boy lying in the street, the young will ask it of you too someday. They’ll perhaps you will be the one dying. Truth is a powerful thing. Atonic, bitter, and piercing holding you by the ears until you stare at it, scars, but sweet in the end, squeezing your tears into a sugar, pushing against the roof of your mouth, like the shrapnel of the grenade or else the vibrating in you, endo of a serenade feeding you false fragrances until they gather dust and hold your breaths in the back of your throat.

You will not remember it in the morning. But 20 years from now, reaching your hand out for a bottle of pills at the pharmacy counter, the truth will hit you square in the face.

[00:05:28] Jeremi: I love the range and humor of your poem. Zachary. What is it about

[00:05:32] Zachary: the poem was really

about how difficult it can be. Uh, even in one’s daily life to acknowledge the truth, to follow the.

But how important it is to keep going forwards and to keep, to keep bringing the truth with you, where you go. Because even if you try to escape it, it will come back and hit you in the face.

[00:05:52] Jeremi: You cannot escape it. Uh, Ken it, what Zachary is saying is to some extent, a truism, why is it. Presidents seem repeatedly to think they can escape the truth.

Why do they try to do this?

[00:06:07] Kenneth: Uh, yeah. Before I, before I comment on that, let me just say Zachary, how much I enjoyed your, your lyrics. They’re a really powerful stuff. And a couple images, um, that I really love is the, the language use indescribable in decencies, which, uh, Answers the question that Jeremy just asked me about why presidents, uh, distort or hide things in the historical record.

But I also love the, the closing image there. If the person reaching for the bottom of the pills or something, the truth slaps them in the face that I, they have reminds me of, of times I’ve spent interviewing people who. Were once very powerful, uh, and connected, you know, right up to the white house, very close to the president and controlled access to secrets into power and, uh, you know, their actions shaped the world.

And yet at the end, Just old men telling war stories. Um, and there’s a, there’s a powerful sort of like a disjuncture there that at the end of that, that’s how we all end up. Is it not, you know, reaching for that bottle of pills, so to speak,

[00:07:10] Jeremi: uh, right. Power is fleeting, Ken, isn’t it? Yeah.

[00:07:13] Kenneth: And it, and in the end, it’s, it’s just a story of life, right.

Um, But in terms of the incentives for presidents and their advisors to distort the historical record, uh, I’ll tell another really simple and very short story. Um, this morning as I was driving my youngest child to school and thinking about this interview in my head, I, I turned to Varina and I asked them, uh, why do, why do people keep seeing.

And without any hesitation, um, Verona gave me a very simple answer to keep from getting in trouble. Um, and it’s it immediately. I was like, well, that’s exactly the answer I wanted her to take because that was on the one that was on my mind. And I kept pushing her there. Are there other reasons and all of them essentially added up to, you know, hiding embarrassment, hiding disgrace, hiding shame, or in the case of Zachary’s poem, hiving hiding indescribable and decencies.

Um, the, the incentives for presidents to, to start the record are, are, are not always focused on history. I think oftentimes it is shaped on the present or the near present, um, concern about. Hiding actions that would be embarrassing or damaging or condemned. Uh, if, if it got out. Oh, one other story comes to my mind.

I, um, an early example of, of, of this in a strange way that I came across, that was really interesting. I was reading, uh, once top secret, um, national security council meeting from 1956 and it seemed straight out of a cold war set. Maybe Dr. Strangelove or, or possibly get smart. Um, and in the meeting, you don’t often find this kind of conversation take place.

And in the speeding, the, uh, it’s being presided over by vice-president then vice president Richard Nixon because, uh, Dwight Eisenhower was in the hospital and he opened the meeting by telling everyone to keep their mouth shut. Uh, and then, uh, and then everyone agreed that yes, we need to be very. And then everyone agreed.

We just needed to be really secretive. And, uh, and they, then the conversation went on about how, if it got out to be very dangerous and there’s extreme sensitivity, uh, about the topic they’re talking about. And then there’s a conversation about, could we take this document and make it extra classified?

And, uh, Nixon asked the group, uh, could we. Ultra top secret. And I sort of admit, I sort of imagined like the next line, or could we make it super duper top secret or that maybe they would suggest, you know, can we carry on this conversation and the cone of silence? Uh, so, so this long conversation about how Damion Lee secret this thing is, and, and then it turns out the conversation is really not about anything particularly.

Damaging, uh, one would imagine, you know, what do they really want to keep seeking? Well, maybe the secret bombing of a country or a covert operation to overthrow a government or, you know, torturing of somebody or something like that. No, but they’re trying to keep secret as the fact that they were quietly abandoning the policy that they had run for office.

In the, uh, at the beginning of the 1950s, uh, so they ran on office saying they were going to liberate the iron curtain countries, the satellite countries of Eastern Europe. They realized they can’t do it. So they’re going to abandon the policy, uh, and they’re scared to death that. It became known that they abandoned the policy, they would get creamed and the upcoming elections.

[00:10:38] Jeremi: Right. So, so one of the other reasons to hide information at that level is to protect your backside in a political, politically difficult environment. Right. It’s to cover your, your politics, right?

[00:10:51] Kenneth: Yes. And sometimes, uh, here’s one of the reasons why it’s concerning for democracy is that in examples like this, the.

The political leaders are saying that they’re going to pursue one set of policies as a result of winning support from the electorate while they’re quietly abandoning or choosing very different policies and hiding. That is the goal. Uh, another example, one could point to was the 1964 elections, uh, with, uh, uh, Barry Goldwater, hawkish crazy person, uh, in many respects, uh, running against Lyndon Johnson, who is trying to present Barry Goldwater as a crazy person.

And so he, Johnson is, you know, sort of implying that, that there would not be a wider war. Uh, if he were elected. That very moment as everyone was going to the polls, uh, in a, in the Pentagon, there was a meeting going on, including, uh, Daniel Ellsberg, who later would become famous, where they’re literally planning to widen the war.

Right. Uh, uh, and that’s been kept secret from the public, right? So these are, these are. Th the ways in which information is kept from, uh, the public is especially concerning when it comes to foreign policy.

[00:12:02] Jeremi: And Ken, do you see that as the same as also trying to doctor the historical record or are these different things, keeping things secret from the public and actually trying to create a record that in a sense is intentionally inaccurate.

Uh, how, how do you think about those two things together.

[00:12:21] Kenneth: I in some ways there have a piece that there are a broad range of things that are, um, designed to obscure how actual decision-making. I mean, another example might be the fact that this one NSC meeting I described a minute ago where they vary. Uh, obviously admit to the fact that domestic politics are shaping their decision-making, that almost never appears in the historical record, but you know, it’s always on their minds.

So that is omitted either deliberately or subconsciously or something like that. And that’s not so different from, you know, sort of willful destruction of documents. The difference becomes with, with willful destruction of materials or, um, keeping, you know, Deliberate acts is an indication that usually they know that something is really stinky out there and they need to keep it.

They need to take extra precautions to keep it from being discovered then, or perhaps.

[00:13:21] Zachary: Some of the most famous instances I think of, of document destruction and, and trying to hide the facts from the historical record, uh, are, are, are, are people physically tearing up documents or destroying tapes, do you think then that it’s become a lot harder for the president or members of the executive branch to, to do something similar, uh, in a world of technology and.

[00:13:46] Kenneth: Yeah, the question is, can, can, can you as easily destroyed digital traces of the record, I guess, is what you’re suggesting. Exactly. And there, I guess I don’t have the technical knowledge to know because, because it will relate to if something is deleted electronically, eventually, like I say, it’s in the white house.

Those electronic records are required to be transferred to the national archives and records administration. Is Nara going to look for things that may have been deleted? For example, I don’t know that that, that they would begin that process because in order to, um, you know, find something that’s been digitally destroyed, you kind of have to know in the first place to look for it.

Um, and there are other ways to get around it. I know the Trump administration, for example, did a lot of communications on WhatsApp, um, including, you know, top advisors and the president himself. Um, so it never gets recorded at all. And that’s, that’s the same as document destruction in a way it’s deliberately evading the recording of, uh, Uh, communications,

[00:14:51] Jeremi: Right. I was going to make a similar point, Ken. And just following on that point, do you think this problem has actually gotten worse on the one hand? It’s possible that technology allows us to recover things it’s harder to, um, delete something. I know we all feel that way in the world of email. You know, once the email goes out, it’s very hard to take it back.

Whereas in theory, you could go find. Paper copies of a memo you sent and destroy them. And we know examples of that. Um, so on the one end, it’s been, it potentially has become more difficult to destroy records. On the other hand, it does appear if we look at the record of, uh, Richard Nixon with Watergate and, uh, the deletion of tapes and Ronald Reagan and, uh, the instances.

People at the NSC shredding documents, Oliver, north fond, a whole shredding documents in 1987 during the investigation of the Iran Contra scandal. Uh, is there more of this happening now and why, why, why does it appear there might be more of this happening.

[00:15:55] Kenneth: W, well, the Watergate example is illustrative in the sense that those famous 18 and a half minutes of, of curiously erased recordings.

Had a number of consequences, uh, beyond Watergate itself, uh, in the first place, it drew attention to the existence of presidential recordings, uh, that, that, uh, actually turned out, going back. As far as Truman presidents had periodically recorded conversations, private conversations that they were having with her as advice with their advisors.

So that drew attention to the fact that these things existed. And the other consequence is it drew attention to the fact. Damaging these things could be once they came to light, uh, as, as Nixon was discovering. Uh, and so, uh, and that the very public way in which those tapes were, um, dropped there, their absence was dramatized.

And there, the parts that were there were used in the courtroom was sort of a red flag to all subsequent presidents, be really, really careful about what you record in. Uh, not just orally, but in all manner of documentation. Uh, so I think it’s put presidents and their advisors made them a little bit, much more, uh, made them a little bit more conscious, uh, about making sure that some things are not preserved to begin with.

[00:17:11] Jeremi: What about the evidence we have at least in Reese of recent presidents, again, Nixon Reagan, Donald Trump jumping out at us as examples of presidents, really trying to use their office to. Actively delete, distort, um, control the historical record.

[00:17:30] Kenneth: Yeah. I mean, those are the, those are the most prominent examples.

Um, but I’m in some ways more. More shook by evidence of, of sort of people down the food chain, so to speak, um, administration officials who are further down the line, who were engaged in deception or destruction of evidence. And one example that comes to mind is, uh, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center.

Jose Rodriguez, uh, literally shredded with, uh, industrial. Shredder, uh, 92 videotapes, um, of various suspects being waterboarded in secret detention facilities run by the CIA. And one can imagine what these videotapes look like. Uh, people vomiting, crime, uh, they’re naked as water that. Experiencing the phenomenon of being drowned.

Um, we know that some CIA interrogators, when they saw, when they witnessed waterboarding taking place, they would actually cry themselves. So we know it must’ve been very horrified. So the, the consequence of this deletion is that it perpetuates a myth that this isn’t torture, that this particular activity is not truly gruesome.

And we, that we can imagine that. If these tapes had made it into the public domain, they would be horrifying and they’d be damaging to American foreign policy. No doubt, but they would also, I think, put a permanent stop to a fiction that this is merely an enhanced interrogation technique that this was in fact torture.

Those are the kinds of things that really worry me. What also worry me is how the destruction or fabrication of evidence, uh, Uh, allows presidents in particular to get off their hook, uh, get off the hook for their complicity in certain types of actions. So Watergate, uh, the Watergate investigation, um, you know, led Nixon from office, but he was never truly held accountable and he was able to maintain his innocence until the end in part, because there was never that.

That quote unquote smoking gun. The same was true. Uh, in Iran, Contra, we have very strong evidence indicating that Reagan approved of this whole thing and knew about it. And yet still he could escape the consequences of that because of the action of the absence of physical evidence. And I think the. I worry that the same might be true with these missing.

Um, what is it? Seven hours of audio from the, uh, while the January six raid on the Capitol, the mob attack on the Capitol was taking place. It seems entirely likely that. Some of those conversations would demonstrate the president’s immediate, uh, complicity in the actions, uh, with significant legal consequences for the former president.

And that this, that, that this evidence is missing will make it that much harder to hold them to account.

[00:20:39] Jeremi: So I think that’s the key point and you’ve said it so well. Can, uh, does the nature of a presidential record keeping. Allow the president to eliminate the evidence that would indict him that would lead the president to be convicted for breaking the law.

Is the president able to erase evidence, uh, that would be incriminating in the way that most citizens. Able to do that in the case of Nixon that you refer to, uh, it appears as if the 18 and a half minutes missing from the white house recordings. Uh, during his conversation with HR Haldeman, his chief of staff would have been a conversation when he talked very explicitly about, um, Complicity the Nixon’s complicity in the Watergate break-in and in the coverup of that, um, certainly the missing documents from Iran-Contra are documents that would lead one to be able to more clearly see the president Reagan’s approval of arm sales to Iran, which were against the law and then the diversion of money from the arm sales to the contours and Nicaragua, which was also against the law, both Nixon and Reagan’s case.

Prosecutions did not move forward for a variety of reasons, but one of them was that they didn’t have, as you say, sufficient evidence. And as you say, this might be an issue for, for Donald Trump, uh, as well.

[00:21:56] Kenneth: There’s a perversity about that in the sense that, um, The S the standard of evidence that would need to be applied to prosecute a former president would be far higher than the standard of evidence that would be needed for anyone else.

We, uh, I think justifiably have a history of not carting our former presidents off to jail, um, or having a sort of vindictive. Retribution by a Victor party against a losing party, which is damaging to institutional stability. But conversely, that means that anyone who has good reason to prosecute a former president for a crime.

Faces a higher bar and because the political consequences are so great from breaking from this tradition. So I think one of the reasons why Donald Trump might in the end to get away from it all is that absence, you know, really just overwhelming, you know, like access Hollywood style tape. Documenting the president’s activity it’s it seems raising the specter of prosecution would just be too daunting, the task.

[00:23:11] Jeremi: Right. Right. I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re pointing in other words is that you need to, you need more than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to go after the president and. Perversely, the president has control over the evidence that would ever make it possible for one, to be able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Uh, so, so what should we do about that, Ken? I mean, you’ve spent a lot of time as have I, as have other historians, uh, struggling with these issues, struggling to get at the record. And, and we’re, we’re talking here not about presence also, as you say about those who work for presidents and often. Use similar tactics and the intelligence agencies are one of many where we have examples of this.

You gave a very powerful example. What should we do about this?

[00:23:54] Kenneth: Well, I think. And I think some of the examples, some of the things we need to take are becoming manifest as we watch the ongoing saga of the, um, January six committee trial, seek to investigate, uh, Trump and his former, uh, lieutenants and others who may have been tied to the January 6th attack on the Capitol building.

And that is that the Congress is facing. Endless a seemingly endless parade of hurdles in getting access to documents and, and, and evidence. So, so there, my concern is less about destruction of evidence, although that may be there, uh, Then about all the tools that are available to a president and his, or her administration to keep evidence from going before, even the, the oversight of Congress.

Uh, so even though there are protections, so for example, the presidential administrations are not supposed to destroy documents. Uh, presidents are required to turn over their personal papers to the national archives after they leave office, uh, these laws. Don’t really have a significant enforcement mechanism.

So there are no significant penalties, for example, that might, uh, uh, stop or deter a president from, from engaging in, uh, or actually literally Holly documents away tomorrow, Largo and hoping that you don’t get discovered, um, uh, There’s no meal of enforcement. So there’s my, that’s my biggest concern. I also think a, a related concern is even in cases where the law is on the side of freedom of information, as in the freedom of information act, there are recourses the, the ability to Sue for information, but there are also enormous obstacles.

It’s, it’s very costly. It’s very slow. The freedom of information offices are often understaffed and overwhelmed and those. In their own way, also provide bureaucratic incentives for the maintenance of secrecy, even when the reasons for doing so are not great.

[00:25:58] Jeremi: Right. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.

It’s almost Ken as if we need, uh, more moment by moment oversight of records as they’re being created, um, in the white house.

[00:26:10] Kenneth: Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s a, that’s a good suggestion. I, um, you know, I think the. Based on my years of research. And you could maybe weigh in if you have a different experience, but I think a lot makes it into the historical record.

Um, I, I don’t know that I’m super worried. Stuff not making about stuff being destroyed. There are some really powerful examples as I am, uh, from the broader culture of secrecy that keeps things from the public domain for years and years on end and sometimes indefinitely. I don’t, I don’t know if you knew this Jeremy, but I’m actually a partner to a lawsuit I’m suing the central intelligence agency for access to.

And that’s a really interesting experience because the agency maintained, uh, these internal histories that were meant for its own uses, uh, but official histories of a whole range of operations and activities that it did throughout the fifties and sixties. And these classified internal histories are really valuable potential sources.

And so we are suing under the freedom of information act to get the CIA to release. Uh, and we’ve gotten now maybe a hundred, some odd different releases of these documents. And as I go through all the stuff that they’ve provided to, of course, some sections are all blacked out or largely blacked out. And as we are going through much of the material that’s provided to us, we find.

They’re essentially releasing to us or allowing us access to the kind of thing that is already on Wikipedia. Uh, so, uh, we can press for openness, but in the end, we, we have little power to release. Press for the things that have not made it already into the public domain, if that makes sense.

[00:27:59] Jeremi: That makes a lot of sense. Yes.

[00:28:01] Zachary: Do you think then that the public needs to have a higher standard of our leaders and preserving records? I think honestly, beyond the historians and the journalists who rely on these records, the public probably knows very little about what happens with the documents and the, the phone calls that, that, that keep our government running.

[00:28:21] Kenneth: Uh, yeah, I think that, I think that makes sense. Um, I think our public actually has very little access to the, the, the moderns that sort of inner workings of modern American history. The, um, it’s, it’s not simply that. Documents aren’t there, but it’s that they’re very difficult to understand, uh, when they are there.

Um, and their, their use with the public is not trained as a professional historian is trained to make sense of these materials. Um, and so that is also a question about how we teach history or we, we help our, even the most, uh, young people today. The history courses and somewhere in the mid or early 20th century, uh, I’ve read very few college students who enter college and have actually been taught anything about the Vietnam war, for example, their courses.

And before then. So how are they to make sense of the massive growth of the national security state, if they aren’t exposed to it, even at an early age?

[00:29:26] Jeremi: Right. Right. And, and understanding the complexities of how evidence is used. And misused is obviously difficult to teach. If you don’t get into those, into those subjects.

Um, can you, you made a really important point, uh, that you and I have discussed before about secrecy and a culture of secrecy within. Policymaking institutions within the executive branch in particular and the ways in which I think this is your position, the ways in which a culture of secrecy also undermines distorts, um, causes problems for policymaking in an effective way.

Uh, what would you say more about that?

[00:30:03] Kenneth: Yeah. One thing that I think is quite telling is that in some of the, some of the most important or consequential actions of the federal government in the second half of the 20th century, We had to learn about because of criminal activities. So for example, the, we now know the FBI was engaged in a broader range of activities to neutralize the anti-war movements during the Vietnam era, uh, attempted to incite violence.

For example, with them in the black Panthers or attempting to pressure Martin Luther king to kill himself and a host of other things. We only learned about these things because of. Physics teacher named to build Avedon and a taxi driver and a nanny, and a couple other people broke into an FBI building and stole all their documents.

Uh, we only learned that the Gulf of Tonkin that was used to rationalize the Vietnam war, uh, was, uh, Largely a fabrication or an exaggeration, um, when it was released by the Pentagon papers, secret massive data dump by, uh, Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, uh, we learned, learned about the NSA’s massive program of surveillance, uh, when Edward Snowden leaked those documents to the press.

So we have a faulty system here in that. Uh, there is no system of accountability for. Presidents and th the whole entirety of the executive branch for doing things that are very worrisome, uh, very anti-democratic. Uh, we have no system to. Ensured the level of oversight that would keep those things from happening in the first pace or bringing those things to light, uh, in the second, uh, it takes crimes to expose crimes.

And that is, uh, I think, uh, one of the most serious failures of our, of our whole pattern of, of secrecy, the president, the whole executive branch, but the presidency in partition. In its power of classification, it’s virtually unrestrained power of classification. It can hide all manner of activities. Most of which is usually routine.

Uh, some of which is embarrassing and only a small percentage of which actually relates to, you know, serious and damaging, uh, national security information. Uh, but keeping that from the public domain, uh, allows us to have a foreign policy that is not well scrutinized by the public writ large.

[00:32:35] Jeremi: And, and it can, why has that happened?

You’re, you’re one of many historians to make precisely that point, that, that we’ve developed this culture of secrecy. That’s evident in the lawsuit. You have to file to get access to a CA documents. The, the, the ways in which there’s almost a default mode to classify materials, you’ve had the same experience I’ve had.

Historians of getting classified materials after going through many hoops and finding the classified materials, have nothing in them that deserves to be classified. Uh, sometimes I get these documents in the mail. I kept remember what parts were the excise, what were, and I have to go back and look at the original document because it makes no sense.

Culture develop. It’s certainly not what you would expect. Reading the early history of our Republic and the skepticism, our founders, and those after them had about secret government about anything that’s stunk of aristocracy and monarchy. How did we fall into.

[00:33:33] Kenneth: Well, I think you have to look to the world wars, first of all right.

That that’s the, uh, that’s the, the environment through which the system of classification emerges. Um, but to get to your question about why does it persist, uh, the power of classification classification grew out of. Uh, security concern, right? There are secrets about military activities and world war II, the, uh, atomic bomb project, uh, and so on and so forth that for very good reason, need to be kept out of the public domain.

Uh, there were secrets related to the cold war that for very good reason needed to be kept out of the public. But the fact that some things should be kept secret. And the fact that some security threats are real, uh, is essentially blown up to provide a cover for keeping anything. That it’s far easier to classify than to not classify.

Uh, and there’s very little countervailing pressure. There’s no one there saying, Hey, does this really need to be classified? Uh, and so absent a sort of meaningful teeth to sort of countervailing pressure to on the side of openness stuff, just errors on the side of being secret. And then we have to wait, uh, decades oftentimes to get that information to the present secrecy also persists it’s rooted in.

For example, the concept of executive privilege is rooted in a concept that makes sense, right? The president should be able to get advice from their advisors without being concerned. That that advice would be, you know, immediately ended up on CNN or Fox or some such thing. So there’s a good reason for some level of secrecy, but then that gets taken to.

Extremes and it allows, uh, it makes it very difficult to get access to information, uh, even when the public interest is great and demonstrable.

[00:35:32] Jeremi: So, so can we always like to close on an optimistic note on how history can offer a pathways forward for improvement and continued growth and evolution in our democracy?

Is this the kind of issue. Where attention, greater attention from citizens, historians, and others, uh, can actually make a difference, uh, where, where the sort of work you’re doing through this lawsuit, you were part of, in addition to your scholarship, raising attention to these issues can push back against these forces toward classification and secrecy and deception.

That, that you’ve untangled for us. So well.

[00:36:11] Kenneth: You know, Jeremy, I, my students will tell you, I don’t often end on an optimistic note. That’s just not my strong suit. Uh, but in, in more seriousness, I, there are, I guess they’re a good, they’re a good sides and bad sides to the story. The, the D the sort of sad side is that, uh, so much.

Kept from the public and so much will continue to be kept from the public. And the sad site is that oftentimes as I’ve suggested, it takes illegal acts or people taking great risks to reveal secret information for, for, for government abuse or excesses to make it to the public. On the plus side, our first amendment protections do offer robust, um, protection to the press for revealing information.

Uh, gets its hands on. Uh, and the United States is far better at, uh, bringing information into the public domain. Then, for example, the British government, which has an official secrets act, uh, there are, uh, legal structures for the protection of records for the freedom of information. I think it’s incredibly important that citizens understand and value those protections that when policy makers make moves to.

Interfere with the freedom of information such as through the Patriot act, uh, that the public, uh, pushes back and recognizes that the government’s right to protect information to advance national security or other causes should not be absolute and should always be kept in check by, uh, the watchful eyes of citizens by the other executive, by the other branches of government and by the.

[00:37:53] Jeremi: So there are at the very least some constitutional protections and pathways for addressing these issues. Zachary is as a young person who I know is often frustrated yourself with the, um, Lack of access to information at key moments and with the deception that you see sometimes from political leaders, uh, as well as the dishonesty are, are you optimistic?

Do you, do you think that at the very least raising consciousness, as we’re trying to do today about these issues can actually motivate young people like yourself to get more involved in creating more of a culture of openness rather than a culture of.

[00:38:31] Zachary: I think so. I think it’s made a lot easier, um, in the way that, in the sense that the internet, I think.

In the broader public sphere has sort of democratized access to these documents. It’s a lot easier now I think, than it was a few years ago to go online and find archival documents or, or even, uh, to, to read, uh, memos, uh, that are important to recent government actions. Um, but I do think. Uh, in our new sort of internet age, there’s so many more avenues that the government can use to, to cover up its secrets.

And I think in some ways we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re more used to that. And I think we have to, we have to constantly remind ourselves of the importance of transparency as an end unto it. Right. Not as a tool for, um, to achieve a political end, but, but as an important value in principle of our democracy.

[00:39:23] Jeremi: Right, right. I mean, democracy is founded on the notion that the people should understand and make decisions and that government leaders have a responsibility to share information with the public. The default, right? The, the assumption should be that information is shared except in the extreme exceptional circumstances.

Some of which can, Ken gave us examples of what. Troop movements and things like that, where you could jeopardize human lives in the short run. But most of what we’ve been talking about on the show is information that in no way, jeopardizes anyone’s life, but as Ken said earlier on is mostly related to embarrassment and political political need a final question for you, Ken.

And this is a, this really asks you to go deep into your historical, uh, research. Um, are, are there ways in which, uh, The executive he or herself or themselves can make a big difference. Is that, is that one of the crucial points at which we can see deception being encouraged or resisted at the.

[00:40:30] Kenneth: So, what are you asking, you know, are there, are there ways in which a given president can err on the side of openness? Yes. Uh, yes. Uh, there, obviously there there’s, uh, there is, but, um, one has some good reason to be skeptical. Uh, For example, Barack Obama went during this presidency, um, spoke eloquently and beautiful and often about the value of transparency.

Uh, but he went after, uh, Edward Snowden with a viciousness of, of Richard Nixon, uh, after those disclosures. Uh, so, uh, I don’t know that. Um, even even promises, can I can’t, uh, kids see Kim come to achieve the level of transparency that we would like. Um, so I guess that’s a less hopeful response to your,

[00:41:20] Jeremi: I actually see it as a hopeful response because it, it tells us that this is something that is not about rhetoric.

Uh, it really takes a personal commitment that, that if, if anything, the bias, as you pointed out is towards secrecy. And oftentimes the incentives are toward deception and that, uh, in our democracy, if we have leaders who are willing to resist those temptations and those pressures that actually might, might make a big difference, that seems to be what’s what’s been missing is, is the.

[00:41:53] Kenneth: Uh, that is true. Although I guess there Zachary pointed out, I think there’s two countervailing pressures, counter Zachary pointed out. I think the positive side, which is that, um, it’s easier than ever to get documents into the public sphere. Through, you know, you can data up, you can put things online. Uh, ordinary people can access a primary document.

I know after the president, Trump’s sort of scandalous. Phone call where he tried to essentially blackmail president Zelensky of Ukraine and to finding, or making up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, uh, that after that phone call, uh, happened and was made public, the documents appeared almost immediately. And we could read the transcript of that document and see, uh, so that level of instantaneous exposure I think is quite valuable and quite useful, uh, on.

Other side, the incentives to hide and distort are still as strong as ever and possibly even more so, because not only of that, very ease with which things could get out into the public sphere, but also by our scandal long airing culture. Right. So Barack Obama, uh, you know, for example, his state department, uh, you know, doctored, some documents related to the Ben Gazi attack.

Uh, why did he do so? Well? Because there was a big, essentially a phony scandal about the, about the, the attacks and Livia, uh, that he needed to respond to. And there will always be this parade in our, if, unless our political culture changes of phony or exaggerated scandals that compete for our attention with actual real things, we should be concerned.

[00:43:30] Jeremi: Right. Very well said. And we have, in that case, the phony scandal encouraging a phony use of documents to counteract the phony scandal. Exactly. So, so I think all of this, uh, brings out one of the themes that we come back to time and again, uh, in our podcast and it’s that democracy, it does require an informed.

Active public and an informed, an active public that is willing to pursue a real information and really willing to hold its leaders, even when their leaders that they like accountable for, uh, honesty and integrity. There really is no perfect institutional check on dishonesty except. A public that is Doggett and its demand for honesty and for attention to the facts.

And I think, uh, what you’ve shared with us today, Ken, uh, brings us fundamentally back to this point that there has to be a higher political price to pay for misusing evidence and, uh, excessive secrecy than there has been so far.

[00:44:35] Kenneth: Agreed and very well said. Yes.

[00:44:37] Jeremi: And, uh, and, and your work, I think really highlights this.

I encourage all of our listeners to, uh, read, uh, Kenneth Osgood’s, uh, total cold war and various other essays and books and articles that he’s written. Thank you, Ken, for joining us today.

[00:44:53] Kenneth: Uh, it was a great pleasure and it was great fun. And. Thanks to you and to Zachary

[00:44:58] Jeremi: and yes, and Zachary, thank you for your, your poem, uh, filled with, uh, memorable, memorable moments in the world of secrecy and deception.

And thank you most of all, to our loyal listeners for joining us for this, uh, week of this is democracy.

[00:45:21] Narrator: This podcast is produced by the liberal arts, its development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Codine stay tuned for a new episode every

week.

You can find this is democracy on apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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