David Frost: So what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.
Richard Nixon: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
David Frost: By definition.
Richard Nixon: Exactly, exactly..
— Nixon/Frost interview, April 6, 1977
The recent controversies involving journalistic explorations of National Security and the government investigations that followed raise serious questions about what the law ought to be.
What balance should be found between privacy and security? It is not a binary choice between freedom and safety.
Anyone who occasionally watches police dramas on television might have imagined the government would routinely be able to get court permission to check phone records while investigating a crime. In a computer age, we have come to expect that most anything transmitted electronically might become public. Facebook, google searches, dialed phone numbers, all involve an unfortunate sacrifice, perhaps even an outrageous sacrifice, of some degree of privacy.
A casual discovery of personal details often can take less effort than a search through the telephone book for a home address might have taken decades ago. Few people thought much about it back then. Fewer still went through the expense of obtaining an unlisted number.
Today’s secrecy of policy is disturbing. It is difficult to find what standards are followed by the secret FISA courts which were mandated by Congressional legislation after 9/11. They are, after all, secret. A national debate is worth having.
And we can expect some rhetorical excesses in an emotional debate about our relationship to our government and our responsibility toward each other.
We should also expect that sort of excess to meet with rebuke.
David Gregory of NBC has been meeting his share of rebukes of late. He not only suggested the possibility of a reporter going to jail, he implied the reporter might not even be a legitimate journalist.
I returned from Sunday service too late to hear the original exchange between David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, and Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who has worked with Edward Snowden of NSA fame. It is possible the excerpts I have seen lost some context.
Here is what I have heard:
David Gregory: To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?
Glenn Greenwald: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies.
Mr. Greenwald went on to what I regarded as the most legitimate part of his response, a semi-denial that he engaged in such activity:
The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way.
“Completely without evidence” is probably as close as we will get to a denial.
He went on to provide what has become standard fare in US journalism. He decried the pursuit of federal employees who hand over classified documents as criminalizing journalism. He did not note that cases he mentioned had blown the cover of a British spy who had infiltrated al Qaeda and revealed the existence of a secret source in North Korea.
And this is what seems to have gotten David Gregory in as much trouble as his original question.
Well, the question of who’s a journalist may be up to a debate with regard to what you are doing. And of course anybody who’s watching this understands I was asking a question. That question has been raised by lawmakers as well. I’m not embracing anything, but, obviously, I take your point.
Let’s unpack this a little, shall we?
About 40 years ago, I moderated a series of public debates at a local political club in St. Louis County. Part of it involved taking questions from the audience. One audience member rose and asked if a debate participant was simply trying to keep racial minorities from enjoying our system of parks. I turned and said:
“Well, what about it, Joe? Are you trying to keep black people out?”
“Joe” correctly saw my rephrasing as an opportunity to refute, and he did just that.
I was surprised that, four decades later, Glenn Greenwald did not take the same opportunity. I thought David Gregory had offered up a softball question, which Glenn Greenwald regarded as too rude for words.
I am impressed that so few seem to have noticed that Mr. Greenwald threw the first “Are you a real journalist” hand grenade in that exchange.
I am more impressed, however, with a statement many regard as so self-evident that it needs no further argument to support it. Let’s review it again, shall we?
Glenn Greenwald: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies.
So you are not worthy of even calling yourself a journalist if you think any other journalist is capable, even in theory, of committing a chargeable crime.
Richard Nixon: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
It seems Mr. Nixon’s mistake was his pursuit of a professional career unsuited to his aptitude. He should have become a journalist.