It will seem to some frivolous to rank this kind of snooping travesty alongside episodes of violence, secret small wars, secret large thefts of taxpayers’ money and the rest. But the mishandling of the acres and acres of private information Americans are now, one way and another, obliged to cough up for Uncle Computer seems to me to be right up there with the worst of them, especially as the vast interconnecting databanks and the number of people equipped to get at them grow. Your health care, your credit, your tax returns, your myriad applications to qualify for this program or that benefit to which you are entitled – all of it is whirling around in the great national cyberjacuzzi somewhere. It is meant to be protected. You worry that it is not. Your government tells you, ““Hey, we are careful as hell with this stuff. It is our sacred trust. We take that trust utterly seriously. Now go back to sleep and leave it to us.’’ And then something like this – again and again – will happen.
Louis Freeh, the estimable director of the FBI, after looking into the reason a couple of unreassuring political operators in the White House had gained access to hundreds of FBI background files on the Republican opposition, actually spoke in terms of a contract violation by these Clinton administration apparatchiks. Having first fully conceded the fault of the FBI in failing to be vigilant enough in screening the requests, he added: ““The prior system of providing files to the White House relied on good faith and honor. Unfortunately, the FBI and I were victimized.’’ In other words, in his opinion, the White House aides had been acting with neither. But, you find yourself thinking, isn’t the FBI supposed to be a suspicious, alert outfit? Do they go around just asking to be fooled by assuming everyone is acting in good faith and with honor? On this subject, the FBI report adds something very important that tells us much about Washington and also about the way this particular scandal came about.
The report says: ““It appears that, over time a tradition of considerable deference to the White House has developed.’’ That is world class understatement. In a city where so many people work for the same ultimate boss (the president) and where that boss has been increasingly enshrined, enrobed and otherwise dolled up in the trappings of power, mystery and awesomeness, the mere words ““the White House wants’’ are often enough to make grown men and women unthinkingly snap to. So what does the phrase mean? It is invariably intended to convey that the president himself wants whatever it is. But over the years this implication, often as not wholly false, has been conveyed by more and more undistinguished aides and quasi-official hangers-on who are acting on their own motion and profoundly enjoying their ability to make movers and shakers around town do their bidding.
I have seen this sort of thing going on in the White House since the Kennedy administration. What is different is the huge growth in the number of junior twits and middle-aged incompetents with access to telephones and just enough of a title to stir deference in the response of their elders and/or betters around town when they utter the magic words ““the White House wants.’’ The already published literature of the Clinton administration reveals a certain besottedness on the part of many of these aides with the perks of the presidency which have them, not just the president, riding around in chauffeured cars and being able to summon up all sorts of special privileges at a moment’s notice. They are mostly, though not exclusively, young people who have not done enough in life either to put these things in perspective or to have earned any stature except for the stature the show of these privileges confers. A few years back people stewed about the dangers of ““the imperial presidency.’’ Today they could do worse than contemplate the dangers not of the grown-up serious White House staff which is functioning and there, but of the odd complement of giddy, self-important, imperious junior show-offs that is there as well. Craig Livingstone, the man who is to date in most trouble for the requisitioning of the files, reportedly liked to boast to his White House colleagues that he had been reading secrets about them, but wouldn’t tell. Material of this kind should be carefully guarded by those who are entitled to see it. But we read that even White House interns were entrusted with the files.
Does this mean that the FBI files were actually being deliberately scanned and misused for political purposes? The investigations now going on will give us the answer to that. I found myself thinking the other day that ““oops’’ is the first lie an infant child tells. He has learned that ““oops’’ signifies a no-fault accident, a spill or break that carries no penalty. He will soon try it out to cover a premeditated crime. ““Oops,’’ he will say tentatively having been caught yanking the cat’s tail. I thought I heard one of those specious ooopses in the ““snafu’’ explanations last week, but we shall see. But even if the accident rationale holds up, it was a plenty serious and inexcusable accident. Neither that material nor that responsibility should ever have been placed in those hands.
