{"id":12399,"date":"2018-08-21T17:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12399"},"modified":"2018-08-21T21:42:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T01:42:15","slug":"the-hill-in-washington-the-truth-has-refugee-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/21\/the-hill-in-washington-the-truth-has-refugee-status\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hill: In Washington, the Truth has Refugee Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Hill<\/h2>\n

In Washington, the truth has refugee status<\/a><\/h1>\n
By James Bovard, opinion contributor \u2014 08\/21\/18 04:30 PM EDT<\/span> <\/span> 0<\/a><\/div>\n
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\u201cTruth isn\u2019t truth,\u201d declared Rudy Giuliani<\/a>, President Trump<\/a><\/span>\u2019s personal attorney,\u00a0on Meet the Press\u00a0on Sunday.\u00a0Giuliani\u2019s comment \u2014 the weirdest absolution yet proffered for Trump \u2014 is the\u00a0\u201cTrump era\u2019s epitaph,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0according to a Washington Post columnist.\u00a0But truth really is defined differently inside the Beltway<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Trump could face\u00a0a \u201cperjury trap<\/a>\u201d from Special Counsel Robert Mueller<\/a><\/span> because of the unique way that the FBI defines reality\u00a0\u2014 and the truth.\u00a0The FBI\u00a0rarely<\/a>\u00a0records interviews and instead relies on written summaries\u00a0(known as Form 302s) which \u201care widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations,\u201d the\u00a0New York Times noted<\/a>\u00a0last year. Though defense attorneys routinely debunk\u00a0the accuracy<\/a>\u00a0and credibility of 302s, prosecutors continue touting FBI interview summaries as the voice of God. Even if Trump made factually correct comments to Mueller, he\u00a0could still face legal\u00a0peril<\/a>\u00a0if his statements failed to harmonize\u00a0with FBI \u201ctrust me on what I heard\u201d memos containing contrary assertions.<\/p>\n

Though other federal agencies cannot play the 302 game, they have plenty of options for editing the public record.\u00a0Inside the Beltway, \u201cplausible deniability\u201d (a\u00a0phrase first publicly used<\/a> by CIA chief Allen Dulles in the 1950s)\u00a0is \u201cclose enough for government work\u201d to truth<\/strong>. Congress enacted<\/a> the\u00a0Freedom of Information Act in 1966 to boost self-government\u00a0by entitling Americans to learn what Washington did in their name. But FOIA is derided nowadays as a \u201cFreedom\u00a0From\u00a0<\/em>Information Act\u201d that begets\u00a0merely a mirage<\/a> of transparency. Last year, individuals who filed FOIA\u00a0requests<\/a>\u00a0\u201creceived censored files or nothing in 78 percent\u201d of the time, according to the Associated Press. Federal agencies with the most power \u2014 such as\u00a0the FBI<\/a>,\u00a0Department of Homeland Security<\/a>, and the\u00a0Justice Department<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 are among the worst FOIA abusers.<\/p>\n

Federal agencies also maximize their discretion in defining truth\u00a0via almost 50 million decisions<\/a> to classify information each year.\u00a0And the Justice Department can totally suppress embarrassing facts on the most contentious issues (such as torture or assassinations) by invoking<\/a>\u00a0the \u201cstate secrets\u201d doctrine. The George W. Bush administration routinely invoked \u201cstate secrets\u201d to\u00a0seek \u201cblanket dismissal of every case challenging the\u00a0constitutionality of specific, ongoing government programs,\u201d according<\/a> to a study by the Constitution Project.\u00a0A federal appeals court\u00a0slammed<\/a>\u00a0the Obama administration\u2019s use of \u201cstate secrets\u201d: \u201cAccording to the government\u2019s theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and the limits of the\u00a0law.\u201d\u00a0Government\u2019s sway over damning information is boundless \u2014 at least until some scofflaw like Edward Snowden obliterates federal credibility.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If one is seeking Shakespearian-level creativity, official claims regarding U.S. military and foreign policy rarely disappoint. (But seriously, the Taliban are finally on the run.)\u00a0How much has changed since 1965, when Pentagon assistant secretary Arthur Sylvester\u00a0hectored<\/a>\u00a0Vietnam war correspondents: \u201cLook, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you\u2019re stupid. Did you hear that? Stupid\u201d? Sylvester\u2019s slapdown has not deterred the media from continuing to play stenographer for the vast majority of government assertions.<\/p>\n

Lamentably, the Oval Office has never been an oasis of candor inside the District of Columbia. Calvin Coolidge may have been the last man who appeared more honest at the end of his presidency than at the start.\u00a0While\u00a0every president<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0last quarter century<\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0shredded their credibility,<\/a>\u00a0Trump is\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0shattering the bogus benchmark (the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0asserts he has made more than 2000 false or misleading claims).<\/p>\n

But wild-eyed tweeting is not a federal offense, and it is unclear whether the president has said anything specifically that places him in legal peril. Trump is guilty of wacky hiring decisions, as shown by his lawyer Giuliani\u2019s \u201ctalent for putting defense arguments as unconvincingly, unappealingly, and suspiciously\u00a0as possible,\u201d as attorney Ken \u201cPopehat\u201d White quipped<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest whopper in Washington nowadays is the assumption that the government and the political class will automatically be trustworthy once the Trump era ends. Even if Trump is toppled by impeachment, there will still be a thousand precedents for federal coverups and duplicity. And neither political party nor the bureaucracy has shown any itch to cease deceiving the American people.<\/strong><\/p>\n

James\u00a0Bovard<\/span>\u00a0is the author of\u00a0“Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>” (Kindle version 2012), “Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>” (St. Martin’s\/Palgrave, 2006), and eight other books.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hill In Washington, the truth has refugee status By James Bovard, opinion contributor \u2014 08\/21\/18 04:30 PM EDT 0 \u201cTruth isn\u2019t truth,\u201d declared Rudy Giuliani, President Trump\u2019s personal attorney,\u00a0on Meet the Press\u00a0on Sunday.\u00a0Giuliani\u2019s comment \u2014 the weirdest absolution yet proffered for Trump \u2014 is the\u00a0\u201cTrump era\u2019s epitaph,\u201d\u00a0according to a Washington Post columnist.\u00a0But truth really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1684,1693,417,729,1291,753,47,815,1692,11,1695,27,1691,1694,1690,55,1047,1495],"class_list":["post-12399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arthur-sylvester","tag-calvin-coolidge","tag-coverups","tag-deceit","tag-dhs","tag-donald-trump","tag-fbi","tag-foia","tag-form-302","tag-justice-department","tag-ken-white","tag-lying","tag-perjury-trap","tag-popehat","tag-rudy-giuliani","tag-secrecy","tag-state-secrets","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hill: In Washington, the Truth has Refugee Status - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12402,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12399\/revisions\/12402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}