A
Democracy In Crisis:
Who Is Really In Control?
By Ramzy Baroud
01 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Years
back, an old and astute professor at the University of Washington ended
a fascinating lecture to a small group of freshmen with the following
contention: "Our country might find itself in a position that could
force it to deprive its citizens from certain freedoms to preserve basic
rights."
The political atmosphere
in the United States then was hardly tense; moreover, the professor
was not essentially alluding to a political topic; his argument was
meant to assert an environmental concern: the government must interfere,
mustering its entire legal prowess to contain human activities that
have for long harmed our increasingly fragile environment; even if such
intervention can theoretically be qualified as one that curbs certain
freedoms, as long as by doing so, we preserve basic but fundamental
rights, the right to a good life, health and collective preservation.
Utilitarianism at its best; partly, I agreed.
But a question, nonetheless,
lurked within and I simply couldn't wait until the following lecture
to raise it. I followed him to his office. He sat in front of me, gasping
for air and desperately probing the top drawer of his ailing desk for
a cigarette; I hesitantly overlooked the irony and retorted: Your point
made a lot of sense, but it was too generalised; what if the freedoms
being denied are those of political dissent, civil rights and the like?
Would any fundamental right be a worthy prize to compel such compromises?
His answer was simple: our
democratic system simply wouldn't allow it.
The logic of that point was
hardly new, of course; what was interesting about it, however, was its
swiftness and decidedness. It contends that the country's founding fathers
were farsighted and indeed remarkably sensitive to the kinds of political
dilemmas that might create a situation that could provide the ruling
elite the opportunity to abuse their powers. The rest of the argument
is scarcely out of the ordinary: the checks and balances within the
political establishment itself, the watchful eye of the media, the Bill
of Rights, an educated citizenry and so forth, are more than enough
to draw a well defined line that would keep America from falling into
the abyss of tyranny, authoritarianism and theocracy.
A young student, trying to
leave a positive impression on a progressively more irritated professor,
I fabricated satisfaction and withdrew.
The February 26 issue of
Newsweek however, brought that conversation back to mind. "A Man
of Mystery: Richard Hohlt is the heavy hitter you've never heard of,"
by Michael Isikoff was not a lengthy investigation by any accounts,
though it deserved to be so. It introduced a most disturbing twist to
the Valerie Plame story: the CIA officer who had her identity revealed
by top White House staff to punish her husband, a leading Iraq war critique
Joseph Wilson for discounting reports that the Iraqi government was
endeavouring to acquire raw materials for nuclear weapons from an African
source. The story was later found to be sheer concoction, but Wilson,
according to the Bush administration's standards had to pay for his
integrity.
The 'scoop' was made public
when conservative US columnist Robert Novak revealed it in one of his
columns, on July 14, 2003; more recently, according to Novak's court
testimony, it was further revealed that the information was passed on
to him through two top Bush administration officials: Vice-President
Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby and public
policy genius — until the recent Republication legislative election's
defeat, of course — Karl Rove.
Leaking a name of a CIA agent
to the Press is a federal crime; both Libby and Rove knew such a fact
well, although the former — now being prosecuted — is still
acting as if he cannot recall the exact conversation he had with the
columnist during the early stages of the Iraq war. Like faithful soldiers,
Libby and his associates shall do their utmost to halt the persecutors'
incessant quest of finding out the original source of the leak, suspected
of being Cheney himself, or even worse.
As disconcerting as this
may be, a new element was adding to the unfolding drama, as delineated
by Isikoff's article: "Asked by one of Libby's lawyers if he had
talked about Plame with anybody else before outing her in his column,
Novak said he'd discussed her with a lobbyist named Richard Hohlt. Who,
the lawyer pressed, is Hohlt?"
It turned out that Hohlt
is "a very good source" of Novak as both talk "everyday";
A lobbyist and a "powerbroker", Hohlt reportedly seeks little
media attention, although represents such influential clients as Bristol
Myers, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase and the Nuclear Energy Association (not
to mention his status as a 'Super Ranger' for his remarkable fund raising
talents for the Republican Party.)
According to some affiliates
of the obscure lobbyist, speaking to Newsweek, Hohlt is "known
as the person you can go to to try to get stuff in Novak's column."
Though Novak denied the suggestion as "ridiculous," nothing
else can explain the columnist's daily hunts for scoops from Hohlt.
The latter is so influential in fact, that before publishing his column
revealing Plame's identity, Novak "did something most journalists
rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column."
In turn, Hohlt, passed on the copy to Rove, according to his statement
made to Newsweek. The White House clique thus had advanced knowledge
of the "bombshell" that was yet to come, three days later.
The tripartite scandal: one that revealed, or rather further confirmed,
the troubling matrimony between the state, the media and the lobbyists,
is hardly an individual account of rogue elements that behaved on its
own behest.
"But Hohlt's more significant
role may be his leadership of a secretive social group of GOP heavy
hitters and, occasionally, White House officials (including Rove and
White House chief of staff Josh Bolton), who convene to smoke cigars
and mull over politics," wrote Isikoff. The group's name is the
Off The Record Club. Hohlt is designated as "keeper of the flame."
This travesty has apparently been going on for over 15 years.
As such dirty politics is
being actively pursued behind close doors — involving self-serving
officials and politicians, their media beneficiaries, larger corporations,
religious zealots and the rest — one has to wonder how relevant
the American people are to the democratic process in their own country,
and more to how they are governed and by whom?
If I could only present these
questions to my dear professor of many years ago; if he is still alive,
I wonder what his answer would be. Would he contend that our system
of checks and balances and the foresightedness of the founding fathers
would eventually prevail over the corruption of the ruling elites and
big businesses? Or would he finally admit that a nation that compromises
on its freedom under false pretexts is a nation that is destined to
lose its own democracy, once the greatest on earth?
-Ramzy Baroud’s latest
book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronology of a People’s
Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is now available at Amazon.com.