Like many of my colleagues, I find myself obsessing on Judy Miller [1], languishing in her quiet cell, reading the Times, waiting for the story of the day (Hurricane Denis, NASA’s failed shuttle launch, Supreme Court vacancies) to pass so the saga of her martyrdom can return to public scrutiny.
I have lived long enough to know that the plight of one talented but corrupt reporter is not important. Nevertheless, something about this story pulls at my thoughts. There is something here, as in the Bolton memos [2] and the Downing Street memos [3], that has the capacity to shake the world as we know it to its core.
Somewhere there exists a thread that has broken from the pattern of lies and deception. Find that thread, give it a pull and it all unravels, leaving the Emperor naked and exposed. The greatest surprise of all is that it is not George W. Bush.
In this obsession, the question that keeps gnawing at my lobes is: What have we forgotten? What are we not seeing? As we examine the scarred and dying tree, what is happening in the rest of the forest?
Let Judy Miller rot in jail until she comes out with the truth. How dare she hide behind journalistic privilege, as Nixon hid behind executive privilege? How dare she portray the victim of her own integrity? Where was her integrity when she passed blatant White House war propaganda to an unsuspecting public? This is not some maverick reporter. She is an important ally of the Bush warlords.
It is increasingly clear that what Judy Miller and the New York Times are hiding beneath a cloak of journalistic martyrdom is far more damning than the Karl Rove connection [4].
There is no Woodward & Bernstein [5] today. Woodward is as lost as a man without a home, a mad hatter always two steps behind and looking in the wrong direction. Bernstein has been cut off at the knees, seemingly emasculated in the modern world of journalistic duplicity.
The best hope now lies in the web, where the truth resides and can never be deleted. Why did Time-Warner give up Matthew Cooper’s notes [6]? Because they were already in the public domain. The truth is out there waiting, calling to those who know the language and have the means to navigate the electronic maze.
Like Watergate, Iran-Contra and beyond, here is a conspiracy of such magnitude it hobbles the mind and renders honest reporting the stuff of fiction. The curse in this web of deception, this grand illusion, this world of electronic imagery in which nothing palpable is perceived as real, is to be a visionary.
Is it more frightening to think that our elected leaders are informed or that they are not?
I have discovered the madness of King George. It is marked from the day he gave an order and his betters said, “No.”
“Am I not the King?” he cried and laughter filled the air.
“Am I not the King?” he cried again and they put him in a quiet place until he returned to his senses.
In the time of aristocracy and hereditary succession, there were towers and torture chambers and princes in iron masks. To pacify the masses, there were theatres, sport, brothels, pubs and churches promising redemption in the afterlife.
While the overlords of power still possess the tools of antiquity, today the quiet places are mostly pharmaceutically induced and the most powerful drugs are self-administered. Without our medicines, we would all be mad. Without our technological toys, our mega-media infotainment, our games and movies, our infinite distractions, we would all be visionaries.
In a modern world of madness, the visionaries are locked away in quiet places where their cries of anguish will never be heard and their stories never told.
The cure to this madness does not lie with those who have already signed the loyalty oath. It does not lie with John Kerry (Skull & Bones), Hillary Clinton (the Bush-Clinton alliance), Joe Biden (more troops and firm resolve) or Harry Reid (a master of moderation). They are all pledged to uphold the cloak of secrecy and maintain the established order.
The only effective medicine for the madness of illusion is the truth and the truth can only be revealed when the layers of deception are stripped away. The shill game is in process. Smoke is pouring from the bowels of the White House. Mirrors are in place and the hand of Karl Rove is working its majestic wonders. Do not allow the Bolton memos, the Downing Street memos, or the Judy Miller file to fade away. The thread is there, waiting to be pulled. Find it, pull hard, and do not stop pulling until the whole is laid bare.
JACK RANDOM is the author of the Jazzman Chronicles, the War Chronicles (Crow Dog Press) and Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press). He can be reached through his website: www.jackrandom.com.
Notes:
[1] NY Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for failure to comply with a court order to reveal her sources in the case of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent exposed by a White House leak.
[2] John Bolton was nominated to succeed John Negroponte as Ambassador the United Nations. In confirmation hearings, the Senate requested documents related to the Iraq War. The request was denied by the White House and the nomination is in limbo.
[3] The Downing Street memos revealed the Bush administration’s predetermination to go to war in Iraq from the perspective of the British government.
[4] An email from Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper exposed Karl Rove, mastermind of the Bush campaigns and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, as one source of the Valerie Plame leak.
[5] Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein were the Washington Post reporters who exposed the depth of the Watergate scandal, leading to the resignation of Richard Nixon.
[6] Time Magazine complied with a court order, surrendering Matthew Cooper’s notes (mostly electronic) in the Valerie Plame case.
