Stewart Udall Quotes
The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.
Udall, Stewart L. The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom. Pantheon Books, 1994, p. 278.
He warns particularly of politicians who believe their own lies.
Agree resigned from the CIA in protest to its political position.
One major theory is that most Government lies are perpetrated by Appointees who will only be working for the government for a few years. By the time the truth comes out, they are no longer in office and cannot be affected much by the revelation of the truth. The law actually protects most Federal Officials from criminal or civil penalties for most lies told while in office.
If a government can classify embarrassing information, then it does not have to lie which is why over-classification is so prevalent. But then the officials have to lie in the classification process by claiming national security is involved as opposed to their own or their party’s security from embarrassment. Most officials prefer to tell the truth and not deceive the public. However, a large proportion have their moral instincts compromised by confusing the national interest with the politicians’ interest
In the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, right wing talk show hosts had extensive conservative audiences who were very susceptible to hyperbole, exaggerations, vitriol, ideology, and conspiracy theories. They in turn pressured the conservative politicians along the lines of the media shows version of conservatism. The result was that the most powerful conservatives in America were media personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. They had more influence on the Republican party than any of the Republican elected officials. Moyers, used to working with Republicans in many bi-partisan efforts attributed the extreme hyperpartisanship, and nasty, gridlocked political scene that developed in these media personalities.
The documentary was a rabid, racist appeal to the worst kind of prejudices. It was so extreme that even the Republican Candidate, Barry Goldwater, denounced it. The complaint was moot when Citizens for Goldwater-Miller, the film’s producers, withdrew it before it could be aired nationally.
President George W. Bush, to justify the invasion of Iraq had told the public that the Iraqi regime was developing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and had participated in the September 11 attack on the United States by assisting Al Qaeda. It turned out that these statements were false. The administration claimed that their error was well intentioned and the result of faulty intelligence. Opponents claimed that the administration officials knew that they were exaggerating and had pressured the intelligence agencies to create intelligence conclusions that supported their story.
Alsop, a political hawk was convinced, as many other right wingers were at the time that the Russians had forged ahead of us in offensive missiles. When he asked President Eisenhower, the President never denied it, but never went to Congress to ask for more money to close the “missile gap”. Alsop made this shocking accusation which offended many Americans, but pleased the ultra-hawks and anti-communists. Most of the nation however then believed that there was a missile gap, with varying explanations of Eisenhower’s silence on the matter. Two years later John F. Kennedy, used the “missile gap” when running in 1960 against Nixon by attacking Nixon and Eisenhower for allowing us to fall behind the Russians at have a missile gap. When Kennedy became President, he was very surprised that there was no missile gap favoring the Russians—it was favoring the United States. Eisenhower did not want the Russians to know that he knew exactly what they were producing and deploying in missiles through great espionage sources. By not saying anything in the face of the accusations, the Russians assumed that the Americans really thought that they had more capacity than they did. And Eisenhower wanted that so that they would be secure that the United States had no real knowledge of their missile capacity. If Eisenhower had actually told the nation that the Russians were really behind us, the Russians would suspect a security leak and our sources could be compromised.
Stewart Lee Udall was an American politician and later, a federal government official. After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
