As a guy whose maternal grandfather was a snitch for the U.S. military and the FBI, I have always been fascinated by government lies and secrecy in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
No one knows for sure when lying became a constant factor in public life. But it generated a head of steam following the Second World War with the communist witch hunts and the advent of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) charade led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. This was the genesis of the Cold War that has never ended, since all the other countries have learned to lie as well as we do.
History buffs may recall that the ensuing hysteria created a blacklist of actors, directors and screenwriters, known as the Hollywood 10—including former Marinite Alvah Bessie—and many hundreds of other innocent people who were also caught in the web. Aside from the pathetic clown show we call politics in the present day, this may have been our nation’s darkest hour.
One of the other government snitches, and there is no better word to describe their ilk, was a two-bit actor by the name of Ronald Reagan. But the real star of the show was Joe McCarthy, with the shark-like lawyers, Roy Cohn and Robert Kennedy, in support.
There can be no dispute that some information held by government sources should be protected, for the safety of the general public. But the government, at least until the next fascist regime is put in place, is not a paramilitary organization. All taxpayer funded activities should be open to public scrutiny, with a tiny number of exceptions. In theory.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of the 1970s shouldn’t have been necessary to enact, but it was. It’s law that requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information and documents controlled by the government upon request.The FOIA is most commonly known for being invoked by news agencies for reporting purposes, though such uses make up less than 10% of all requests—which are more frequently made by businesses, law firms and individuals.
A society whose elected officials and federal and state government officials have a distant relationship with the truth needs the FOIA to function correctly.
Craig Corsini lives in San Rafael.
