Constitution most meaningful in toughest of times

saxo-archive

Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008 | midnight

New York

At the beginning of last month we learned that the CIA had destroyed videotapes showing harsh interrogations of al-Qaida operatives. Last week we found out that the CIA had withheld these tapes from the government's 9/11 Commission, which had asked the CIA for all material relevant to al-Qaida interrogations while the panel was preparing its report in 2003 and 2004.

We also learned something else last week, something unrelated but ultimately relevant to how we might assess these first two revelations: That, in 1950, just after the outbreak of the Korean War, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to sell President Harry S. Truman on a plan to imprison 12,000 Americans whom Hoover suspected of disloyalty.

There is, in times of war and threat to the United States, an understandable inclination on the part of many Americans to give the federal government -- specifically, the executive branch -- the benefit of the doubt. This inclination carries with it a corresponding suspicion and even hostility toward those, such as the news media and congressional oversight committees, that want to keep the government's affairs as transparent as possible and hold the government accountable for excesses committed in the name of national security.

These impulses are understandable because we can all appreciate how fear has a way of creating its own priorities and rationales, how its imperatives can make constitutional concerns such as due process and the rule of law seem like peacetime luxuries.

They are understandable, but they are ultimately misguided, and the restraints they put -- and the chilling effect they can have -- on legitimate inquiry into the workings of our government pose a real danger to people who wish to remain free.

History is filled with cautionary tales about the ways in which politicians and others who wish to accumulate and wield power have used fear -- to gain acceptance of measures the public would not ordinarily consider in its best interest, such as suspension of civil liberties, and to deflect questions about these same measures. This latest revelation about J. Edgar Hoover provides but one example, which might be easier to see with clarity because it happened so long ago.

America's founders understood this, and many of the protections they built into the Constitution -- the separation of powers, the vaunted checks and balances -- were designed precisely to protect this republic from the predations of fear. These men did not see the protections as mere niceties to be disposed of when the going got truly tough; they saw them as firewalls designed to preserve our nation's core values from even the hottest flames of demagoguery, war and political passion.

So maybe you're wondering why the 9/11 Commission and some in Congress and the news media think it's a big deal that the CIA withheld and destroyed tapes of interrogations using methods such as waterboarding. Maybe you wish these institutions would let our security and intelligence agencies “just do their jobs” instead of looking over their shoulders all the time.

If you are among those who feel this way, you might remember that a very powerful director of the FBI -- one with dirt on, and therefore power over, a number of government officials and members of Congress -- once handed a president a list of people he personally deemed disloyal.

President Truman did not act on Hoover's list. But as we enter this presidential election year, you might consider the candidate, from whichever party, whom you like least -- and ask yourself, would you trust him or her to do the right thing with Hoover's list?

Dan Rather is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.