Joycelyn Elders on the Clash of Politics, Science

Newsweek Health - MSNBC.com:

NEWSWEEK: What was your reaction to the testimony of the three former surgeons general?
Joycelyn Elders: What they were saying was true. I think each surgeon general has a different set of problems. But when they're suppressed—when they can't put the science out there for people to make good decisions about—then our ideas and our morality and ideologies and mythologies get in the way of good science. When I was the surgeon general, I did not feel that we should let politics invade science and marginalize it. And I think we’ve been seeing some of that. Of course, it didn’t start with [George W.] Bush. Look at Dr. [C. Everett] Koop, who stood up for AIDS when heaven knows the president [Ronald Reagan] didn’t want to even mention the word. And [the surgeon general under George H.W. Bush, Dr. Antonia Novella] was more muzzled than anybody ... When tobacco smoking was an issue, she only spoke about it after the state surgeons general were already suing the tobacco companies. But I do think the suppression has been going on more and more lately. And we just can't let that happen.

What does it mean for the office of the surgeon general when political pressure is brought to bear?
It destroys the office. And I think it's a very important office; it has a very important role. We're setting a dangerous precedent. We need to find a way to make that office more independent. We've got to be able to build a support system around the surgeon general such that he is not being constantly bombarded and afraid of losing his job because he's taken a position that's different from the president's. If all he's going to do is be the president's mouthpiece, what does the country need with a surgeon general?

The New Hippocratic Oath

The New Hippocratic Oath - New York Times: By Michael Feldman

I SWEAR by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and President Bush and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my and President Bush’s ability and judgment this oath and covenant:...

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to President Bush, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself.

This might help.

Holsinger: Politics Won't Trump Science

Guardian Unlimited: By KEVIN FREKING (AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's nominee to become the next surgeon general said Thursday he would resign rather than allow politics to push aside science.

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. James W. Holsinger sought to offer assurance that he would be a strong voice for public health, unswayed by political ideology, and to answer criticism of his past writings. He said a controversial 1991 paper about homosexuality and health no longer represents his views.

Holsinger's hearing came just two days after the last person to serve in the post told Congress that the Bush administration had manipulated the surgeon general's office for political purposes.

Asked what he would do if pressured to promote ideology over sound science, Holsinger said he could never be persuaded to advocate a position contrary to his conscience.

``I think I have a clear response to that. I would resign,'' Holsinger told the Senate health committee.

Been there, heard that? Chief Justice Roberts? Justice Alito? Clarence? At least this appointment isn't for life.
And on that sterling conscience:

Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said he was worried that if confirmed, Holsinger would let his own ideological beliefs cloud his scientific judgment. He referred to the paper that Holsinger wrote on homosexuality for a study committee of the United Methodist Church.

``Dr. Holsinger's paper is ideological and decidedly not an accurate analysis of the science then available on homosexuality,'' Kennedy said. ``Dr. Holsinger's paper cherry picks and misuses data to support his thesis that homosexuality is unhealthy and unnatural.''

What a difference an election makes? Or not?

CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible'

washingtonpost.com: By Bob Woodward

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a 'Churchillian' vision of 'victory' in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. 'A constitutional order is emerging,' he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."...

Hayden's bleak assessment, which came just a week after Republicans had lost control of Congress and Bush had dismissed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was a pivotal moment in the study group's intensive examination of the Iraq war, and it helped shape its conclusion in its final report that the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating."

In the eight months since the interview, neither Hayden nor any other high-ranking administration official has publicly described the Iraqi government in the uniformly negative terms that the CIA director used in his closed-door briefing. ...

A senior intelligence official familiar with Hayden's session with the Iraq Study Group said that Hayden told the panel his assessment was "somber" and acknowledged that Hayden had used the term "irreversible." But the official insisted that Hayden instead said, "The current situation, with regard to governance in Iraq, was probably irreversible in the short term, because of the world views of many of the [Iraqi] government leaders, which were shaped by a sectarian filter and a government that was organized for its ethnic and religious balance rather than competence or capacity."

But another senior intelligence official confirmed the thrust and detail of Hayden's assessment, saying that the intelligence out of Iraq this month shows that the ability of the Maliki government to execute decisions and govern Iraq remains "awful." ...

Former defense secretary William J. Perry, one of the five Democrats on the Iraq Study Group, confirmed that Hayden told them the Iraqi government seemed beyond repair.

"That was what we'd been hearing everywhere," Perry said. "He just said it a little more clearly and more explicitly than other people."

Can you fool all of the people all of the time?
It seems the Bush Administration is willing to die trying.*

(* Ooops, forgot. That's other people who will die. Got to be careful with these metaphor things.)

Give that man a hand

The Opinionator - New York Times Blog:

[Nick Gillespie at Reason] cites a Washington Post article, which noted that Satcher was told he could not release a report on sexuality and public health, “in part because of sensitivities triggered by the Monica Lewinsky scandal,” and that “Clinton also forced out Joycelyn Elders as surgeon general in 1994 after her controversial remarks that public schools should consider teaching about masturbation.”

“On that last point,” notes Gillespie, “just think what would have happened had schools actually started teaching masturbation. Talk about federal overreach! If there’s one thing you don’t even need vouchers for, much less a centralized curriculum, it’s probably masturbation. I imagine that within a few years, American students’ standing in international rankings would have dropped through the floor.”

And: Dick Polman acknowledges the Clinton precedent, but sees a more disturbing pattern:

Indeed, everything Carmona said yesterday merely confirms what John DiIulio was the first to say, five long years ago. DiIulio, a University of Pennsylvania professor and domestic policy expert, lasted barely a year as director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. His parting shot looks more prescient with each passing day: “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.

DiIulio may still have been at Princeton rather than Penn at the time of his appointment, but my memory on that is hazy. His leaving was an early sign of what to expect from this Administration.

Nixon Library Loses Watergate Whitewash

New York Times:

YORBA LINDA, Calif. (AP) -- The privately operated Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace was officially handed over to federal archivists Wednesday and researchers can pore over documents and tapes detailing ''the good, the bad and the ugly'' on the 37th president and his legacy.

After a simple opening ceremony, library officials and docents shared champagne and cake before moving to the research room to view 78,000 newly released Nixon papers and listen to 11 1/2 hours of audio tape. ...

For nearly 20 years, library visitors were told the Watergate scandal was really a ''coup'' by Nixon's rivals and the investigative reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein offered bribes for their nation-shaking scoops.

The new library director is taking some of the whitewash off the scandal resulting from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the subsequent White House cover-up. The revised account is a precondition for receiving 42 million pages of the former president's papers and nearly 4,000 hours of tapes, which will be moved to California in several years once Congress approves funding for a 15,000-square-foot addition.

Transition to federal control ushers the black sheep of presidential libraries into the fold of the prestigious National Archives. ...

The documents show a keen interest, if not preoccupation, with stage-managing Nixon's appearances and include advice that he pay more attention to his wife, Pat, when the two are in public.

''From time to time he should talk to her and smile at her,'' TV adviser Roger Ailes told Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, in a May 1970 memo, after noting that the president walked away from her at a Houston event and she had to run to catch up. ''Women voters are particularly sensitive to how a man treats his wife in public.''...

With the stamp of the federal system for library comes a major makeover for certain less-than-accurate exhibits -- a relief to Nixon scholars who were frustrated by the way the private institution had portrayed the Watergate scandal and Nixon's foreign policy.

Naftali recently oversaw the demolition of the revisionist Watergate gallery, including a section that said the scandal was a coup plotted by Democrats. The museum also told visitors that the infamous 18 1/2 minute gap in one important White House tape -- a conversation three days after the break-in -- was because of a mechanical malfunction.

''No serious historian believes in that,'' said David Greenberg, a Nixon scholar and professor at Rutgers University. ''It's not only not true, it's the opposite of truth. There was a lot along those lines in the library, which was not a matter of interpretation, but was flat wrong, a lie.''

Roger Ailes now runs Fox News. He has a long history of "fair and balanced" advice. Maybe some interesting tidbits still to come.
I await the commentary of my esteemed colleague, UW presidential historian Stanley Kutler, on all this, and will link to him when he has delivered himself of his remarks on the Nixon Library, past and present.

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations

washingtonpost.com: By John Solomon

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. 'There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,' Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act....

Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the nonpartisan Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "I think these documents raise some very serious questions about how much the attorney general knew about the FBI's misuse of surveillance powers and when he knew it." A lawsuit by Hofmann's group seeking internal FBI documents about NSLs prompted the release of the reports.

Caroline Fredrickson, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the new documents raise questions about whether Gonzales misled Congress at a moment when lawmakers were poised to renew the Patriot Act and keenly sought assurances that there were no abuses. "It was extremely important," she said of Gonzales's 2005 testimony. "The attorney general said there are no problems with the Patriot Act, and there was no counterevidence at the time."

Some of the reports describe rules violations that the FBI decided not to report to the intelligence board. ...

See article for further details.
We really can't trust anything they say...
Can one be too cynical about this crowd? Increasingly, I doubt it.

C.I.A. Chief Tries Preaching a Culture of More Openness

New York Times: "By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, June 22 — William E. Colby faced an uneasy decision in late 1973 when he took over the Central Intelligence Agency: whether to make public the agency’s internal accounting, then being compiled, of its domestic spying, assassination plots and other misdeeds since its founding nearly three decades earlier.

Mr. Colby decided to keep the so-called family jewels a secret, and wrote in his memoir in 1978 that he believed the agency’s already sullied reputation, including a link to the Watergate scandal, could not have withstood a public airing of all its dirty laundry.

So why, at a time when the agency has again been besieged by criticism, this time for its program of secret detentions and interrogations since the Sept. 11 attacks, would the current director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, decide to declassify the same documents that Mr. Colby chose to keep secret?...

General Hayden’s decision to declassify the family jewels now has been greeted negatively by some C.I.A. veterans, who say it could be a blow to the morale of a proud organization afflicted by turmoil during the last five years.

“C.I.A. officers, especially the young officers, want to belong to an organization that has a history and tradition they can look up to,” said one recently retired veteran, who insisted on anonymity because he had been an undercover officer. “If you put something out that says the founders of the agency were a bunch of criminals, that doesn’t exactly help.”

Truthiness, forever.
They can't handle the truth.

Coming Attractions at the CIA Megaplex

washingtonpost.com: By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called 'family jewels' documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of 'unwitting' tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government discussions of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.

And, extra special for anti-war activists of my generation:

Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations.

The program included "information on the domestic activities" of the organizations and led to the accumulation of 10,000 American names, which Colby told Silberman were retained "as a result of the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not," according to the summary memo.

Who would have thunk it?

And in case this didn't occur to you...

washingtonpost.com:

Barred by secrecy restrictions from correcting 'misinformation,' he said, the CIA is at the mercy of the press. 'Unfortunately, there seems to be an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room,' Hayden said.

Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused of illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing of terrorism suspects.

'It's surely part of [Hayden's] program now to draw a bright line with the past,' said National Security Archive Director Thomas S. Blanton. 'But it's uncanny how the government keeps dipping into the black bag.' Newly revealed details of ancient CIA operations, Blanton said, 'are pretty resonant today.'