The Revealers

Question: How many revealers have been awarded Pulitzers for reporting US secrets?

Answer: Bush lied.

Irrational, you say? Um, yeah. But the spirit of Pulitzer lives on -- yellow (by which I mean cowardly) journalism, muckraking up controversy for its own sake, saying anything to muckrake in the extra penny that extra sale would bring.

So the latest Hero of the Revolution is Mary McCarthy -- formerly the special assistant to bill clinton and senior director of intelligence to his White House, formerly a Kerry partisan, recently a CIA apparatchik. Ms. McCarthy thought it expedient to leak classified material to a Washington Post revealer about secret CIA prisons in NATO countries. Not illegal torture camps (as an EU investigation has shown), not Black Holes of Calcutta, not Mexican prisons -- just secret. Um, formerly secret. And the revealers at the Post deemed it, somehow, adventagious to whatever it is they owe loyalty, to publish the fact of this secrecy, so that the world might stand in awe of … of, um, the Washington Post.

Two NY Times revealers also advanced their careers by sharing the highly sensitive secret that US intel agencies can and do intercept emails and phone calls between US citizens (and no doubt, um, immigrants) and Islamists. I can’t think of anything sarcastic enough to say about this ... did you ever dream such a thing could be possible? Oh, I know: those fuckers! True, that’s more abusive than sarcastic, but it conveys the sentiment.

Whistle-blowing is a public act. It calls attention to wrongful action. It is the act of a strong conscience. Whether it’s the rape-whistle that calls for help, or the referee’s whistle that calls a rule-violation, it is designed to stop malfeasance.

Ms. McCarthy’s blowing was not an act of conscience. Her job -- one of supreme trust -- involved an understanding of the fact and need of secrecy. Secret is not bad, in itself -- it is necessary, sometimes. It was not her place, to unilaterally decide what the greatest good might be in this case. Her position was one of subordination, and effectively one of military discipline -- since American soldiers will die because of her fat mouth and stupid brain. Act of conscience? No, rather, her act was a partisan ploy, a cowardly, skulking, secret betrayal of whatever integrity one might otherwise have imputed to her -- done for the sake of bringing disapprobation upon an Administration she works against.

As for the collaborators in the media, there are no words sufficient to convey the contempt they deserve. Traitor, treachery, seditious, saboteur -- these are only words and do not evoke the glee with which the actions of the revealers are met by the enemy. It would be impossible and unthinkable that anyone these scum would love might be in the military, and thus placed at even greater risk by their irresponsibility. We might only hope that they themselves suffer the pain they undoubtedly hope befalls our young men – as their actions ensure.

I’m starting a garage band. Wanna join? Fifth Columnists of the Fourth Estate. Groovy name, huh? Maybe we’ll get famous and rich.

J