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If You’ve Got Nothing to Hide, You’ve Got Nothing to Fear, JFK Assassination Edition

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Two photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald holding h...
Two photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald holding his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, his pistol, and two newspapers, in his backyard in Dallas, Texas. JFK Exhibit F-179 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As America marked the 50th anniversary of US president John F. Kennedy’s assassination four years ago, a clear majority of Americans (according to polls by Gallup and AP/GfK) still believed that the whole truth of what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963 remains unknown: That Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and that the killing was in fact the result of a conspiracy.

One good reason for that belief, or at least for skepticism as to the truth of the official narrative, is continued government secrecy.

To this very day, thousands of government files — mostly produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency — remain classified and hidden from public view.

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, passed by Congress in 1992, requires the release of the last of those documents no later than this October unless  US president Donald Trump intervenes to keep them secret on grounds of “national security.”  Politico reports that “Congressional and other government officials have told us in confidence that at least two federal agencies — likely the CIA and FBI — are expected to appeal to Trump to block the unsealing of at least some of the documents.”

The Politico report focuses on a document release in late July which is intriguing because it reveals CIA skepticism of the official narrative. No, no “smoking gun” revelations of additional assassins on the grassy knoll, nor even hints at a wider conspiracy, but rather fear that Oswald’s motives, if fully explored, might badly embarrass the agency.

The Warren Commission dismissed those motives as mere “hatred for American society.” But suppose Oswald acted from anger at the CIA’s series of failed  attempts on the life of Cuba’s Fidel Castro?

The CIA has long since copped to its Castro assassination campaign. But admitting that that campaign’s sole fruit was the killing of an American president even as the agency’s actual target lived to a ripe old age and died a natural death would smart to this very day.

And who knows? 54 years ago such a revelation might have even prompted real public reconsideration of the young but quickly growing national security state president Dwight D. Eisenhower had warned the nation of in his farewell address only two years before.

If the final documents are released and it turns out that “Oswald’s act was blowback” is the secret that’s been so closely guarded these 50-odd years, it likely won’t be enough to spark such a reconsideration. 9/11 has probably secured the future of America as a garrison state for at least another generation come what may.

But let’s see that material anyway. What say you, CIA? If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear, right?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

US Foreign Military Bases Aren’t “Defense”

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“U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation.” That’s the unifying claim of the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases (noforeignbases.org), and it’s true as far as it goes.  But as a signer of the Coalition’s endorsement form, I think it’s worth taking the argument a bit further. The maintenance of nearly 1,000 US military bases on foreign soil isn’t just a nightmare for peaceniks. It’s also also an objective threat to US national security.

A reasonable definition of “national defense,” it seems to me, is the maintenance of sufficient weaponry and trained military personnel to protect a country from, and effectively retaliate against, foreign attacks.  The existence of US bases abroad runs counter to the defensive element of that mission and only very poorly supports the retaliatory part.

Defensively, scattering US military might piecemeal around the world — especially in countries where the populace resents that military presence — multiplies the number of vulnerable American targets. Each base must have its own separate security apparatus for immediate defense, and must maintain (or at least hope for) an ability to reinforce and resupply from elsewhere in the event of sustained attack. That makes the scattered US  forces more, not less, vulnerable.

When it comes to retaliation and ongoing operations, US foreign bases are stationary rather than mobile, and in the event of war all of them, not just the ones engaged in offensive missions, have to waste resources on their own security that could otherwise be put into those missions.

They’re also redundant. The US already possesses  permanent, and mobile, forces far better suited to projecting force over the horizon to every corner of the planet on demand: Its Carrier Strike Groups, of which there are 11 and each of which allegedly disposes of more firepower than that expended by all sides over the entire course of World War Two. The US keeps these mighty naval forces constantly on the move or on station in various parts of the world and can put one or more such groups off any coastline in a matter of days.

The purposes of foreign US military bases are partly aggressive. Our politicians like the idea that everything happening everywhere is their business.

They’re also partly financial. The main purpose of the US “defense” establishment since World War Two has been to move as much money as possible from your pockets to the bank accounts of politically connected “defense” contractors. Foreign bases are an easy way to blow large amounts of money in precisely that way.

Shutting down those foreign bases and bringing the troops home are essential first steps in creating an actual national defense.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

Privacy: J. Edgar’s Not The Hoover You Need to Worry About Anymore

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Roomba 980

Is your vacuum cleaner spying on you? Hamza Shaban of the Washington Post reports that iRobot, maker of the “autonomous” Roomba vacuum, may eventually sell the internal maps of your home  the device builds to facilitate its work to the makers of other “smart home” devices.

In the latest phase of our frenzied technological advancement, it’s clear that yes, our gadgets do collect and use more and more information about us, and that that information progressively ramifies across more, bigger, and more integrated networks.

The bigger question: Is it worth it?

The answer: It depends.

Benjamin Franklin cautioned us against “giv[ing] up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety.” If he lived today, I think he’d be fascinated by the Internet of Things — and that in updating the quote above to describe it, he’d likely substitute “privacy” and “convenience” for “liberty” and “safety.”

I’m not going to try to tell you not to buy an autonomous vacuum or  smart thermostat or Amazon Alexa voice-activated device (I have a couple of those myself). They can be incredibly useful. They can make our lives better in significant ways.

But when weighing the associated costs, don’t forget to account for the risks inherent in sharing your information. Who’s gathering it? What will be done with it? Where will it end up, intentionally or otherwise? The commercial applications, however annoying and intrusive they might become, aren’t the half of it.

One not terribly far-out, if somewhat dystopian, prediction:

As autonomous vacuums and similar map-reliant devices become the norm (and as they get cheaper, that will happen), governments will become major customers for the information they gather. The obvious application for that data is law enforcement (for example, being able to call up the floor plan of a house when planning a search or raid). But you should also expect that your county assessor will use that information when calculating square footage for your tax bill, and don’t be surprised if city planning and zoning bureaucrats come knocking to talk about that addition you built without a permit.

And then, of course, there’s the criminal element (but I repeat myself). The same people who stole your credit card number at the gas pump last year may acquire and use this type of information to case your house for prospective burglary next year.

Watch yourself. And never forget that your stuff is watching you too.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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