Dialogue: State secrecy on comeback trail

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

After regularly reporting local and national politics for three decades, I devised a maxim based on my observations: that if there are more than 10 people at a political meeting and they are all in fervent agreement about something, the only certainty is that they're all wrong.

I remember feeling a special, smug confirmation of this at a meeting of Rob's Mob in Auckland during the 1981 general election campaign. It was like a cut-rate Nuremberg Rally.

Man, as Plato said, is a social being and, sadly, this may transform him in times of fear and anger into a pack animal.

Which is what makes me uneasy about George W. Bush's approval rating of almost 90 per cent for the way he's prosecuting the so-called war against terror. The Americans have achieved almost everything they set out to do in Afghanistan and we may end up being grateful for that.

But that public support is being used to waive the established system of justice within the United States for certain minorities and is spreading consternation among some of the European members of the anti-terrorism alliance. Eighty-plus per cent is a fearsome approval level among nearly 300 million people. Thank goodness they're not all at the same meeting.

Even the popular name of the emergency legislation has a worrying quality. "The USA Patriot Act" (short for "The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.")

This law allows those "suspected" of terrorist activities or of supporting terrorism to be arrested, tried and punished in secret by military tribunals, a law described by some American commentators as the most draconian since the extreme crisis of the Second World War.

When questioned, the Administration simply points to the polls denoting the level of support. But leadership is not a matter of acting on whiffs of electorate fear. One of the fundamental tests of a democracy is how well it treats its minorities.

As always, of course, many independent and courageous Americans are leading the charge against Bush and Attorney-General John Ashcroft, a man from the religious right. Among them is, perhaps surprisingly, William Safire, a famous political commentator whom no one can accuse of being from the waffling left.

A former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and a conservative luminary, he has described Ashcroft as being "frustrated and panic-stricken" in advising Bush to assume "what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens".

Safire has written: "His [Bush's] kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules, find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no review by any civilian court."

This carries echoes of that terrible time when, fearful of the Cold War becoming a hot one, Americans allowed Senator Joseph McCarthy to seriously undermine the liberty of compatriots. History has decreed that the heroes of that time were not the majority slavering for victims but the tiny minority trying to stand up for justice.

Another American columnist, Frank Rich, wrote this week: "Even as we track down a heinous enemy who operates out of a cave, we are getting ready to show the world that the American legal system must retreat to a cave to fight back. Our Government refuses to identify its many detainees, or explain why they are held, or even give an accurate count." (It is understood the number of detainees is about 1200.)

Perhaps we should have some sympathy for our own Government, which has obviously come under heavy pressure from the Americans in their present mood to come up with the Terrorism (Bombings and Financing) Bill. You don't need to have an IQ of 1000 to guess a wink and a nod about trade and friendly relations were given in our direction by the American Administration after September 11. Indeed, Bush has said nations were either for the US or against it.

One trouble with this sort of legislation is it has no use-by date and may be exercised for other reasons by an unscrupulous future government. Remember the strike of 1951, when the Holland Government used old emergency powers without even calling Parliament into session?

Perhaps Foreign Minister Phil Goff can put into the act that it must be passed by the House of Representatives every, say, five years or it self-destructs and becomes invalid. Just a thought.

By the way, at the beginning of November, President Bush signed an executive order delaying Americans' right to know how Presidents made decisions. This reversed 30 years of gradually increasing Government openness.

Scholars, journalists and anyone else will have to provide a specific need to know when seeking the release of documents from the presidencies of Reagan, Clinton and Bush (father and son) and must also gain permission from the President concerned and/or the incumbent.

This move follows a previous ruling that researchers could get all but the most sensitive papers 12 years after the term of office.

Secrecy is making a comeback.