a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Wednesday, October 22, 2003 HayseedThe idea of President Bush as "stupid" is awfully popular in San Francisco, but I've always found it kind of naîve. Now I have support: In Daniel Ellsberg's newish (okay, year-old) memoir Secrets there's a description of John McNaughton, Ellsberg's boss, who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during our first big escalation in Vietnam. Ellsberg describes McNaughton talking to the press:"As he got into areas where he had to be especially untruthful or elusive, his Pekin, Illinois, accent got broader till he sounded like someone discussing corn at a country fair or standing at the rail of a riverboat. You looked for hayseed in his cuffs. He simply didn't mind looking and sounding like a hick in the interests of dissimulation. My future boss in Vietnam, Edward Lansdale, had the same willingness to appear simpleminded when he wanted to be opaque, as he did with most outsiders. In both cases it was very effective. Reporters would tell me how 'open' my boss was, compared with others they ran into, this after I had listened to an hour of whoppers. It became clear to me that journalists had no idea, no clue, even the best of them, just how often and how egregiously they were lied to." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:01 PM | |
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