Bill Moyers will be retiring at the end of this month, in just 6 days. Elizabeth Jenkins captured my sentiments
on this matter:
I totally understand Moyers' decision. That said, it is a sad day for journalism, a sad day for PBS, and sad day for those of us who have enjoyed not just the Journal, but the great many wonderful programs and projects with which he's been connected over the years.
In a tribute to Moyers in
The Nation,
Eric Alterman recounted some of his most outstanding accomplishments:
Who but Bill Moyers could have… done television's most hard-hitting reporting on the Iran/Contra scandal; investigated the media's failure in Iraq; defined the human impact of economic inequality; examined the ability of corporations to manipulate the "public mind"; evaluated the real-world impact on local communities of corporate-driven "free trade" agreements… The variety of topics, moreover, is only half the story. Moyers's methods were unique. Where else but on a Bill Moyers program were Nobel laureates and laid-off steelworkers invited to speak at length to America, without interruption or condescension?
David DeGraw discusses what should perhaps be considered Moyers’ most important contribution to our society, in an article titled “
Bill Moyers on the Economic Elite Vs the People of the United States”:
Bill Moyers gave me my first lesson in how power really works in this country and throughout the world… At that time, Bill taught me things I could have never learned in my public schooling or through the network news programs that dominated public consciousness… The most important thing he taught me was to always be critical of those with power, to always question and probe below the surface of popular opinion. And I heeded his advice. While my friends and classmates dutifully read their history books and memorized names and dates, I spent my time at the local library looking for books that offered an alternative viewpoint to textbooks that seemed so black-and-white and lacked the depth and critical thoughts that Mr. Moyers made clear were necessary to be an informed citizen, to be a guardian of freedom and democracy.
The Secret Government: The Constitution in CrisisOf his myriad great achievements, perhaps the most important was his 1987
expose on our secret government and its implications for democracy. He began that program with a discussion of the origins of our secret government.
The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to them when they can’t win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution.
The Russians had been our ally against the Nazis, an expedient alliance for the sake of war. Now they were our enemy. To fight them we turned to some of the very men who had inflicted on humanity the horrors of Hitler’s madness.
We hired Nazis as American spies. We struck a secret bargain with the devil… So began the morality of the Cold War. Anything goes. The struggle required a mentality of permanent war, a perpetual state of emergency. It had met a vast new apparatus of power that radically transformed our government. Its foundations were laid when President Truman signed into law the
National Security Act of 1947…
The CIA. The core of the new secret government. Its chief legitimate duty was to gather foreign intelligence for America’s new role as a world power. Soon it was taking on covert operations, abroad and at home.
Moyers then recounted a litany of abuses that followed from our secret government:
Regime change in Iran – 1953Iran, 1953: the
CIA mounted its first major covert operation to overthrow a foreign government. The target was the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. He held power legitimately, through his country’s parliamentary process, and he was popular. Washington had once looked to him as the man to prevent a Communist takeover. But that was before Mossadegh decided that the Iranian state, not British companies, ought to own and control the oil within Iran’s own borders. When he nationalized the British run oil fields, Washington saw red.
Here is how Stephen Kinzer describes Mossadegh in his book, “
All the Shah’s Men – An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror”:
His achievements were profound and even earth-shattering. He set his people off on what would be a long and difficult voyage toward democracy and self-sufficiency… He dealt a devastating blow to the imperial system and hastened its final collapse. He inspired people around the world who believe that nations can and must struggle for the right to govern themselves in freedom.
Moyers explains that in Mossadegh’s place we installed the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, who created SAVAK, the Shah’s Secret Police, which tortured and murdered thousands of his opponents.
New York Times reporter Kenneth Love, appearing on Moyers’ show, explained the long-term consequences of that:
Khomeni is a direct consequence, and the hostage crisis is a direct consequence, and the resurgence of the Shi’a is a direct consequence of the CIA’s overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953.
Kinzer describes this in more detail in his book:
In Iran, almost everyone has for decades known that the United States was responsible for putting an end to democratic rule in 1953 and installing what became the long dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah. His dictatorship produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought to power a passionately anti-American theocracy that embraced terrorism as a tool of statecraft. Its radicalism inspired anti-Western fanatics in many countries…
The violent anti-Americanism that emerged from Iran after 1979 shocked most people in the United States. Americans had no idea of what might have set off such bitter hatred in a country where they had always imagined themselves more or less well liked. That was because almost no one in the United States knew what the CIA did there in 1953.
Regime change in Guatemala – 1954 Moyers then discussed
our overthrow of the democratically elected President of Guatemala the next year:
Flushed with success America’s Secret Government decided another troublesome leader must go. This time it was Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala…
President Arbenz had admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and his government voted often with the American position at the United Nations. But in trying to bring a new deal to Guatemala, Arbenz committed two sins in the eyes of the Eisenhower administration. First, when he opened the system to all political parties he recognized the Communists too…
Arbenz also embarked on a massive land reform program. Less than 3 per cent of the land owners held more than 70 per cent of the land. So Arbenz nationalized more than 1 ½ million acres, including land owned by his own family and turned it over to peasants. Much of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company, the giant American firm that was intent on keeping Guatemala, quite literally, a banana republic. United Fruit appealed to its close friends in Washington, including the Dulles brothers, who said that Arbenz was openly playing the Communist game. He had to go…
With its own planes and pilots the CIA then bombed the capital. Arbenz fled and was immediately replaced by an American puppet, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas…
Military dictators ruled the country for the next 30 years. The United States provided them with weapons and trained their officers… Peasants were slaughtered. Political opponents were tortured. Suspected insurgents were shot, stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at one point that coroners complained they couldn’t keep up with the work load.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Philip Roettinger, who now deeply regrets his role in this tragedy, appeared on Moyers’ show and summed up what happened:
It was explained to me that it was very important for the security of the United States that we were going to prevent a Soviet beach-head in this hemisphere…
He (Armas) overturned all of the reformist activities of President Arbenz. He gave the land back to the United Fruit Company that had been confiscated. He took land from the peasants and gave it back to the land owners…What we did has caused a succession of repressive military dictatorships in that country and has been responsible for the deaths over 100,000 of their citizens.
The assassination of President Kennedy – November 1963Discussing the efforts of our secret government to overthrow Castro, Moyers noted the role of the mafia, in a discussion with
Richard Bissell, who had played a major role in that operation as Deputy Director for Plans at the CIA, and who confirmed Moyers’ account:
To help us get rid of the Cuban leader, our Secret Government turned to the Mafia, just as we once made use of Nazis. The gangsters included the Las Vegas Mafioso, John Roselli, the Don of Chicago, Sam Giancana, and the Boss of Tampa, Santo Traficante…
Moyers commented on that scary thought:
It is a chilling thought made more chilling by the assassination of John Kennedy. The accusations linger. In some minds, the suspicions persist of a dark unsolved conspiracy behind his murder. You can dismiss them, as many of us do. But knowing now what our secret government planned for Castro, the possibility remains. Once we decide that anything goes, anything can come home to haunt us.
Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann describe Mafia involvement in plans to overthrow Castro, as well as the JFK assassination, in great detail in their 2008 book, “
Legacy of Secrecy – The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination – Robert Kennedy, National Security, the Mafia, and the Assassination of Martin Luther King”.
Vietnam – 1954-73Next, Moyers discussed our
involvement in Vietnam:
It started secretly off the books, like so many of these ventures that have ended disastrously. The CIA got there early, soon after the Vietnamese won their independence from the French in 1954. Eisenhower warned that the nations of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes if the Communists, led by Ho Chi Min, took over all Vietnam. To hold the line, we installed in Saigon a puppet regime under Ngo Dinh Diem.
Indeed it started secretly. How many Americans know to this day that the
Geneva Conference Agreements, which officially ended the war between France and Vietnam in 1954, provided for general elections which were to bring about the unification of Vietnam? How many Americans know that the United States, fearing a Communist victory in those elections,
intervened to prevent the elections from taking place?
Moyers then quotes President Lyndon Johnson, for whom he served as Press Secretary, rationalizing the need to go to war against Vietnam.
Johnson said:
“It is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States, to take action and reply.”
Moyers comments on Johnson’s rationalization and what it led to:
This President was not telling the truth… The action at the Gulf of Tonkin was not unprovoked. South Vietnam had been conducting secret raids in the area against the North and the American destroyer, ordered into the battle zone, had advanced warning it could be attacked. But Johnson seized the incident to stampede Congress into passing the
Gulf of Tonkin resolution. He then used it as a blank check for the massive buildup of American forces.
April, 1965: Two battalions of Marines land in South Vietnam. The first of more than 2½ million Americans to fight there with no Congressional declaration of war. The dirty little war that began in secret, is reaching full roar. Free-fire zones, defoliation, the massacre at My Lai, napalm, and the CIA’s
Operation Phoenix to round up, torture and kill suspected Viet Cong.
The Communists eventually won that war, but not until two million Vietnamese and 58 thousand Americans were dead.
Summarizing secret military actions – 1953-1987Moyers then went on to summarize our history of secret military actions:
Looking back, it is stunning how easily the Cold War enticed us into surrendering popular control of government to the National Security State. We’ve never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the president. Setting up White House groups that secretly decide to fight dirty little wars, is a direct assumption of the war powers expressly forbidden by the Constitution.
Not since December, 1941, has Congress declared war. Since then, we’ve had a police action in Korea, advisors in Vietnam, covert operations in Central America, peacekeeping in Lebanon and low intensity conflicts going on right now from Angola to Cambodia. We’ve turned the war powers of the United States over to, well we're never really sure who, or what they’re doing, or what it costs, or who is paying for it. The one thing that we are sure of is that this largely secret global war carried on with less and less accountability to democratic institutions, has become a way of life. And now we are faced with a question brand new in our history. Can we have the permanent warfare state and democracy too?”
Moyers then described the
Senate Select Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, which brought to light so much about our secret government; and then he quoted Senator Church on our CIA manufactured
regime change in Chile in 1973:
Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was unacceptable to the president of the United States. The attitude in the White House seemed to be – if in the wake of Vietnam, I can no longer send in the Marines, then I will send in the CIA.
Moyers then comments on the consequences of our secret government to our democracy:
The powers claimed by presidents and national security have become the controlling wheel of government, driving everything else. Secrecy then makes it possible for the president to pose as the sole competent judge of what will best protect our security. Secrecy permits the White House to control what others know… The ultimate weapon of the secret government – the National Security Decision Directive: Every president since Harry Truman has issued them. They're not published in any government register. Ronald Reagan has signed at least 280 such directives. They cover everything… In essence, by an arbitrary and secret decree, the president can issue himself a license to do as he will… And the only ones who need to know are the secret agents who carry it out… The men who wrote our Constitution… were concerned that power be held accountable… But how do the people cry foul when their liberties are imperiled, if public officials can break the rules, lie to us about it, and then wave the wand of national security to silence us? …
Can it happen again? You bet it can. The apparatus of secret power remains intact… This is a system easily corrupted as the public grows indifferent again, and the press is seduced or distracted. So one day, sadly, we are likely to discover once again that while freedom does have enemies in the world, it can also be undermined here at home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends. I’m Bill Moyers. Good night."
Moyers on abuses of our secret government relating to Iraq Subsequent to Moyers’ landmark expose on “The Secret Government” he continued to pound away at this issue for the next two decades and more.
Applying the lessons of Iran-Contra to the first Gulf WarA little more than three years later, on the eve of our
first invasion of Iraq (1991), Moyers commented on the significance of our secret government to the onset of that war. Howard Rosenberg quoted him in an article titled “
Applying the Lessons of Iran Contra”.
Moyers' 'Frontline' report of the 1980s scandal (Iran-Contra) asks the crucial question relating to today's gulf crisis: 'How can we hold our leaders accountable when we are kept in the dark?' The theme is government stealth, aimed not at foreigners but against its own people. And even though "
High Crimes and Misdemeanors" traces an event of the 1980s – the
Iran-Contra scandal that disclosed deception in high places – it also relates directly to the present. "So the basic constitutional question raised by Iran-Contra has yet to be answered," reporter Bill Moyers concludes on this frightening "Frontline" program… Moyers is… on the phone from New York, explaining why "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" – which he calls an update of his memorable 1987 program "The Secret Government" – should be heeded by a nation now preoccupied by the Persian Gulf:
“There soon will be half a million U.S. troops poised for action in the Middle East on command of the President, with a Congress in complicity and the people cynical… We are about to have a war that the country's not debated. The Founding Fathers gave the Congress alone the power to declare war. Our government is out of control and the gap between what citizens think and the government does is so large that people are confused about it.”
Moyers aggressively opposed George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq since before its inception. So when he was invited to be the speaker for “The Meaning of Freedom” lecture series, to be given to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in November 2006, he had a dilemma on his hands. He notes in his book, “
Moyers on Democracy”:
The committee had to have known of my opposition to the invasion of Iraq…. These cadets had committed themselves to Duty, Honor, Country and were now being asked to fulfill those obligations in a war they should never have been asked to fight. As I weighed the decision to accept or decline, I fastened on the title of the lecture series: The Meaning of Freedom…
The speech that Moyers gave is one of the best I have ever read or heard. He explained how our Founding Fathers tried to limit the role of war in our nation’s future, and then he told the truth about our nation’s military history and how our then current leaders abused their powers and used our soldiers as pawns for their own nefarious purposes – while providing as little offense to his audience as he possibly could.
Moyers began
his speech by acknowledging that he had never been a soldier, but that he had tried very hard to learn about what war is like by talking with veterans about their experiences. He then launched into his feelings about how we were led into the Iraq War and the chicken hawks who led us there.
Moyers went on to talk about the need for our military to be subservient to civilian authority, but also that our civilian authority must maintain their end of the bargain by using good judgment and common decency before committing our nation to war – in a scathing critique of the Bush administration:
The civilian authorities whom you loyally obey are shirking their (end of the bargain). And before you assume that I am calling for an insurrection against the civilian deciders of your destinies, hear me out, for that is the last thing on my mind…
The current president has made extra-constitutional claims of authority by repeatedly acting as if he were commander in chief of the entire nation and not merely of the armed forces. Most dangerously to our moral honor and to your own welfare in the event of capture, he has likewise
ordered the armed forces to violate clear mandates of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva conventions by claiming a right to interpret them at his pleasure, so as to allow indefinite and secret detentions and torture. These claims contravene a basic principle usually made clear to recruits from their first day in service –
that they may not obey an unlawful order. The president is attempting to have them violate that longstanding rule by personal definitions…
I repeat: These are not palatable topics for soldiers about to go to war… But freedom means we must face reality: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Free enough, surely, to think for yourselves about these breaches of contract that crudely undercut the traditions of an army of free men and women who have bound themselves voluntarily to serve the nation even unto death.
In July of 2007,
Moyers hosted John Nichols and Bruce Fein on his show to talk about impeachment. Nichols had the following to say about the consequences of failing to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their many crimes:
If George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this Administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any President has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined…. Whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools.
With that in mind, Moyers summed up the challenge we then (and now) face:
The freedom and rights we treasure were not sent from heaven and do not grow on trees… Our moral, political and religious duty is to make sure that this nation, which was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, is in good hands on our watch.
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