\nSalon.com
\nJAN 15, 2010
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Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal<\/strong> Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama\u2019s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama\u2019s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for \u201coverseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.\u201d In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-\u201cindependent\u201d advocates to \u201ccognitively infiltrate\u201d online groups and websites \u2014 as well as other activist groups \u2014 which advocate views that Sunstein deems \u201cfalse conspiracy theories\u201d about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens\u2019 faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper\u2019s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.<\/p>\n Sunstein advocates that the Government\u2019s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into \u201cchat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.\u201d He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called \u201cindependent\u201d credible voices to bolster the Government\u2019s messaging (on the ground that those who don\u2019t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false \u201cconspiracy theories,\u201d which they define to mean: \u201can attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.\u201d Sunstein\u2019s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story\u2018s Daniel Tencer.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein\u2019s position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein\u2019s closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn\u2019t an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein\u2019s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein\u2019s paper worth examining in greater detail.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Initially, note how similar Sunstein\u2019s proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates. The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as \u201cindependent analysts\u201d in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon. Bush officials secretly paid supposedly \u201cindependent\u201d voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts. In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens. In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda \u2014 and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda. Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government \u201dpropaganda\u201d within the U.S., aimed at American citizens:<\/p>\n As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, \u201cpublicity or propaganda\u201d is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) \u201ccovert propaganda.\u201d By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.<\/p>\n Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves. His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise. Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer\u2019s closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat \u201cfalse conspiracy theories\u201d in Iraq \u2014 the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.<\/p>\n Sunstein\u2019s response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself. He acknowledges that some \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples: the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in \u201cmind control\u201d experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters). Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government \u201cconspiracy theories,\u201d discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good \u2014 i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama:<\/p>\n Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s precisely because the Government is so often not \u201cwell-motivated\u201d that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that \u201cwe will use them well\u201d is every authoritarian\u2019s claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we\u2019re Good and are working for Good outcomes. That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President\u2019s health care plan. With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama\u2019s health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House \u2014 falsely \u2014 as an \u201cindependent\u201d or \u201cobjective\u201d authority. Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber\u2019s analysis to support their defenses of the President\u2019s plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed. This created an infinite \u201cfeedback loop\u201d in favor of Obama\u2019s health care plan which \u2014 unbeknownst to the public \u2014 was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked).<\/p>\n In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned. Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack \u201cintellectual integrity\u201d; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case. Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being \u201cjust like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals.\u201d What is one key difference? Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views \u2014 he favors health care \u2014 and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he\u2019s defending are dismissed as a \u201cfake scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n Sunstein himself \u2014 as part of his 2008 paper \u2014 explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls \u201ccredible independent experts\u201d to advocate on the Government\u2019s behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don\u2019t trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are \u201cindependent.\u201d In so arguing, Sunstein cites the Armstrong Williams scandal not as something that is wrong in itself, but as a potential risk of this tactic (i.e., that it might leak out), and thus suggests that \u201cgovernment can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,\u201d but warns that \u201ctoo close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed.\u201d In other words, Sunstein wants the Government to replicate the Armstrong Williams arrangement as a means of more credibly disseminating propaganda \u2014 i.e., pretending that someone is an \u201cindependent\u201d expert when they\u2019re actually being \u201cprodded\u201d and even paid \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d by the Government \u2014 but he wants to be more careful about how the arrangement is described (don\u2019t make the control explicit) so that embarrassment can be avoided if it ends up being exposed.<\/p>\n In this 2008 paper, then, Sunstein advocated, in essence, exactly what the Obama administration has been doing all year with Gruber: covertly paying people who can be falsely held up as \u201cindependent\u201d analysts in order to more credibly promote the Government line. Most Democrats agreed this was a deceitful and dangerous act when Bush did it, but with Obama and some of his supporters, undisclosed arrangements of this sort seem to be different. Why? Because, as Sunstein puts it: we have \u201ca well-motivated government\u201d doing this so that \u201csocial welfare is improved.\u201d Thus, just like state secrets, indefinite detention, military commissions and covert, unauthorized wars, what was once deemed so pernicious during the Bush years \u2014 coordinated government\/media propaganda \u2014 is instantaneously transformed into something Good.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein\u2019s worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that \u201cfalse conspiracy theories\u201d are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world. That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9\/11 theories \u2014 both domestically and in Muslim countries \u2014 as his prime example.<\/p>\n It\u2019s certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive \u201cfalse conspiracy theories\u201d have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, \u201ccrazy conspiracy theorist\u201d has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.<\/p>\n Who is it who relentlessly spread \u201cfalse conspiracy theories\u201d of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba\u2019athist\/Al-Qaeda alliance \u2014 the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation? And who is it who demonized as \u201cconspiracy-mongers\u201d people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government? The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources: namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.<\/p>\n It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein\u2019s desire to use covert propaganda to \u201cundermine\u201d\u00a0anti-government speech so repugnant.\u00a0 The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned \u2014 rationally \u2014 to distrust government actions and statements.\u00a0 Sunstein\u2019s proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is.\u00a0 In other words, people don\u2019t trust the Government and \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d\u00a0are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.<\/p>\n UPDATE<\/strong><\/u>:\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t want to make this primarily about the\u00a0Gruber scandal \u2014 I\u00a0cited that only as an example of the type of mischief that this mindset produces \u2014 but just to respond quickly to the typical Gruber defenses already appearing in comments:\u00a0\u00a0(1)<\/strong>Gruber\u2019s work was only for HHS and had nothing to do with the\u00a0White House (false<\/a>);(2)<\/strong> he should have disclosed his payments, but the White House did nothing wrong\u00a0(false<\/a>:\u00a0it repeatedly described him as \u201cindependent\u201d and \u201cobjective\u201d and constantly cited allied media stories based in\u00a0Gruber\u2019s work); (3)<\/strong>\u00a0Gruber advocated views he would have advocated anyway in the absence of payment\u00a0(probably true, but wasn\u2019t that also true for life-long conservative Armstrong Williams, life-long social conservative Maggie Gallagher, and the pro-war Pentagon Generals, all of whom mounted the same defense?); and\u00a0(4)<\/strong>\u00a0Williams\/Gallagher were explicitly paid to advocate particular views while Gruber wasn\u2019t\u00a0(true:\u00a0 that\u2019s exactly the arrangement Sunstein advocates to avoid\u00a0\u201dembarrassment\u201d in the event of disclosure, and it\u2019s absurd to suggest that someone being paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars is unaware of what their paymasters want said; that\u2019s why disclosure is so imperative).<\/p>\n The point is that there are severe dangers to the Government covertly using its resources to \u201cinfiltrate\u201d discussions and to shape political debates using undisclosed and manipulative means. \u00a0It\u2019s called \u201ccovert propaganda\u201d and it should be opposed regardless of who is in control of it or what its policy aims are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n UPDATE\u00a0II<\/strong><\/u>:\u00a0\u00a0Ironically, this is the same administration that recently announced<\/a> a new regulation dictating that \u201cbloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.\u201d\u00a0 Without such disclosure, the administration reasoned, the public may not be aware of important hidden incentives (h\/t pasquin<\/a>).\u00a0 Yet the same administration pays an MIT\u00a0analyst hundreds of thousands of dollars to advocate their most controversial proposed program while they hold him out as \u201cobjective,\u201d\u00a0and selects as their Chief Regulator someone who wants government agents to covertly mold political discussions \u201canonymously or even with false identities<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n UPDATE\u00a0III<\/strong><\/u>:\u00a0\u00a0Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is\u00a0(which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for\u00a0\u201dcognitive infiltration of extremist groups<\/strong>,\u201d as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:<\/p>\n So Sunstein isn\u2019t calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) \u2014 having Government\u00a0\u201dban conspiracy theorizing\u201d or \u201cimpose some kind of tax on those who\u201d do it \u2014 but he says \u201ceach will have a place under imaginable conditions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019d love to know the \u201cconditions\u201d under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will \u201chave a place.\u201d\u00a0 That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment.\u00a0 Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n UPDATE\u00a0IV<\/strong><\/u>:\u00a0\u00a0Paul Krugman has replied<\/a> to the part of this post which pertains to him and Jonathan\u00a0Gruber; my response to that is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Obama confidant\u2019s spine-chilling proposal Cass Sunstein wants the government to “cognitively infiltrate” anti-government groups<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n(updated below \u2013 Update II \u2013 Update III \u2013 Update IV)<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_MnYI3_FRbbQ\/S1DBJ6f3AGI\/AAAAAAAACRw\/Lq7UYfPnDgE\/s400\/sunstein.png\")
\n<\/a><\/p>\n