When Presidents Lie? A History of Official Deception & Its Consequences

 

By John Tiffany

 

An American parent once said: “I would like to tell my child to respect the U.S. president. And I would like to tell my child that lying is wrong. But I would like to be able to tell my child both things at the same time.”

As far as we know, George Washington never told a lie. But telling “taradiddles,” or fibs, while in office goes back at least as far as John Quincy Adams, Eric Alterman explains in his new book When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences.

Adams, when he was secretary of state during the Monroe administration, intentionally sent the Senate incomplete sets of documents relating to a set of Central American treaties in order to obtain, by subterfuge, its consent. He also published a series of letters, under a pseudonym, to mislead readers regarding the nature of some South American revolutions.

Since the end of the 19th century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and intentions in going to war. Most of these wars—perhaps all—were totally unnecessary for America and only served the interests of the robber barons, of course.

George Bush Sr. lied about alleged satellite images showing Iraqi troops massing along the Saudi Arabian border. The first Bush administration did not feel Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait provided enough justification for a military response in the eyes of the U.S. public. But this problem would go away if it became apparent that Iraq was not going to stop with Kuwait, but also planned to attack Saudi Arabia. To address this problem the administration told the Saudis that Iraq was preparing to invade. The administration provided the Saudis with “secret satellite photos” showing a huge Iraqi force massing on their border. At the same time the administration ordered commercial satellite firms to turn off their coverage of the border zone.

The whole thing was a fabrication by our government and by many of the same people who urged war on us again in Gulf War II.

AFP readers are surely familiar with some of the lies of presidents William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who got us respectively into the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.

With politicians, lying has become almost accepted behavior—at least up to the time that they get caught. And with the arrival of George W. Bush, even getting caught does not seem to matter anymore.

We are all familiar with Bill Clinton’s lies, made under oath, about Monica Lewinsky, which got him impeached while he got away with other, far more serious high crimes and misdemeanors.

Populist pundits say the Lewinsky storm-in-a-teacup was a planned diversion from the start.

Richard Nixon, of course, resigned over his lies regarding Watergate.

Today, the Bush administration has lied in numerous instances to make the case for war, the worst being the alleged link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Only recently, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s slip of the tongue, in which he downplayed reports of any connection, exposed the fact that the connection is tenuous.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign has focused on the lies of the present administration, attacking Bush and Cheney for numerous exaggerations about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq.

This book, exhaustively researched, cannot cover all the territory its title suggests. Instead, it concentrates on four specific incidents. Roosevelt lied again, the author says, about the nature of the Yalta accords, creating the basis for a half-century of largely avoidable Cold War. John F. Kennedy lied about the compromise that settled the Cuban missile crisis. Lyndon Johnson lied about the second Tonkin Gulf (non-)incident, and moved the United States down a slippery slope that destroyed his hopes of creating a Great Society. Ronald Reagan lied about his actions in Central America and Iran, creating a secret and illegal foreign policy that resulted in “the murder of tens of thousands of innocents.”

George Washington had it right: Never lie to the American people. But nothing will change—indeed, it will just get worse and worse—until American citizens insist on changes being made for the better.

 

When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences (hardcover, 448 pages, with 118 pages of notes, #1163, $28 for members of AFP’s Readership Council, $32 for all others), by Eric Alterman, is available from First Amendment Books, 645 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Suite, 100, Washington, D.C. 20003. Call 1-888-699-NEWS (6397) toll free to order with Visa or MasterCard.