Covering war, empire, the national security state and occasionally a cultural commentary, Tom Dispatch features some of the best and most established progressive writers on the block -- the likes of Barbara Ehrenreich, Noam Chomsky, and Andrew Bacevich -- and it has done so at a remarkably steady pace for over a decade: about 150 essays a year. AlterNet has been proud to publish virtually every article produced by Tom Dispatch, and we consider TD an incredibly valuable resource. Its mainly a one-man show with Tom Engelhardt, known far and wide as a writers editor for top-flight publishers, at the helm. So it was a pleasure to spend a recent morning with Tom Engelhardt to discuss his new book, Shadow Government (Haymarket, 2014), and how we will grapple with the worsening effects of the National Security state. AlterNet: Looking back over the past decade, it seems things have gotten worse. True or false? Engelhardt: Thirteen years later, its gotten endlessly worse. What I see as the worst part of it is that -- forget politics for a minute -- there just seems to be no learning curve in Washington. Its like, you know what it reminds me of, but not in an amusing way? That old movie Groundhog Day? Bill Murray wakes up the next morning and its always the same. Except in this case, each day gets worse. And now were at a point where, the National Security State -- what I call in the title of my book, the Shadow Government -- has little accountability whatsoever. If I were break into a house, and I was found and caught, I would be brought to court for it. I might end up in jail. If the Shadow Government breaks into a house, nothing will happen. You can run through the crimes, they range from destroying evidence of a crime they committed, CIA destroying its own tapes, perjury before Congress, to kidnapping and assassination, including the murder of American citizens, torture which we all know about. Every kidnapping which we like to call rendition because it sounds somewhat politer. AlterNet: There are basically zero consequences for committing these crimes. Engelhardt: Not a single person has gone to jail. I always think the torture thing is the telling one. There are 101 cases of torture, CIA torture brought before the justice department. Two of them included the actual deaths, the killing functionally of prisoners in black sites. One in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Of those 101 cases, not one was brought to trial. The Justice Department dismissed them all. One man however has gone to jail over the CIA torture program is John Kiriakou, who was a CIA agent, and his crime was to release the name of a CIA agent whod been involved in the torture program. You really dont need to know more than that. Its true that Washington always had a certain lack of accountability, but people did over the years get brought up in charges. In this period, no. The federal apparatus is in post-legal America. Were still in legal America. Thats a terrible change.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 14:27:19 +0000
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