The Lifeboat News: Re: Conspiracy theories

Preventing State Crimes Against Democracy
Professor Lance deHaven-Smith
Florida State University, Tallahassee
Dr Matthew T. Witt
University of La Verne, California

THIS ARTICLE analyzes U.S. vulnerabilities to state crimes against democracy (SCADs).
SCADs are actions or inactions by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty.
Watergate and Iran–Contra are well-known examples of SCADs involving top officials.

SCADs in high office are difficult to detect and successfully prosecute because

- they are usually complex and compartmentalized;
- investigations are often compromised by conflicts of interests;
- powerful norms discourage speculation about corruption in high office.

However, liberal democracies can reduce their vulnerability to state political criminality by identifying vulnerabilities proactively and instituting policies for SCAD detection and prevention.

Because of growing concerns about the health of U.S. political institutions, public administration scholars have begun to conceptualize and
study state crimes against democracy (SCADs). SCADs are actions or inactions by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty (deHaven-Smith, 2006).

In principle, SCADs can be committed at any level of government, but those involving
high office have thus far been the primary focus of scholarly interest
because of their potential to subvert political institutions and entire govern-
ments or branches of government.
Although only a few high-level SCADs in U.S. history have ever been
officially corroborated, evidence indicates that at least since World War II
American democracy has become vulnerable to subversion by top leaders.

Examples of high-level SCADs that have been officially proven include the
Watergate break-ins and cover-up (Bernstein & Woodward, 1974), the secret
wars in Laos and Cambodia (Ellsberg, 2002), the illegal arms sales and covert
operations in Iran–Contra (Kornbluh & Byrne, 1993; Martin, 2001; Parry,
1999), and the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson by revealing his wife’s status
as an intelligence agent (Isikoff & Corn, 2006).

There have been many other
political crimes in which involvement by high officials is suspected have
gone uninvestigated or unpunished. Examples of suspected SCADs in high
office include the fabricated attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin
(Ellsberg, 2002, pp. 7-20), the “October Surprises” in the presidential elec-
tions of 1968 (Summers, 2000, pp. 298-308) and 1980 (Parry, 1993; Sick,
1991), the election breakdowns in 2000 and 2004 (deHaven-Smith, 2005;
Miller, 2005), and the misrepresentation of intelligence to justify the invasion
and occupation of Iraq (Isikoff & Corn, 2006; Rich, 2006).

Nefarious involvement by high-ranking public officials in these and
similar events cannot simply be dismissed as improbable, for the investiga-
tions of Watergate and Iran–Contra showed that officials at the highest
levels of American government can and sometimes do engage in conspira-
cies to manipulate elections, wiretap and smear critics, mislead Congress
and the public, and in other ways subvert popular sovereignty (Summers,
2000; Walsh, 1997).

Corruption in high office is also predicted by a number
of theoretical traditions in public administration and policy that point to
sinister, antidemocratic tendencies in modern representative government.

Examples include Harold Lasswell’s garrison–state construct, C. Wright
Mills’ theory of the power elite, and Jürgen Habermas’s critical theory. Yet
another reason to be open to the possibility of political criminality in high
office is the rise since the 1930s of what economists and criminologists
refer to as “control frauds” (Black, 2005; Calavita, Pontell, & Tillman,
1999). Usually occurring in waves, these are large-scale frauds, such as the
looting of savings and loan companies in the 1980s, that are perpetrated by
corporate officers with the tacit approval, if not active support, of high-
ranking public officials whose support has been purchased by campaign
contributions and other rewards.

Despite the grave implications of political criminality among top lead-
ers, public officials tend to downplay the threat of crimes in high office. As
a practical matter, oversight committees and government investigators are
usually reluctant to pursue suspicions about top leaders unless evidence of
guilt is already in hand. Even then, calls for prosecution or removal from
office are likely to be tempered by partisan calculations and other strategic
considerations.

Still, this widespread reluctance to suspect public officials when they
benefit politically from election breakdowns, intelligence failures, breaches
of secrecy, and other events need not stand in the way of reforms to make
SCADs in high office less likely to be committed in the first place. Liberal
democracies can reduce their vulnerability to antidemocratic manipulations
by instituting policies for SCAD detection and prevention. Many such
policies were enacted in the United States after Watergate, including the
War Powers Act, which was designed to prevent presidents from initiating
or escalating military action without consulting with Congress, and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which restricted electronic surveil-
lance of U.S. citizens.

The challenge for public administration scholars and
practitioners is to develop effective anti-SCAD policies proactively, before
high crimes are committed, so that such crimes will be discouraged by fear
of detection and prosecution.

This article analyzes SCAD vulnerabilities in contemporary American
government and recommends constitutional and statutory reforms to
improve the chances that antidemocratic conspiracies in high office will be
detected and punished, if not discouraged in the first place.

The article is divided into three sections.

The first section traces changes in the nature of
antidemocratic corruption over the course of American history to changes
in U.S. politics and government. Here it is argued that the proliferation
since World War II of Watergate-like conspiracies is due to the relatively
recent formation of political–economic “complexes” with the means and
motivation to manipulate the national political agenda.

The second section focuses on SCADs and suspected SCADs in high office since World War II
and explains why they have so often gone uninvestigated and unpunished
despite their devastating consequences.

The article concludes by analyzing
targets and tactics in post–World War II SCADs to reveal perpetrator profiles and systemic weak points.../ continues at link