Blogs > Cliopatria > "He Asked Me, In the Crude Language of Cops, If I Liked Women With Red Hair and Large Bosoms"

Mar 29, 2011

"He Asked Me, In the Crude Language of Cops, If I Liked Women With Red Hair and Large Bosoms"




Take a few moments to read this sickly delicious story from a former Los Angeles Times reporter about what it was like to cover the LAPD when Daryl Gates ran the thing. Under Gates, the department's Public Disorder Intelligence Division had two hundred cops, and they spent the better part of their work week searching for public disorder in the trash cans and gloveboxes of local journalists, activists, and politicians. The chief would interrupt interviews to tell reporters who they were having sex with, what recreational drugs they preferred, and precisely what they had ordered for dinner last night. Now what was your question, again?

The LAPD was one of many law enforcement agencies known for similar behavior. Historians will surely add to the list, but the examples include the FBI's files on members of Congress, the detectives at the Birmingham Police Department who were assigned as the agency's liaison to the Klan in order to coordinate the necessary police absences around bombings, and the Alabama State Police red squad that converted with ease to an anti-integration dirty tricks outfit.

In a thoughtful post and subsequent comments at the Crolian Progressive, Jeremy Young joins our discussion here about the Wisconsin GOP's public records request for William Cronon's email messages. He draws this distinction in Cronon's defense:

"I think where we differ is that you see Cronon’s actions as those of a political player, and I see them as those of an ordinary citizen...As an ordinary citizen, Cronon has the right to make statements against the government without the government or its political supporters retaliating against him."

I don't disagree -- depending on what we mean by"retaliating," because I think politicians have a right to fight their critics and opponents, within reasonable boundaries -- but I also think this"right" has rarely appeared in the American past. Federalist mobs dragged Republican newspaper editors into the street for beatings, then threw their presses in the nearest river. (Federalist officials prosecuted the editors, and imprisoned them.) Wartime censorship has been the norm, with shuttered newspapers and the threat of prison for critics of the government. Nixon's plumbers broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Name your own favorite half-dozen examples.

It seems to me -- and this is my feeling, not something I can prove -- that we've turned several corners in our own moment, but that we've turned them in different directions.

On the one hand, Bradley Manning is approaching the one-year anniversary of his exceptionally punitive pre-trial detention, beyond the reach of decency and normal legal process as the government delivers its sentence first, verdict afterward. (And the president overseeing George Bush's third term shamefully pronounces that Manning's detention is"meeting our basic standards.") My guess is that Manning is a very young man whose life is essentially over: he'll eventually be convicted, and will almost certainly be locked away for all or most of his life, though I'd like to wrong about that. It seems to be an extremely dangerous time to be an individual who embarrasses the government.

On the other hand, and I'm willing to be argued out of this position, has there ever been a safer time to be an academic? Ward Churchill and Michael Bellesiles were both targeted over their politics, but finally destroyed by their own recklessness and dishonesty. Norman Finkelstein's career is permanently stalled over his open-throated attacks on Zionism. That's the list of politically damaged careers that I can think of, though I'm sure others can improve on it. For the most part, it seems to me that the biggest threat to academics in 2011 is good luck getting a job, or good luck getting a tenure-track job. But if you can make tenure track somewhere, the likelihood is that you'll retire thirty years later without having been plausibly threatened with destruction over a political matter. Rashid Khalidi has been under attack for years; has he been seriously damaged? Our harbor seems like one of the safest places to be moored, right now.

A measure of the current political safety of academia is that the Wisconsin GOP has thrown an obviously weak and hapless punch at William Cronon, and it has resulted in a substantial controversy over academic freedom. Perhaps it's best to seriously affronted by this sort of dismal provocation, and perhaps that's why academic rights seem to be more secure today than they have been in, for example, the ugliest days of the Cold War. But surely the threat against Cronon registers at a lower point on a long historical scale.

ADDED LATER: But here's another piece of evidence that political attacks on professors are spreading.



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Chris Bray - 3/30/2011

Ralph,

I agree with all of that, and yet the government keeps piling on new charges -- including the lately added charge that he gave aid and comfort to the enemy. If there's evidence that shows he violated the terms of the security clearance that he accepted, try him, convict him, and levy reasonable punishment. I have to wonder if the government is harming its own case with this persistently disproportionate and unreasonable behavior, but we'll see.


Ralph M. Hitchens - 3/30/2011

I don't think you should compare Manning to Sacco & Vanzetti. I also don't know why it's taken so long for the military to bring him to trial, since by all accounts (including his own, apparently) he knowingly violated security regulations that carried still penalties to include jail time. What is wrong is not only the delay, but the incredible harshness with which he has been treated, indeed quite "stupid and counterproductive," as a former government official acknowledged. If I was sitting on his court-martial (and I sat on many, back in my military days) I certainly wouldn't --given what I've read -- vote to lock him away for life. Assuming he's convicted (not much doubt, I believe) he should get no more than a couple of years. He's no Ames, Hanssen, or Pollard (the latter being another guy who's done enough time, in my opinion.


Chris Bray - 3/30/2011

I think of the limits of expertise whenever I see Robert Kagan explain events in Iraq or Paul Krugman calmly explain the precise policy steps that will fix the global economy, and I admire that view. I do think there's an argument for historians to try to place current events in a historical context, but still.

One of my favorite professors at Pitzer College used to tell undergrads that if they thought a PhD was a sign of general wisdom, they should sit in on a meeting of the faculty senate.


John R. Clark - 3/30/2011

I think we as historians should recognize that our "safe harbor" extends only to the past.

For example...I have a exceedingly narrow interest in America during 1965 and 1966. I can speak with authority on LBJ, Selma, the first two years of the Vietnam War, the British Invasion, Everett Dirksen, Sandy Koufax, and why CBS was the last television network to switch from black-and-white programs to color programs.

Comparatively speaking, I don't know beans about the political landscape of 1991, 2001, or 2011. So does my authority on 1965 and 1966 make me somehow more qualified to comment on Wisconsin state politics than my neighbor who is an industrial engineer? I don't think so.

For me, my "safe harbor" is gone when I engage present-day events.


O R - 3/30/2011

W/r/t the last link there, don't most states' public records laws prohibit these ridiculous fishing expeditions? If not, then surely the logical next step is the one considered by some of the characteristically calm and level-headed HuffPo commenters: FOIA requests for absolutely everyone!


Chris Bray - 3/30/2011

"...academics maintain that safe harbor precisely because we are so touchy and so quick to push back against provocations such as this one."

I absolutely accept that argument, and see the value of the hair trigger.

Waiting to see if anyone disagrees with the argument that academia is a generally safe place -- someone must have a counterargument, and I'll be interested to see it if it appears....


Jeremy Young - 3/30/2011

But I think your last paragraph is what's key here: it is vitally important that being an academic continues to be the safe harbor it has been since the 1960s, and this is the first salvo of what promises to be a disturbing trend against academic insulation from retaliation by political forces.

Again, what I think your original argument misses is that academics maintain that safe harbor precisely because we are so touchy and so quick to push back against provocations such as this one. What you're advocating is a bit like saying, "Democrats have the presidency and Congress, so we're in good, and we don't need to worry about doing things to extend our majorities." We all know how that one turned out.

Certainly I am not, and I think no one is, drawing any sort of equivalence between the Cronon affair and Bradley Manning. Manning is the Sacco and Vanzetti of our age -- an obscenely railroaded political prisoner and American hero who richly deserves to be a cause celebre of the left. The key is that we in academia need to be very careful of slippery slopes that could lead, eventually, to our becoming Bradley Manning. Clearly we are not there yet -- but we won't stay safe unless we continue to fight for our protected status.

Again, thanks for a very thoughtful and interesting discussion, which I'm happy to continue.