When Lying Becomes Censorship

By David K. Shipler

President Trump’s frequent lies have been disorienting enough during his three years in office, and especially risky during the coronavirus epidemic. Now he is moving more dramatically across the line into censoring skilled professionals in government. This imposes an implicit threat that some who counter his falsehoods with truth could lose their jobs.

Sunday, when a reporter asked Dr. Anthony Fauci about hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for COVID-19, Trump interrupted, stepped forward, blocked Fauci from answering, and let stand his own disjointed and ill-informed answer. Trump did not caution against self-medicating, which has already killed one man in Arizona, and made no reference to the warnings by medical experts that the drug can have deadly side effects in patients with cardiac problems.

Last Thursday, Capt. Brett E. Crozier was removed as skipper of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt after sending an urgent, four-page letter to about thirty Navy officials pleading for rapid help in relocating thousands of crew members ashore amid a spreading infection of COVID-19 on the ship. The appeal, leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, might have bypassed Crozier’s immediate superior, a violation of military protocol. But the uniformed Navy wanted a careful investigation, not the summary dismissal executed by Trump’s civilian appointee, acting Navy Secretary, Thomas B. Modly, who told a colleague, “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired,” according to David Ignatius of The Washington Post. (Modly later resigned after flying all the way to Guam to insult and lambaste Crozier to the crew. How does Trump come up with these people?)  

Then late Friday, Trump fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael K. Atkinson, for obeying the law in notifying Congress of the whistleblower’s complaint in the Ukraine case that led to the president’s impeachment. Dozens of inspectors general populate government agencies as supposedly independent watchdogs. Their reports of errors, misdeeds, fraud, and corruption have been key to restricting the malfeasance of powerful officials. And Atkinson was required by statute to provide the notification if he found the complaint credible, which it obviously turned out to be.

After his dismissal, Atkinson tried to reassure and encourage potential whistleblowers: “The American people deserve an honest and effective government. They are counting on you to use authorized channels to bravely speak up—there is no disgrace for doing so.” He concluded, “Please do not allow recent events to silence your voices.”

But that is exactly what Trump is trying to do, and most of his Republican legislators signed on to the effort when they repeatedly demanded during impeachment hearings that the whistleblower be summoned and identified. This, even after many other witnesses confirmed the anonymous report that Trump had withheld Congressionally appropriated military aid to help Ukraine in its war against Russia, while urging the new Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens—both Hunter Biden, who had profited from a lucrative position with a Ukrainian company, and his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s expected election opponent.

Inspector General Atkinson is only the latest in Trump’s purge of officials who testified truthfully on the Ukraine matter. One might disagree that the president’s behavior warranted impeachment and removal from office, but it’s hard to see how citizens who value an open society can stomach Trump’s message in the aftermath: Speak truth to power and get ready to apply for unemployment benefits.

Firing people he sees as disloyal is not brand new for Trump. But the latest incidents continue a sequence anathema to pluralistic democracy. First, propagate lies from the top, usually to make situations seem much better than they are. Second, discredit the press as the people’s enemy to undermine its credibility when it corrects the lies and exposes wrongdoing. Third, hire only functionaries who revere and support the leader. Fourth, fire officials who contradict or criticize the leader, even if they are following legal requirements—which in turn undermines the rule of law. Fifth, create anxiety in the ranks to promote self-censorship by officials who want to keep their jobs. That way, no repeated edicts are needed from on high. The system of lies and silence becomes self-sustaining.

Thankfully, self-censorship is not the style of Dr. Fauci, the immunologist who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is so dedicated and honorable that he is able to contradict Trump by simply stating facts. “To my knowledge, I haven’t been fired,” he quipped a couple of weeks ago. And the president would unleash a political firestorm if he sacked him now. That’s why Trump had to step to the lectern Sunday to stop Fauci from answering a question about chloroquine. When a reporter asked why Trump didn’t let the science dictate the treatment, and why he was promoting the drug, Trump said, “I’m not. I’m not at all.” Then he went on:

“Look, you know what I’m trying to do? I’m trying to save lives. I want them to try it, and it may work and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s nothing lost by doing it, nothing. . . . We don’t have time to go and say, gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out. And let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. We don’t have time. I’d love to do that. But we have people dying today. As we speak, there are people dying. . . . We bought massive amounts, 29 million doses of it. We have it coming for all of the labs.  . . . because in case it does work, we want to have it.”

Then, with Fauci at the lectern, a reporter asked, “Would you also weigh in on hydroxychloroquine? What do you think about this?”

Fauci prepared to answer, but Trump stepped forward next to him and declared, “How many times have [inaudible] answered that question? Maybe fifteen times.”

Reporter: But he’s a doctor.

Trump: Fifteen times. Maybe fifteen times. You don’t have to ask that question.

Reporter: He’s your medical expert, correct?

Trump: He’s answered that question fifteen times.

What Fauci would have said was no mystery to the aware public, or apparently to Trump. But with a thin smile of discomfort, the good doctor turned to another reporter. Fauci in this job is critical for the country right now, so he doesn’t have to get into a public fight with a vengeful president.

Yet another question hung in the air, unasked. How many other medical experts working for the federal government will dare contradict the president with scientific facts and sound medical advice?

As for Captain Crozier, who was cheered by his crew as he left his ship and is now quarantined in Guam with a dry cough, the full story remains to be told. Did he try and fail to get sufficient responses from the Navy to the infections blooming on the Roosevelt? Did his immediate superior, Rear Adm. Stuart P. Baker, react properly, or was he deficient? Evading the chain of command is serious business, but Crozier apparently felt compelled to broadcast his appeal widely enough that it shook the establishment into action. His four-page letter was strong but not hysterical; it outlined a logical, measured, and reasoned approach to minimizing deaths among his nearly 5,000 crew. The details of the episode remain murky, but the intimidating message to others in uniform is clear.

The risk Trump poses to the flow of unwelcome information can damage military effectiveness and blind policymakers. As we saw during the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, optimistic falsehoods are often passed up the chain of command to enhance the records of subordinates who fear retribution for failure. I witnessed this myself, though far from Vietnam.

As a junior officer on a destroyer in ancient times, 1964-66, I saw my captain and the executive officer try to fake passing scores in a failed gunnery exercise to make the ship—and themselves—look good. And during a big anti-submarine exercise, the captain decided not to report that our sonar was down—a “sitrep,” or situation report, was supposed to be sent straight to the Pentagon—until we were ordered to hunt for a sub and could no longer hide our disability. A destroyer captain, usually the rank of commander, was at a turning point in his career and was unjustifiably held responsible for equipment failures on his ship. (That skipper was later promoted from commander to captain.)

These were merely exercises, not the real thing. But truth-telling in government should always be the real thing.