By Peter Galuszka
Tomorrow, Kenneth Cuccinelli leaves office after an intriguing run as attorney general and as a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate. Say what you want about him (I certainly have) but Cuccinelli can never be accused of being boring.
So, it seems especially remarkable that his first task after leaving office will be to help U.S. Sen. Rand Paul in his lawsuit against the Obama Administration for the massive government eavesdropping and collection of cell phone calls, emails and text messages that were brought to light by fugitive Edward Snowden, now in Moscow.
On one level, the involvement of a staunch conservative like Cuccinelli in an issue that has eerie resemblances to the Pentagon Papers case back in the early 1970s seems strange if not downright bizarre.
Maybe not. Cuccinelli has always had a ying to his yang. While pushing ahead with abortion rules that brought great protest from feminists and pro-choice advocates, he has also supported women’s issues when they involve such crimes as date rape and violence. He may want to put what he considers to be hordes of Medicaid cheats in jail but he went far to help an innocent man get out of prison.
Suing the government is nothing new for Cuccinelli, as his measures against Obamacare have shown.
Still, it is weird that by opposing an overly-powerful National Security Agency fed by hysteria after the 9-11 attacks, he is kin to the very liberals who risked prison to make public the secret history of the despised Vietnam War.
In remember that well. I was rising college sophomore in June 1971 and like many, I opposed the war. Lucky for me I was just a smidge too young and the war was winding down for me to be a serious candidate for the draft, although I did have a draft card and knew plenty of people who had fought in Southeast Asia. I had been teargassed five or six times at anti-war demonstrations as a high school student int he DC area and later as a college student in Boston.
The Pentagon Papers were the secret study ordered by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and purloined by defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, the Snowden of his day.
The New York Times took a big risk and published them. Later, The Washington Post, also under significant legal, political and corporate pressure, did the same.
Among other things, the papers revealed that, contrary to what the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations had claimed, the U.S. had secret operations to provoke the North Vietnamese into combat. Of course, they were aiding the Viet Cong in the South, but the extent of American duplicity had never been documented.
Liberals and anti-war activists hailed the papers’ release as a major victory for liberty. Conservatives were aghast that classified documents would be released in such a way. You had to live through those times to realize just how polarized the country was. It was nothing like today. Then President Richard Nixon seemed inclined to let the publication slide since it made Democrats look bad until adviser Henry Kissinger said that the precedent could screw up future U.S. attempts at secret deals.
The scary thing about the current problem is that advanced technology allows the government to cache just about anything electronic. This raises fears about how much data can be gathered about us and how it will jeopardize our personal freedoms. This is no “Internet of Things” buzzword popular among the chattering classes. The fears date back years and now they are coming true.
Of course, the NSA has been gathering information for decades. That’s what it does when it isn’t breaking codes. It is essential for U.S. security but there must be limits. Obama has pitched some but the horse is well out of the barn.
Paul and Cuccinelli are wrong to claim that this is all Obama’s fault without noting the huge role George W. Bush played. Bush’s post 9-11 actions were needed to prevent future terror bloodlettings but he went too far. The entire Iraq War was not necessary and based on bad intelligence.
In any event, it is indeed curious that Cuccinelli has chosen the Rand lawsuit as the focus of his next endeavor. One wonders what’s next after that.
