Jimmy Carter’s Justified Lies

A good example of the justified lie of a statesman is a case that occurred during the reign of Jimmy Carter. Former Governor of the State of Georgia, Jimmy Carter was elected President in 1976, when he won the campaign from Gerald Ford, the former President after Nixon’s resignation. During the election campaign, Carter promised to revive morality in the White House after the difficult and scandalous times of Watergate. His campaign was built on the fact that he looked at the camera and in the simplest terms promised that he would never lie to the American people. Nevertheless, after three years he had to lie, and not once, to hide his plans to release the American hostages in Iran.
At the beginning of Carter’s presidency, a revolution occurred in Iran, and Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Shah. Shah always received American support, so when he went into exile, Carter allowed him to come to the US for treatment. Enraged by this, Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran and took sixty hostages. All attempts to resolve the hostage crisis by diplomatic means yielded no results, and television news commentators each day counted the days and then the months during which the Americans remained hostages.
Shortly after the hostage-taking, Carter gave a secret order to the military to begin preparations for the rescue operation. This training was conducted in strict secrecy; Moreover, representatives of the administration have repeatedly made false statements to put any suspicion to sleep. For many months, the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House have repeatedly stated that the operation to free the hostages is technically impossible. On January 8, 1980, President Carter also lied at a press conference, stating that the military operation to free the hostages "would almost certainly end in failure and almost certainly lead to the death of the hostages," despite the fact that it was at this time that the Delta group was working out operation in the desert in the southwestern United States.
Carter lied to the American people because he knew that the Iranians were listening to his speeches; he wanted the Iranian militants guarding the hostages to have a false, soothing sense of security. At the very time when the rescue operation was developed. Carter told his press secretary, Jody Powell, to deny that the government was planning to release the hostages. In his memoirs, Carter writes: “If the insurgents had even the slightest suspicion, an attempt to rescue the hostages would be doomed to failure ... Success completely depended on the unexpectedness of the operation” ^[256] . I remind you that Hitler also lied to get the advantage of a surprise attack on the enemy. But we condemn Hitler not for the lie itself, but for its goals and actions. The lie of the head of state, uttered in order to gain an advantage over the enemy, is not in itself evil.
Carter’s lie was intended primarily for Iranians who violated international law by taking the American Embassy hostage. But it was impossible to deceive them without deceiving the American people and the congress. And the lie in this case was aimed at supporting the US military. In addition, it should exist for only a short time. Although some members of Congress raised the question of whether President Carter had the right to act without notifying them in advance, as required by the Resolution on the Armed Forces, Carter said that the release of hostages is an act of charity, not a military operation. Carter’s actions were condemned because the rescue operation failed, not because he broke his promise not to lie.
Stansfield Turner, who was the director of the CIA under Carter, wrote in his notes on the Iran-Contra case about the need for CIA officials to be honest before the congress, and what he would have done if he had been asked to prepare rescue operation: “Perhaps I would not know what to answer. But most likely he would say something like: "It is now unreasonable to talk about the problem of the hostages, because what has been said can either be misinterpreted or help the Iranians." Then I would consult with the president and decide whether I should return to the congress and directly answer the question or not. ” ^[257] However, Mr. Turner is silent about what he would have done if President Carter had instructed him to return to Congress and completely deny the existence of any plans to free the hostages.