Lies in public life

In the previous chapter, I described the results of recent works and unfinished studies, and also referred to my teaching experience with professional verifiers. The same chapter is not based on scientific evidence. Here I present my own assessments, which were formed as a result of my reflections on the nature of lies and attempts to use my research to understand the world in which I live.

How did Oliver North justify his lies

Giving testimony, Lt. Col. Oliver North admitted that several years ago he had lied to Congress about the transfer of Iranian funds to the pro-American contras from Nicaragua. “It was difficult for me to decide on a lie,” he said. “But it was necessary to weigh everything and choose what is more important: a lie or human lives.” North quoted the classic justification of lies about which philosophers have been arguing for many centuries. What do you say to the person who asks you, threatening with a pistol: “Where is your brother? I'm going to kill him". For most of us, this situation will not be a dilemma. We will not tell where the brother is. We will lie and point the place wrong. As Oliver North said, if life is at stake, you have to lie. We can give a more prosaic example: the instructions that parents give to children left at home in a locked apartment. If a stranger knocks into an apartment, children should not say that they are alone at home; they must lie and state that parents, for example, are asleep.
In his book, published four years after the congressional hearings, North described his attitude to the congress and the sense of the truth of his case: “For me, many senators, congressmen and even officials were privileged people who shamelessly left Nicaraguan rebels to their fate and left Contras unprotected from a strong and well-armed enemy. And now they wanted to humiliate me, because I did what they had to do! .. I never thought that I was above the law, and I never intended to do anything illegal. I have always believed and still think that the Boland amendments do not prohibit the National Security Council from supporting the Contra. Even in the most stringent amendments there are loopholes, and we used it, trying to ensure that the resistance in Nicaragua was not left without support ” ^[251] . In his book, North acknowledged that when in 1986 members of Congress tried to find out if he had provided direct assistance to the contras, he misled them.
North's lie, motivated by the salvation of human lives, was unjustified, firstly, because the correctness of its solution is not obvious. According to him, since one of the paragraphs of Boland’s amendments was to ban the congress from rendering further “deadly” assistance to the rebels, the contras could die. However, not all experts believed that the termination of such assistance meant the death of the contras. It was a political issue on which the Democrats and Republicans strongly disagreed. And it is impossible to answer it with the same confidence with which we respond to the inveterate murderer.
The second objection to North’s claim that the purpose of his lie is to save human lives is the ambiguity of the addressee of the lie. There was no person in front of him who expressed the intention to commit a murder. If the killings had taken place, the Nicaraguan army would have committed them, not the members of Congress. Despite statements by opponents of the Boland amendments that the killings would be the consequences of these edits, the congressmen who voted for them did not set themselves such a goal either directly or indirectly.
Rather clever and, probably, highly moral people could not reach a common opinion on the question of the consequences of stopping the "deadly" aid, or whether Boland’s amendments did not leave the slightest loophole. Because of his zealous desire, North could not see that in this situation there was no single truth with which all reasonable people would agree; and if he saw, he closed his eyes to it. North turned out to be very arrogant in his desire to oppose himself to the majority of congressmen and in the belief that his lies before the congress had excuses.
My third objection to North and his lies of salvation is that by lying, he violated his oath, which forbade lies to Congress. No one is obliged to answer the truthlessly murderer. The murderer intends by his actions to violate the laws that must be followed by us and him. Our children do not have to be truthful with a stranger knocking on a door; however, if this stranger had declared that he was in trouble, the situation would have been ambiguous. Nevertheless, everybody should give true testimony to the congress, and everyone should also be held accountable for lying. In addition, North, given his profession, had other reasons for telling the truth. Lieutenant Colonel North as a military officer gave the oath to abide by the Constitution. By lying to Congress, North violated the constitutional principle of the division of responsibility between the two branches of government, namely the constitutional right of the congress to control the budget and verify the work of the executive bodies ^[252] . After all, if North felt he was being forced to pursue a policy that, in his opinion, is immoral and endangers other people, he had another opportunity to resist. He could resign, and then publicly oppose the Boland amendments.
Disputes over accountability for lying before the congress continue to this day, but already with respect to the CIA employees. Recently, the press discussed the question of whether there is a special set of rules for CIA employees, since, because of the secret nature of their work, they are often not allowed to be truthful before Congress. Since North was following orders from CIA Director Casey, his actions can be justified by the fact that they comply with the standards established for the staff of this department. David Whipple, director of the Association of Former CIA Employees, said: “In my opinion, this is not bad at all when you manage to give the Congress as little information as possible. It seems to me that one of these guys should not be blamed ” ^[253] . And Ray Klein, also a former CIA official, said: “There has always been a tradition in the CIA to protect senior executives from disclosures” ^[254] . However, Stansfield Turner, who was the director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, believes that the president should not give the CIA permission to lie to Congress, and all CIA employees should know that if they lie, nobody will intercede for them ^[255] .
The fact that North, Poindexter, and recently CIA employees Alan Fayers and Claire George, are held accountable for lying to Congress, only confirms the above. And the highest-ranking CIA official prosecuted for lying to a congressional commission on the Iran-Contra case in 1987 was Claire George. However, since we all know that CIA Director Casey did not follow these rules and believed that his employees had the right to lie, it was unfair to punish people who not only believed that they were acting as they should, but also hoped for support.