Writer’s Notebook: Paying a price for secrecy

Published 12:30 am Saturday, February 15, 2020

Secrecy is the enemy of public health. That truism has been reconfirmed in China, where the totalitarian government kept news of the coronavirus from key decision-makers and the Chinese public. Thus the disease got a head start on the local and world medical community.

The New York Times on Feb. 2 reported that, “At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.

“A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms of early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city … points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.”

Paying a public price for secrecy is not unique to communist countries.

Confidentiality created the emblematic environmental calamity of the Pacific Northwest — which is the mountain of nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Born in wartime, secrecy at Hanford was essential. But the secrecy extended beyond the end of World War II, and it enabled a bureaucracy of science that would not reckon with the mortally dangerous byproducts of nuclear fission. If it were not for whistleblowers who outed Hanford’s many time bombs and haphazard mitigation, the day of public reckoning with this pile of nuclear waste would have been much later.

Americans witnessed a different, but kindred challenge when President Donald Trump injected himself into warnings about Hurricane Dorian in the first week of September. Trump warned that Alabama “would most likely be hit harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever.” That alarm bell from the White House generated a slew of phone calls to forecasters in Alabama. In response, they contradicted Trump’s statement, diplomatically apprising Alabamans that they faced no actual risk.

In a putdown of the National Weather Service, the White House generated a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rebuking the Alabama forecasters.

In the wake of the Trump-generated confusion, Neil Jacobs, of NOAA, said: “You have no idea how hard I am fighting to keep politics out of science.”

President Trump’s penchant for spreading misinformation revealed itself again following Iran’s Jan. 8 ballistic missile attack on the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq. Following the attack, the president minimized the damage, saying U.S. troops only suffered “headaches.” It turns out that more than 100 of our troops suffered debilitating brain injuries from the missiles’ shock waves — the kind that have long-term consequences.

There was a time when Americans enjoyed ridiculing communist countries for the bald-faced lies they would spread among their own people, as well as abroad. Today, it is hard for an American to feel superior, as their president and his minions manufacture lies and misinformation. This has become weekly fare for “Saturday Night Live” and late-night talk show hosts such as Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert. Of Trump’s cascade of lies, the TV hosts might say: You can’t make this stuff up.

It was a cultural imperative that motivated communist Chinese leaders to hide the coronavirus in its earliest stages. But there is no similar cultural norm to explain the smokescreen the White House generates on an almost daily basis. It is all about protecting a president who is woefully ignorant about so many things that are essential to governing.

Taking a page from the Chinese, Russians and others, Trump recently floated the idea of setting up an official U.S. government-sanctioned TV “news” channel. Although Fox News already comes close to exactly parroting the Trump party line, Trump’s impulse to create his own propaganda network reveals a profound misunderstanding of American checks and balances. The Chinese are paying for their lack of a free and independent news media with the current epidemic, which prompt and accurate reporting might have obviated.

Trumpian secrecy and disregard for the facts don’t make Americans safer or smarter. It is quite the opposite. A recent political cartoon depicted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issuing instructions to reporters: “Welcome, media members, to the State Department! Remember to check your critical thinking at the door.”

One could imagine Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issuing the same admonition to Republican senators at the recent impeachment trial of President Trump. “Senators, check your intelligence, your free will and your integrity at the door.”

America’s success depends on the good character of our leaders, with their flaws and mistakes immediately brought to light by a free press. Diverging from this formula puts us at grave peril.