We live in a sceptical age. After the Wikileaks phenomenon it is hard to be naïve about the news. The wired world has made us accustomed to data endlessly streaming into millions of devices, and facts that overturn other facts, occasionally with the same news cycle. The new technology has transformed newsgathering. Instead of long-form analysis we have become used to disconnected ‘updates’ about the world. Often the news is presented as entertainment: prime ministers’ and presidents’ impolitic disclosures near ‘hot’ microphones are accorded no more attention than notorious tweets, text messages or cellphone footage from celebrities. The ubiquity of this infotainment, and our incessant, roving attention often tempt us to believe that the age of “plausible deniability” is over and that sooner or later the truth always shows up.
In fact, the truth often vanishes. Five years ago, in response to a Congressional request for official documents, the Bush White House said it could no longer retrieve 5 million emails stored on a server belonging to the Republican National Committee. This figure was later revised upward to more than 20 million emails. As a result, an investigation into the controversial dismissal of eight US Attorneys stalled for lack of evidence. Later that year, the Director of the CIA disclosed that the agency had destroyed hundreds of hours of interrogation footage, including some of two high-profile detainees being waterboarded. A subsequent investigation by the US Justice Department laid no criminal charges, sparing the Obama administration the unenviable task of prosecuting CIA personnel, but also burying part of the truth about America’s use of torture, forever.
Earlier this week the Guardian reported that colonial officials deliberately destroyed thousands of documents that chronicled some of the British Empire’s worst excesses. A small fraction of these documents were kept in a Foreign Office archive with special instructions to keep them out of the public domain after the customary 30 years. The archive would probably not have come to light but for legal action undertaken by former Mau Mau detainees seeking to prove that the British had used torture while suppressing the Kenyan rebellion. The Foreign Office has now promised to release the 8,800 documents gathered from 37 former colonies.
Among the British archive are papers that show the government was aware of torture in Kenya and the ‘elimination’ of its enemies in Malaya. There are even details of the dirty tricks used to expel the native population of Diego Garcia (an atoll in the Indian Ocean now used as a US Navy base) between 1968-73. Full disclosure will undoubtedly contradict years of official statements, but it is important to remember that the most embarrassing material was carefully culled and destroyed. This was done on the explicit orders of former colonial secretary Iain Macleod, out of a concern that it “might embarrass Her Majesty’s government … [or] members of the police, military forces, public servants or others e.g. police informers,“ or even “used unethically by ministers in the successor government.” The Guardian notes that Macleod’s directive led to the complete destruction of “every sensitive document kept by the authorities in British Guiana, a colony whose policies were heavily influenced by successive US governments and whose post-independence leader was toppled in a coup orchestrated by the CIA.”
We may want to believe that technology makes government secrecy less feasible, but the facts suggest otherwise. In 1996 the US government officially classified 5.6 million documents as secret – ie they could not be read without an official security clearance. In 2009 this figure had climbed to a staggering 55 million. These figures suggest that apart from the occasional blip, such as the Pentagon Papers or the Wikileaks disclosures, few of us will ever get more than a glimpse of the true workings of the complex machinery of modern government. And the documentary truth of many events in our lifetimes will remain entirely speculative for future historians.
In January 1948, Winston Churchill joked in the House of Commons that “it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.” Today Churchill’s quip reads like a template of the way that modern governments – of all political stripes – control their legacy. Not only do they stick to talking points and other forms of message control, they also ensure that any evidence of failure, poor judgments, or downright criminality, is carefully erased.
