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Why National Security Is Not Incompatible With the First Amendment: Maintaining a Constitutional Perspective
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11943 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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Date : |
8 / 1987 |
3,750 Words |
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Martin L.C. Feldman
Martin L.C. Feldman is U.S. district judge for the Eastern
District of Louisiana. |
We are all familiar with the watchwords: Bay of Pigs, Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and, most recent of all, the Iran-Contra Affair. Those words have evoked concern at the highest levels of the government. These same words have also brought a sense of victory to those whose agenda is the protection of First Amendment rights. They argue that such fiascos could have been prevented if their details had been made available at the outset to the press and, thereby, to the public at large. Yet they are confronted with the counterargument that prematurely publicizing such information would have created a security risk.
The question inevitably arises: Is national security incompatible with the First Amendment? The answer entails a precarious balance of our right to exercise individual freedoms with the preservation of the national security that makes possible these very freedoms. Totalitarian nations hold fast to the unyielding primacy of national security above all other societal values. This inflexible hierarchy of values does not hold reign in the free world.
Freedom of expression is the anchor of democracies. Our constitutional republic heralds this liberty, embodied in the First Amendment, as a requisite fundamental value. We question the value of life in a regime whose perceived notions of national security act as an underlying measuring rod that monitors all civil liberties.
We must acknowledge that our national security depends on an intelligent and informed public citizenry as well as on government secrecy. We thereby reject the explicit belief in the incompatibility between free speech and national security common to autocratic and totalitarian regimes. Both principles are protected by our constitution. We may be justly proud that we do not invoke national security interests to justify a wholesale suspension of constitutional order. Nevertheless, to deny that there is often a sharp competition between the two values would be to ignore history's lessons.
The Case for Secrecy: Beyond Politics
Do we need secrecy in government - even in a free and open government? Of course we do. But freedom and secrecy pose an unsettling problem for those charged with the guardianship of our national ideals. Sir William Stephenson, former head of the British Secret Service, addresses this issue in his compelling book A Man Called Intrepid:
The weapons of
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