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Lessons from US passport scandal

By: James N. Kariuki

[ Posted On: 2008-04-16 ]

Last month a feisty uproar erupted over a claim that unauthorised US State Department contract personnel had "poked their noses" into the passport files of the three leading presidential contenders.

Two of the accused lost their jobs over the matter and further investigations were ongoing.

The incident was taken so seriously that the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, herself was drawn into it. She personally apologised to the "offended" presidential contestants. It is not every day that the US Secretary of State gets involved in procedural matters such as passports any more than Kenya's Minister for Foreign Affairs engages in similar bureaucratic affairs. Ordinarily, such prominent figures devote their time to policy concerns.

In last month's instance, Rice pledged publicly that a departmental investigation was under way. To Senator Barack Obama, however, internal investigation was not enough; he preferred a formal Congressional investigation.

In most of the world, the fact that some John Doe had peeped into politicians' passport files would probably have passed entirely unnoticed. Why the big deal in the US?

Americans are notoriously protective of individual privacy, especially against government intrusion.

To put it another way, official information gathering on individuals runs counter to the very foundation of the US as a nation. Indeed when the US federal Government embarked upon establishing the social security numbers for allocation of benefits to individual citizens, there was considerable popular suspicion and resistance. Such serialised numbers were seen by some as Uncle Sam's uncanny way of introducing identity cards for the citizenry.

In the bigger picture America did derive massive benefits from influx of foreign genius. Albert Einstein is often cited as the classic example. Yet, it is equally true that the US also inherited a mentality of suspicion towards government. From Eastern Europe in particular came a mindset that governments are prone to war cycles that perpetrate untold harm and carnage on ordinary citizens. After all, the two World Wars, and the human suffering associated with them, originated from governmental conflicts.

Passport issues are particularly sensitive to Americans because deprivation of the travel document has been repeatedly used as an instrument to punish contrary views.

During Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communism campaign after World War II, many innocent Americans were ruined in the "red hysteria". But African-American Paul Robeson stands out for his racial views, visibility and sympathetic leanings toward communism. His passport was revoked (1950-58) irrevocably ruining his international singing career. Towering African-American intellectual WEB Dubois, narrowly escaped similar fate.

Yet another illustration of mistrust of government snooping on Americans pertained to J Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover's FBI claimed to spy on individuals in defense of the "American way", but Americans ultimately became leery of that institution's excessive intrusions. They found it unsavory that the FBI engaged in recording compromising private affairs of civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, to discredit him.

President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974 for his involvement in the Watergate scandals. Under this broad sin, one of his worst crimes was to engineer what came to be known as the Enemy List. This was establishment of a series of names of American citizens targeted by the Nixon presidency for potential political reprisals. Nixon intended to unleash the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against the so-called enemies to silence political challenge.

The IRS is the dreaded US tax collection agency with a reputation for being lethal. In practice, the IRS is accountable to no one and once you are targeted for its probe, you are as good as wiped out.

Against such a background, the recent public outcry against snooping into the US presidential candidates passport files makes sense.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: James N. Kariuki - is head of the African Diaspora Unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria.

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