A more reasonable assumption is that Freeh is thinking of his (our) country and the impact of an F.B.I. agent selling it out over the years for over a million in cash. The definition of “treason” has been thrashed out already, so I won’t belabor the definition of “patriotism”. I think it’s kind of a nice thing that our F.B.I. Director is willing to make value judgments in favor of the U.S. over Russia.
Bush’s comments edge a bit closer to what might be viewed as hypocrisy, although my read is that he was making a comment on our need to be vigilant in a dangerous world, rather than saying that “espionage is horrible, unless it’s done in the service of the U.S.” However, this is the same guy I heard on the radio today speaking on education, saying “If we teach each child to read, he or her can pass a literacy test”. So syntax may have been an issue.
Jesus, GAD, I know this. The only reason it came up is because PHIL took it upon himself to (wrongly) inform me that I don’t know what I’m talking about in employing the term “treason” or “treasonous,” and to (wrongly) insist that he is The Last Word on whether the actions in question are or are not treasonous. I know it really has nothing to do with the OP, and while I sort of regret following so willingly as PHIL highjacks the thread to Cuba, he does so with such inimicable style that I can’t resist. Shame on me, indeed.
Sure they are, but there is a HUGE difference between being a traitor to your own country and encouraging others to be traitors to theirs (knowing all along that an person of honor would not and that a person who would is beneath contempt, if eminently exploitable). Don’t get me wrong: I see the point you are making; I just don’t agree with it, any more than I think that a police department utilizing informants who rat out their friends (something most cops would never do) means that cops who cultivate informants are hypocrites. Maybe I just don’t have as finely honed a sense of hypocricy as you.
Uhhh, that’s not IMO an applicable analogy. Freeh has neither committed treason (against the U.S.) nor encouraged anyone else to commit threason against the U.S. In other words, treason is “U.S. to U.S.,” (or “Russia to Russia” or whatever). For Freeh, as an American, treason is ONLY “U.S. to U.S.” He has never encouraged anyone in the U.S. (or from the U.S.) to commit treason against the U.S.
You misunderstood me. The distinction I am making is that he can condemn TREASONOUS ESPIONAGE – not other kinds of espionage – because he has never committed, or caused to be committed TREASONOUS ESPIONAGE (treason, for an American, referring to actions harmful to the U.S.). Whether or not he’d have done it with his own lily-white hands is not the point. If he condemned ESPIONAGE (as opposed to TREASONOUS ESPIONAGE), then, yes, he’d be a big ol’ hypocrite. But that’s not what he said.
Again, you are missing the distinction I am making between espionage (spying ON another country for YOUR country) and treasonous espionage (spying on YOUR country for another country).
Yes, but what I have been trying to say is that I interpret his comments as meaning that Hanssen’s Mata Hari-ing of HIS OWN country was the “traitorous action,” not espionage per se. And I’m quite sure that Freeh’s conviction that he would never personally do such a think – betray his own country by spying for someone else – means that he feels he is indeed on very solid moral ground. Do you see the distinction I’m trying to make?
Oh, and lest we get bogged down in the fact that Freeh actually said “traitorous” while I then used the word “treasonous,” my Black’s Law Dictionary and Webster’s New Collegiate both indicate that the words as synonymous.
calling spying “un-American” is not hypocritical, as much as it is naive, overly simplistic, and frankly plain laughable. We all know that the american governent spies, we spy on our enemies, our allies, even our own citizens and corporations. It’s a very simple minded statement by a simple minded individual…but that’s just my opinion.
What I find really disturbing, is this xenophobic superiority, which is the underlying theme of half the above statements. If we do it, we’re saving the world, if they do it, it’s evil and bad. Never mind that our enemies, who are doing “bad” things, are not the only ones spying, but that our alies, who I guess stand for good and justice, are also routinelly spying on us. I also wonder which country has globally caused more harm than good.
Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes! He quite possibly is.
Why? Because although treason and espionage are different offenses, the same actions MAY (not “do” but may) satisfy all the elements for both. Just like the same action (hitting someone with a hammer) may be both an assault and a battery (which are not the same crimes, despite often being spoken of as if they are a single crime called “assault and battery”).
Exactly. And I still have no problem with Freeh’s comments.
An American sells secrets for cash to the USSR. Despicable.
A Russian sells USSR secrets to the US. Assuming he was motivated by cash, that’s… despicable.
Paying a foreign spy for secrets: ok in my book. Justification: the alternatives are worse.
I suppose I should add that I have a fairly high tolerance for hypocrisy among our elected leaders. Expecting candor from diplomats or politicians seems inappropriate.
Do you know how hard it is to distinguish between Freeh and Freedom when scanning this thread to find relevant posts?
Gadarene…
Do you think the Germans who tried to kill Hitler during WWII were the same morally as a British spy trying to kill Churchill?
Spying on the Nazi’s from the inside and trying to help the allies win, was the morally right thing to do. You can say whatever you want about xenophobia, I still see America Vs. Soviet Russia from post WWII to the end of the cold war as having a distinct bad guy and good guy.
Maybe some people here are younger than me, maybe some have forgotten, and maybe some just don’t care.
Say what you will, fighting against the Soviets saved the world.
Question from a non-lawyer. Doesn’t “enemies” imply a state of declared conflict? My understanding as an ex-soldier is that espionage during war was treason while espionage during peace was just spying. Of course, I was a grunt, and they don’t tell us nuthin’.
Whatever, Jodi. Perhaps my language skills are simply beginning to fade in my old age, but I cannot be the only person who parses the statements, “Spying for your country . . . spying against your country . . . the latter is treason,” as “Spying against your country is treason.” Which it isn’t, as a matter of legal definition. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be; and I feel that in discussing matters like this in their legal and ethical context, it’s important to draw the distinction. One can feel that Hanssen’s actions are traitorous without believing him guilty of the Federal crime of treason.
Thank you for your clarification on citing portions of the USC. I was not aware of the format.
Let me ask you a question: If you were the Federal prosecutor assigned to this case, would you attempt to convict Hanssen of treason, knowing what you know right now? Or would you limit the charges to espionage? It’s my understanding that treason charges are incredibly difficult to make stick. If even the Rosenbergs could not be charged with or convicted of treason while passing on nuclear weapons information to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, I’d find it astounding if Hanssen’s activites rose to that level.
Anyway, as to Gad’s question, I find that there is some hypocrisy involved. Espionage, IMO, is not altogether morally wrong, as long as it involves using your own country’s citizens to report on the activities of another country. But, as Jodi put’s it, “exploiting the treasonous impulses of others” is, at best, morally ambiguous. Recruiting foreign nationals to give information about their country to yours places them, in many cases, in grave danger. The spies that Hanssen gave up to the Russians were arrested and executed, and that would have been the case whether the Russians got the information from Hanssen or their own investigations. Louis Freeh and the intelligence community, I think, should accept their complicity in those circumstances. If he can sleep well at night knowing that his recruitment of those people could lead to their death, whether Robert Hanssen ever existed or not, he’s in denial or has nerves of steel.
I also don’t think it’s always treasonous, or even morally wrong, to provide information on your own country’s national security secrets to foreign governments, if you’re preventing a greater moral wrong. If, for example, I was in possession of information that the U.S., in its efforts to combat drug lords in Colombia, was about to deploy biological weaponry, I’d be on the phone with the Colombian Embassy in a heartbeat. The other Central American governments, too. Biological warfare is something that a civilized nation should never even consider, and I would consider it my moral duty to prevent it.
I just wanted to mention the timing of this arrest cos there’s a whole lot of stuff going on here.
The Reverent President Chuckles (thanks Eve) comes to power, the new Star Wars initiative gets a luke (skywalker) welcome and Chuckles himself describes the spy as (amongst other things) being ‘un-American. ‘Un-American’ is forever associated with The Committee for Un-American Activities (is that the right term ?) and thereby the (supposed) threat of Communism.
The authorities have known about this guy for some time. Yes, he had just tried to hand over more documents when they picked him up but they would have been controlling what he had access to for some time - since they suspected him (i.e. while they were ‘making a case’). It couldn’t be that the timing of the arrest had anything to do with the Agencies giving the new military friendly Pres a helping hand with the public relations aspect of the super-dooper expenditure plans ?
Phil: Thanks for grasping the thrust of the OP. I swear I didn’t mean this to turn into a “what should Hanssen be prosecuted for?” debate, especially as I’m not at all sure that Freeh’s use of the word “traitorous” was synonymous with the legal definition of treason, as you, Jodi seem to think.
Freeh, er, Freedom: I said I had no problem with your view that the mission of the United States in its espionage was/is morally better than that of Soviet Russia. Why did you spend your entire next post, then, trying to convert me to that view? When it comes to general terms, of course, I have more of a problem with the notion of America’s inherent moral rectitude–that’s the part of your viewpoint to which I object. Let me quote myself from earlier in the thread, so you can respond:
I’d love to hear your take here, and I say that without the least bit of acrimony.
An excellent question. And I don’t know the answer. On the one hand, the fact is that all the treason cases I ran across during an admittedly cursory search dealt with conduct occurring during either WWI or WWII. (I didn’t search before 1900.) Even cases dating from non-war years (say, 1921) dealt with conduct alleged to have taken place during a war. On the other hand, my understanding of the Rosenberg case is that the government considered charging them with treason but decided not to, not because we were not at war but because of the difficulties in proving treason. On the third hand, I don’t consider decisions made or nearly-made during the hysteria of the Red Scare to be indicative of how cooler heads might decide, and maybe cooler heads would have rejected treason out of hand as a charge due to some strict definition of “enemy” (ie, “enemy” meaning ONLY a nation we are at war with). So the honest answer is I don’t know. My guess is that “treason,” like most other crimes, would turn on what actions were committed and not when they were committed, but I may well be wrong.
PLD –
But “spying against your country IS treason.”
Here’s the thing: Legal defintions deal with general actions that make up the crime, commonly known as “the elements of the crime.” They do not deal with specific actions which might make up the elements of the crime – unless we are dealing with an extremely specific crime, which treason is not. For example, “treason” is defined (in part) as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” “Giving aid and comfort” are the general actions that make up that element of the crime of treason. But what specific actions constitute “giving aid and comfort”? The definition doesn’t say, because lots of things might be – doing anti-American radio broadcasts, sending munitions to an enemy nation, and, yes, spying. (Remember Benedict Arnold? He was a spy. He was also a traitor, guilty of treason.) The fact that espionage does not specifically appear in the definition does not mean it is inconsistent with the definition, or is not within the ambit of the definition. It’s like you’re saying “breaking into someone’s house is not burglary because the words ‘breaking into someone’s house’ don’t appear in the definition of burglary.” That’s just not the way it works.
Except, of course, that this is not the distinction you drew. When I said “spying against your own country is treason,” you did not say “it can be, but it doesn’t have to be,” you said “Shame on you, as a lawyer” and “espionage is not automatically treasonous” – which is something I NEVER said, and you could only imagine I said by seriously misreading my post.
Huh. Interesting that you would post this – which I fully agree with by the way – when it was YOU who said “You know that treason has a specific Constitutional definition” – the clear implication of which is that if one believes his actions to be traitorous then one MUST believe him guilty of the Federal crime of treason. YOU refused to allow the discussion to move forward except under the strictest Constitutional definition of the term “treason,” not me.
You’re welcome.
I’d limit it to espionage, given that treason is an extremely difficult crime to prove, calling as it does for the testimony of two witnesses with first-hand knowledge of an overt treasonous act. That does not mean, however, that given actions are or are not treasonous; it just means that the Founding Fathers decided to make treason extremely difficult to prove. Since, as you noted, the penalties for espionage or sufficiently severe (up to and including the death penalty), there would be no reason for a prosecutor to voluntarily assume the extremely difficult burden of proving treason.
But the question is not whether particular actions “rose to the level” of treason, but whether you can prove treason. The “two witnesses/overt action” thing makes treason extraordinarily difficult to prove unless you literally catch someone in the act. (And not just you; you and one other guy.) Let’s say we’re dealing with a true, out-and-out traitor. Sells his country out repeatedly and does real damage to it in the process. But he is very careful and never leaves any evidence of his crimes. Do his actions “rise to the level” of espionage and/or treason? Yes. Can you prove it? No. It’s a questio of proof, not a question of the egregiousness of the actions. Treason is extraordinarily difficult to prove, at least in the States.
This, of course, is the rationale for many traitors – not a greater moral good, but a greater ideological good. (Convinced of the superiority of communism and wishing to preserve the infant U.S.S.R., an 1920s American passes state secrets to the Soviets, for example.) That’s the justification, but it’s a difficult one for me to swallow (not in the obvious “my country is about to deploy nuclear weapons” scenario, but in the more complicated “I believe my country is wrong and this other country is right” scenario). I understand some people become traitors not for money but for ideology or morality; theirs are the situations that are more difficult to condemn, but in every case I can think of, I probably would condemn them anyway (let me clarify lest I get jumped on again that I mean “condemn” in the moral, not strictly legal, sense). There have got to be ways to work for what you believe in without betraying your country – up to and including leaving it.
GAD –
Gah! I NEVER thought Freeh was using “traitorous” in its strictest legal sense. I DID think he was drawing a distinction between espionage FOR your country against another (plain ol’ spying) and espionage AGAINST your country for another (treasonous spying). I never even THOUGHT about the issue in terms of the legal definition of treason until PHIL decided to tak me to task (“shame on you, as an attorney”) for not employing the stricted Constitutional definition. MY position remains the same – that distinguishing between spying FOR your country (a tad unsavory, IMO, but probably necessariy) and spying AGAINST your country (totally reprehensible and “traitorous” or treasonous) is a reasonable distinction to make, and that a person who makes it is not a hypocrite for doing so.
I said :“spying against your country IS treason.” What I should have said is “spying against your country IS treason if you are givng aid and comfort to an enemy by doing so.” Forgot to finish that thought before moving on to the next point.
OK, well, I apologize to Jodi for the “shame on you remark,” and in my comments concerning Hanssen, replace “traitorous” with “unpatriotic and contemptible.” And your legal explanation regarding treason and espionage leads me to believe that I was engaging in a serious case of lingua anal.
I still think that, given that people are human beings first and citizens of their respective nations second (at least I hope so!), it is in some cases morally defensible to reveal your national security secrets in order to prevent a greater evil. A regular, systematic series of revelations to a foreign government is less defensile, especially on ideological or mercenary grounds.
Except I still maintain that this is a tautological statement, to the extent that it’s equally true–absent qualitative moral indices–for the espionage activity of every country. It’s an empty set; were the KGB director to denounce the American double agents whom Hanssen turned in by calling their actions “the most traitorous actions imaginable,” I’d think he was employing just as much of a double standard. Would you give his comments the pass you’ve given Freeh’s, even though the men who were spying against his country were spying for yours?
In any case, you’ve convinced me that hypocrisy is probably not a precise characterization–sanctimony (false piety), however, seems to fit the bill perfectly.
I’m nearly speechless. (Ha! When am I ever speechless?)
Thank you, PHIL. Really. I can only imagine the dismay you will feel when I advise you that you have come up several places in my estimation by having the guts and class to post that.
GAD –
That doesn’t make it a tautology. Treason IS reprehesible for EVERY country who has a citizen committing it. That does not serve to make the fostering of treasonous impulses in others – the encouragement of it by them – the same as the actual commitment of treason. I see the tension implicit in it – Freeh is condemning a person for acting in precisely the way he himself (Freeh) has presumably encouraged others to act) – but the fact that Freeh encourages the behavior for cold-blooded reasons like national security does not mean he is required to approve of it on a personal or moral level.
It’s not an empty set; it’s not a double standard. It’s recognizing that persuading someone to act in a manner so manifestly reprehensible that you yourself would never dream of doing so, is not the same as doing so yourself. And persuading someone to do something traitorous and contemptible – something that you would never do and that you would expect those under your management also to never do – does not mean you cannot simultaneously believe the actions are traitorous and contemptible. Would the head of the KGB (or whatever Russian intelligence is called these days) be equally justified in feeling that way if he uncovered a Russion agent passing secrets to the U.S.? Sure.
As set forth above – Yes, I would.
Well, I don’t think that’s much of a fit, either. I think hypocricy is closer, in that (if we assume Freeh cultivates double-agents, which, parenthetically, I don’t believe he would; I’m pretty sure that’s CIA, not FBI) he at least fosters the behavior he now condemns, albeit for what he considers good reasons, and albeit while assuming that no one in his employ would ever do precisely what he’s encouraging foreign agents to do.
The U.S. EXPECTS a certain amount of duplicity and spying from its enemies, and they expect the same from us. For that reason (contrary to what you see in spy films), we don’t summarily execute Russian agents who are caught in the U.S., and the Russians don’t summarily execute American agents they capture in their territory. There ARE unwritten rules, even in a dirty game like espionage, and most nations abide by them.
But while Americans caught spying in Russia are generally treated humanely (and traded back to the U.S. for RUssian spies we’ve captured, as are Russian spies captured in America, BOTH countries regard spying by their OWN citizens, on behalf of the other countries, as treasonous. Such activities are viewed as unforgivable.
The thinking is, “We KNOW the Russians are going to spy on us, and that’s fine. They ARE our enemies, after all, and that’s what you’d EXPECT them to do. But people who sell out their own countries are beneath contempt.”
Gadarene would probably say, “Oh yeah? Well, what about Russians that WE pay to sell out THEIR country? Are THEY held in contempt, too?” Actually, they probably are.
I mean, police detectives NEED snitches and stool pigeons. Federal prosecutors NEED Mafia goons who are prepared to rat out their friends. But it’s well known that cops and prosecutors alike have NO respect for stool pigeons. They may cooperate with rats, in exchange for the testimony they provide, but they regard stool pigeons as the scum of the earth. I expect that KGB bosses and CIA bosses view their foreign-born employees with similar scorn.
I said I had no problem with your view that the mission of the United States in its espionage was/is morally better than that of Soviet Russia. Why did you spend your entire next post, then, trying to convert me to that view? When it comes to general terms, of course, I have more of a problem with the notion of America’s inherent moral rectitude–that’s the part of your viewpoint to which I object. Let me quote myself from earlier in the thread, so you can respond: