Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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At open letter to ' Public BY PAUL W. BLACKSTOCK Having accepted a $300,000 advance royalty for his for thcoming memoirs, former Nixon aide John Dean, for a modest fee of $4,000, delivered a lectu'e recently at the University of Virginia in which he talked about the moral implications of Watergate and the evil attraction of power, to which he said he was drawn "like a mota to a candle, and badly burnt." Five years ago this spectacle would have been denounced as "obscene." A few days previously the faculty and student body at Boston University voted not to pay former White House press officer, Ronald Zeigler, a similar fee for lecturing in Boston. The invitation to speak was not cancelled, but after the fee was withdrawn, Zeigler failed to show. A political scientist at Boston University raised the moral issue involved in such cases put bluntly as the rhetorical question: "Why should the University encourage crime by paying outrageous fees to alleged malefactors or inveterate liars, simply because they were inevitably involved in Watergate as members of Nixon's White House staff?" This situation has not yet arisen at the University of South Carolina, but if it does, news media reports on the John Dean lecture indicate that he is unlikely to establish himself as either a perceptive moralist or political scientist. The reader may recall that on April 30, 1973, in an agonized address to the American people former President Richard M. Nixon also raised the question, "How is it that men of unimpeachable qualifications and personal integrity get enmeshed in such sordid undertakings as Watergate?" Following Nixon's address I wrote an article for The Baltimore San (May 20, 1973) from which the following is adapted. I suggested that the answer to this question lies in the so-called corporate ethic which develops in the subculture of power--the cluster of technical, military or political experts-which surrounds the president and to whom he must turn for advice. In this ethic, the principle that the end justifies the means is unconsciously trans formed into a mixture of cor porate loyalty and "the good of'the cause," and thus becomes ac ceptable to otherwise honorable men whom in their private lives would never sink to the level of the common thief or employ his methods. The subculture 'of power which developes around the president, or for that matter around the chief e'xecutives of any of our great corporations, is inescapable in the modern world. Rational decision making in either government or big business must be based on expert knowledge. But the technotronic age in which we live is so complex that it Is impossible for The writer is a professor in USC's Department of Government and International Studies and has written guest columns for this newsapner in the past. The Gamecock morality any executive to have a grasp of more than one or two fields. Hence the policymaker must rely on the specialized knowledge and ex perience of experts for both in formation and advice. There is a continuous interchange of such experts between government and the military-industrical-academic complex. Because of the bureaucratic nature -of the modern, technological state, the over whelming majority of men who move into government advisory staffs are organization men, with all that is implied in the term. They are for the most part careerists who have climbed up the ladder of promotion in either a corporate or government bureaucracy to a level high enough to attract presidential attention. This institutionalized career background has important effects on how the individual functions later as a White House staff or Cabinet adviser. The subculture of p around the is inescapable in i The "organization man," par excellence, is one who rises to the top of a bureaucratic pyramid by never backing a subordinate, by never bucking a superior and by keeping his mouth shut on the moral issues which are often in volved in decision-making at the highest levels of both private en terprise and the government. These are the "big time operators" who move into the new echelon of supergrade positions created with each change of ad ministration. They may come from either private or public life, but are nearly always drawn from big bureaucracies or from the interlocking directorates at the top of the corporate structure. The qualifications of political appointees to . cabinet or am bassadorial posts may be largely presumptuous. They may have "met a payroll," a favorite criterion of Eisenhower, under whom Nixon served as vice president, or they may have made a generous contribution to the campaign chest in an election year. The expertise of scientific and technical advisers Is much more likely to be genuine, as Is that of the specialists in the use of violence, the generals and flag officers who move Into military advisory positions. As an In dividual the organization man frequently exhibits the social virtues implicit In the Dale Car negie model. He Is often charming, well-eduscated and to the manner born, evoking Abram Tertz's characterization of his Soviet counterpart In The Trial Begins: "He liked these people; they were colleagues, everyone with a face like an open book, a past as clear as glass, and a stainless con science. Kindly men of whom and the s' perhaps half the world was terrified." Whatever his career pattern or specialized competence, the expert in government usually possesses no power of his own except as it is delegated by the chief executive. The heady intoxication of power which John Dean, John Ehrlich man Bob Haldeman and other White House staffers enjoyed derived from their ability to get the attention and keep the favor of their master, the Chief Executive. Under such circumstances the organization man turned adviser is not likely to tell the chief un pleasant truths; or will delay telling them until the fact that the emperor is obviously wearing no clothes becomes a public or even an international scandal. Within a period of ten months, the Watergate, which started as a dark cloud no bigger than a man's hand, had mushroomed into such a scandal. Over an extended time ower which develops ! president the modern world. frame something like this hap pened with the escalation of the war in Vietnam. President Johnson's memoirs are poignant with evidence that he was surrounded by yes-men who were unwilling to tell him unpleasant truths. The presidential adviser quickly finds that it pays higher dividends to be feckless rather than fearless. If he -dissents too often and too audibly he will soon be banished to the outer darkness of presidential disfavor. He then loses whatever influence on policy he may have had, and must either work himself back into favor or resign. Under the Johnson ad ministration, except for George Ball, about the only important dissenters on the Vietnam War who were not at one time pilloried as defeatists were the anonymous National Estimates Staff of CIA hidden deep within their fortress of exalted brooding at McLean which bears the proud motto, "The truth shall make you free." But then their estimates were for the most part Ignored, even by the CIA Director, John McCone, when the latter advised the President. Super-ChWl Cheese Dog with purchase of Fries and Med. Coke Offer Good thru Feb, 28th only at\ 1366 Rosewood Dq. .(IMstpna-amntco.amn) COMI ubeulture States have never been run by prayer books, and since the time of Machiavelli rulers have been fascinated by his precept that the wise Prince will employ a judicious The presidential advis< pays higher divide rather than blend of force and fraud in public affairs. Nixon's White House staff was made up of organization men like John Dean whose careers were shaped in a fiercely competitive bureaucratic world where the survivors simply use whatever means are closest to hand along a spectrum ranging from friendly persuasion to extreme violence. In the moral perspective of such men all means along the spectrum are justified by the "good of the cause." The cause itself is a sometime thing: personal career advancement, the corporate image and profits, the Cold War, national security or whatever. The principle is even more ap plicable to the Party bureaucracy in the USSR, where "the good of the cause" is cited so frequently that the Nobel prize-winning novelist, Alexander Solzenitisyn used it ironically as the title of one of his earlier novels. In the subculture of power which surrounds the president, the self interest of the state, or even of the administration, is simply taken for granted as the highest good, justifying any means used in its pursuit. The will to live and to 7LovcBund 'Valentine's 0 BemtutlOk heart and a O Joie de F:ie can'send y almost any~ "Can Q F TD ' As an i Extra such Florist" each ~ oWf mentar~ of power hang on to power-however tran sitory- has thus become a mark of excellence and the basis of both private and public morality. But as the American philosopher or quickly finds that is nds to be feckless fearless. Santayana has pointed out, only a brute who had never learned that he cannot live forever could make personal survival the basis of morals. The same observation applies to the state, or to any given administration which is constantly changing its structure and even its nature, until it may become almost unrecognizable within the span of a few years. Since the days of Lord Acton it has become a truism that power tends to corrupt even the most honorable of men. It also breeds arrogance and what Voltaire once called "the subtle poison of am bition." The highest levels of any government are of necessity saturated with it. All of these factors have combined to tran sform a false doctrine-the end justifies the means-into "the good of the cause" and have led to the monumental disgrace of the Watergate and related incidents. This syndrome will repeat itself in one form or another until the president and his advisers learn that personal survival is not the basis of morals and that history will judge them not on how. long they held on to power, but how well and how honorably they exercised it while it was in their trust. 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