1 Boring Old Man

Forty years ago, when the world was young, the war was Viet Nam. Back then, our lives [we = guys] were determined by the local draft boards. I was in medical training and going off to fight in a bad war wasn’t in my plan. Like 100% of us in my Intern class, I applied for something called ‘The Berry Plan.’ If you were chosen, you got deferred from the draft until you finished Residency Training. Like most of us, I also applied to the CORD plan. Instead of military service, you went to the Public Health Corps and spent time with Eskimos or Indians. Sounded good to me.

Then I got a letter. My application to the CORD plan was rejected. I’d failed the Security Check. I’d marched in the Civil Rights demonstrations and stole some candy bars from the corner grocery as a little boy, but was otherwise clean. I called, and found out that those weren’t the reasons, it was from the government computer. Back then, the computers were great big things with punch cards and no terminals. When I pressed,  it turned out that my suspicions of photographs from Civil Rights marches or reports from grocery clerks weren’t the problem. It was my father [close to the same name].

My father was hardly a security risk. He was a Republican for God’s sake! and from an Italian immigrant family eat up with patriotism. It turned out that during World War II, when he was a chemist at a bomb plant, he was part of the F.B.I. program to look for infiltrators, and that every few years after the war, he’d been called in for routine checks. He’d never mentioned it. When I asked, he showed me the tattered card in the back of his wallet. I had two reactions. I was a little proud. I grew up on a street of fathers who had fought in the war and my dad stayed home and made bombs. I sort of thought that was a bit of a draft dodge. So I guess this F.B.I. thing moved him up the hero heirarchy. But my main reaction was the more obvious outrage. You turned me down because my father was a ‘good guy?’

The Public Health people readily agreed that it was absurd. But, both the good guys and the bad guys were in the same computer! It was too late. The CORD Plan choices had already been made. I was winding up to fight about it, when I got chosen for the best deferment from the military one could get. Do your training, then go into the Reserves. So, I dropped it. As it turned out, they changed their minds later and off I went to the Air Force. But that’s another story.

Looking back on it, I feel differently about the story. It was just an silly mistake, flunking my Security Clearance. I don’t mind that there was a computer keeping up with good guys and bad guys. Computers are better now [too much better!]. I have some empathy for the sheenanigans of our leaders who worked to escape war, just like I and all my friends did. But I’m also glad I ‘served.’ I don’t feel like I shirked my ‘duty,’ though my duty turned out to be a three year assignment in Europe – my best vacation ever! I like it when some conservative Republican finds out that little old liberal me was once an Air Force Major. One gets points for that.

But it’s different now. I don’t trust George W. Bush and his pals to use the new technology wisely. I’m not mad it’s there. But without oversight, it’s just a matter of time before it’s misused, if not already. They say that the N.S.A. unwarranted domestic surveillance is being opposed by people who don’t understand the level of threat to national security. They say we’re naive about ‘infiltrators’ like we didn’t see those two towers falling down. Karl Rove says:

"Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why," Mr. Rove said. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

We don’t disagree ["we" because any and every Democrat is an important Democrat]. We actually agree heartily with everything he says except the spin at the end. We disagree with skipping the F.I.S.A. oversight, and we aren’t going to stop disagreeing no matter how Karl Rove distorts our argument. We would disagree if Clinton did it, if Al Gore did it, if Mother Theresa did it. We want to be listened to, not listened in on without some oversight by the judiciary. A "silly mistake" in 2006 could be a very different matter than it was forty years ago. But more than that. We don’t trust this Administration, because it’s not trustworthy. And even if it were trustworthy, it’s setting things up for a scenario that belongs in an action thriller, not in the real world…

Update: For the ultimate in Karl Rove spin, take a look at this interview on radioblogger.com. Thanks to evilpoet for the link…