Holes in India Nuclear Tests Coverage
The Bomb--nearly forgotten by many of us--has returned to the world's center stage in a hurry. When India set off several nuclear explosions and President Clinton quickly responded with economic sanctions, the news coverage was jolting.
Condemnation of India's nuclear tests is certainly justified. But the story we're getting is quite partial. The plot narrated by the White House and echoed by the American media--presenting the U.S. government as a principled foe of nuclear escalation--is akin to a fairy tale.
This country's journalists don't have to visit India in order to find alarming evidence of a nuclear arms race. They could venture much closer to home.
Forty miles from San Francisco, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory are still designing thermonuclear bombs. Under a benign-sounding Stockpile Stewardship and Management program, the Department of Energy carries on with the business of devising new and "improved" nuclear warheads.
In fact, the U.S. government is spending $4 billion a year to develop nuclear weapons. The effort includes sophisticated computer simulation that enables the United States to upgrade the deadly capabilities of its nuclear arsenal without resorting to test detonations.
Now, more than ever, the Clinton administration is a fount of piety as the president and his top aides scold the transgressors in New Delhi. While lecturing India to show restraint, the U.S. officials continue to lead the world in building a nuclear bridge to the 21st century.
The news media hardly seemed to notice as the United States completed the testing and deployment of B61-11 earth-penetrating nuclear warheads last year. And when conflicts with Baghdad intensified over the winter, we heard little about Washington's not-so-veiled threat to use such weaponry against Iraq.
A few months ago, Clinton oversaw a major overhaul of nuclear weapons policies and issued a presidential directive allowing the Pentagon to plan for the use of U.S. atomic weapons against non-nuclear states. (Clinton's order violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty--the same pact, ironically, that the president cited in reverential tones May 13 when he announced sanctions against India.)
In February, with a U.S.-Iraq confrontation heating up, Boris Yeltsin warned that "Clinton's actions could lead to a world war." American news media attributed the Russian president's comment to irrational inebriation. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, called the remark "somewhat daffy." But Yeltsin was apparently referring to the fact that Clinton had authorized the U.S. military to target Iraq with nuclear arms.
Jay Truman knows quite a bit about nuclear tests. Growing up in Southern Utah during the 1950s, he watched mushroom clouds rise from the Nevada Test Site about 110 miles to the west. While in high school, Truman was diagnosed with lymphoma. Unlike many of his classmates, he survived.
Now, Truman is director of a regional organization known as Downwinders. "There is no excuse or justification for any nuclear weapons testing by any nation," he told me. "But before everyone starts pointing their fingers at India as the world's only nuclear villain, it's important to look at the ongoing weapons development programs of the United States and the other members of the `perm five'--the established nuclear weapons countries--and clean up our own houses first."
Truman emphasizes that "the nuclear arms race will not be over until all nuclear weapons testing and development have been stopped by everybody--not just India."
For years, he points out, "India has been warning that it was unfair and discriminatory for certain nations to maintain nuclear arsenals and to be able to threaten other nations with them."
"If we really want a world free from the horrors of potential nuclear annihilation and free from the economic burdens of an ongoing arms race," Jay Truman says, "the world should choose to get that message and understand it and act on it this time. Because if we don't, we may not get another chance."
When I was a child, tall tales seemed wonderful. I liked to read about Paul Bunyan and his huge ox, tromping around in the wilds and creating natural wonders like the Great Lakes. But these days, there's nothing fun or charming about tall tales written for adults under the guise of journalism.
Consider a couple of big news stories--nuclear testing in India and upheaval in Indonesia. Evidently, judging from the recent coverage, the media establishment finds it very easy to report that the CIA was incompetent but very difficult to mention that the agency was involved in evil deeds.
As soon as news broke about the Indian nuclear tests, the Central Intelligence Agency proclaimed that it had been taken by surprise. Media outlets quickly treated the claim as a statement of fact. From there, politicians and pundits went on and on, skewering the CIA for failure to anticipate the test explosions.
The only trouble with the CIA's mea culpa was its absurdity. India's ruling Hindu nationalist party gained power this year after campaigning on a platform that called for the country to reassess its nuclear arms options. Many independent observers were expecting atomic tests.
But we're supposed to believe that the CIA--an agency with a multibillion-dollar budget, access to the world's most precise spy satellites and agents in every corner of the globe--was in the dark until the New Delhi government made the announcement. All in all, it's about as plausible as tracing the origins of Lake Superior to the activities of Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe.
Three days before the ground shook at the Indian test site, a small newsletter published May 7 by Sikh separatists in Canada explained that "preparations for an Indian nuclear test has been further confirmed by our sources in India." The periodical "Charhdi Kala International" said that its sources, "who so far have never been wrong having millions of pairs of eyes and ears fixed to the ground," were reporting "all kinds of feverish nighttime activities" at India's test site in Rajasthan state.
The most powerful political factions in Washington have no desire to challenge the yarn that India's nuclear testing caught the CIA flat-footed. The tall tale has been helpful for an array of agendas. The CIA and its boosters can claim that the agency needs more funds to do a better job. Opponents of a comprehensive test ban treaty can claim that adherence to such a pact is not verifiable. And the Clinton administration can claim that it failed to take action to discourage the Indian tests because it didn't know they were in the offing.
Meanwhile, coverage of the crisis in Indonesia has often been Orwellian. For instance, dozens of New York Times articles detoured around inconvenient history. On May 16, the newspaper's front page referred to "mass killings of 32 years ago, when Mr. Suharto took power from the country's founding president, Sukarno. At that time, as many as half a million people died in an anti-Communist purge."
The next day, another prominent Times story recalled that "hundreds of thousands were killed in the turmoil of the last political transition, as Mr. Suharto presided over a hunt for leftists around the country and consolidated his power."
Actually, the CIA and other accessories of American foreign policy played key roles in the carnage that took the lives of a half-million Indonesians during the "turmoil" of the mid-1960s. Along the way, the U.S. government supplied a list of 5,000 leftists to Indop;nesia's military, fingering them for assassination. Washington also supported Suharto throughout his subsequent brutalities, including the slaughter of 200,000 people in East Timor by Indonesian army occupiers.
Now, after Suharto's resignation, we still cannot understand what's happening without truthful accounts of the past.
Some tall tales are told with a flourish, some with careful silences. But whatever the style, they should not be confused with journalism.