Political espionage

I wouldn’t normally offer a film review in these columns but Steven Spielberg’s The

Post does seem to offer an interesting contrast to contemporary political events in the US. The film is based on the 1971 publication in The New York Times and The Washington Post of a secret US government report on the Vietnam War (the so-called ‘Pentagon Papers’).

In the 1971 case we are invited to sympathise with those who contrived to expose government malfeasance in the matter of the conduct of the Vietnam War, despite the threat of serious legal action, against them. Apart from the journals themselves, these were, particularly, the political left (the Democrats), who had despised President Nixon in their sights.

In 2017, Democrats (and the same journals) are fighting hard to prevent congressional revelations about the use of the US intelligence services to spy on candidate, then President, Donald Trump. The congressional inquiry has still got some way to go but perhaps when it is all completed it will not come out so well for the Democrats, or the Times or Post.

Stealing government documents is clearly a serious offence. It is less clear to me that this may be justified on grounds of public interest although this is what the US Courts seem to have found in the Pentagon Papers case. Coming back to the contemporary, it is also clear that use of the intelligence services against political opponents is contrary to the US Constitution, and generally characteristic of a police-state. Perhaps Mr Spielberg should stand by for another project.

Ron Smith (Dr) Hamilton