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I have read the stirring statement of James Iredell, later a Justice of the Supreme Court, that if Congress tried to exercise any other power over the press than regulating copyright, “then they will do it without any warrant from this Constitution and must answer for it as for any other act of tyranny.” And I have read, a great many times, from the opinion of Justice Hugo Black in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971: “In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulWll its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can e¤ectively expose deception in government.” Justice Black’s was an individual opinion, but it was good enough for this individual . He said nothing about avoiding publication in an anti-establishment paper; indeed, he issued a reminder that the press as a whole was meant to be anti-establishment. How can we bare secrets and expose deception in government if the Government— Executive or Legislative branch—can decide when we are allowed to do it? It seems reasonable to say that the Government should be able to protect its secrets. But it would seem more reasonable if there existed complete conWdence in those who wield the “secret” stamp. This nation has just passed through three years of revelations that the “secret” stamp and the national security label were used to conceal wrongdoing, conspiracy, and illegality. The delicate cord of trust that linked this nation, and its press, to its elected leaders has snapped. There is today no unquestioning trust that what a President or a Secretary of State calls “a national security matter” is indeed a national security matter and not a personal security matter or a personal embarrassment matter. It will be a long time before national security and secrecy will again be accepted without question by the American people, and especially by the journalistic community. Acceptance of secrecy requires a consensus of conWdence in those who call things secret. —Daniel Schorr has been a journalist for more than sixty years, working for CBS, CNN, and NPR. He is the recipient of a Peabody and a George Polk award. When Nice People Burn Books Nat Hentoff february 1983 It happened one splendid Sunday morning in a church. Not Jerry Falwell’s Baptist sanctuary in Lynchburg, Virginia, but rather the First Unitarian Church in Baltimore. 18 part 1 championing civil liberties On October 4, 1981, midway through the 11 a.m. service, pernicious ideas were burned at the altar. As reported by Frank P. L. Somerville, religion editor of the Baltimore Sun, “Centuries of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Hindu writings were ‘expurgated’ because of sections described as ‘sexist.’ “Touched o¤ by a candle and consumed in a pot on a table in front of the altar were slips of paper containing ‘patriarchal’ excerpts from Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, the Koran, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, the Hindu Code of Manu V, an anonymous Chinese author, and the Old Testament.” Also hurled into the purifying Wre were works by Kierkegaard and Karl Barth. The congregation was much exalted: “As the last Xame died in the pot, and the organ pealed, there was applause,” Somerville wrote. I reported this news of the singed Holy Spirit to a group of American Civil Liberties Union members in California, and one woman was furious. At me. “We did the same thing at our church two Sundays ago,” she said. “And long past time, too. Don’t you understand it’s just symbolic?” I told this ACLU member that when the school board in Drake, North Dakota, threw thirty-four copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five into the furnace in 1973, it wasn’t because the school was low on fuel. That burning was symbolic, too. Indeed, the two pyres—in North Dakota and in Baltimore—were witnessing to the same lack of faith in the free exchange of ideas. What an inspiring homily for the children attending services at a liberated church: They now know that the way to handle ideas they don’t like is to set them on Wre. The stirring ceremony in Baltimore...

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