A Treasury of Deception
Page 24
A decade earlier, the State Department announced it would no longer use the word “killing” in official reports on the status of human rights in other countries, but would replace “killing” with the phrase “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life.”
4. James Johnston, chairman and chief executive officer of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, testifying at a congressional hearing in 1994: “The allegation that smoking cigarettes is addictive is part of a growing and disturbing trend that has destroyed the meaning of the term by characterizing virtually any enjoyable activity as addictive, whether it’s eating sweets, drinking coffee, playing video games, or watching TV. This defies common sense.”
William Campbell, president and chief executive officer of Philip Morris, USA, at the same hearing: “Cigarettes contain nicotine because it occurs naturally in tobacco. Nicotine contributes to the taste of cigarettes and the pleasures of smoking. The presence of nicotine, however, does not make cigarettes a drug or smoking addiction. Coffee, Mr. Chairman, contains caffeine and few people seem to enjoy coffee that does not. Does that make coffee a drug? Are coffee drinkers drug addicts? I think not.”
5. U.S. Air Force press officer, Colonel David H. E. Opferin, to reporters after a 1973 bombing raid in Cambodia: “You always write it’s bombing, bombing, bombing. It’s not bombing! It’s air support!”
The war in Vietnam produced other such euphemistic expressions as:
Collateral damage (killing innocent civilians)
Removal with extreme prejudice (assassination)
Energetic disassembly (nuclear explosion)
Limited duration protective reaction air strikes (bombing villages
in Vietnam)
Incontinent ordnance (bombs which hit schools and hospitals
by mistake)
Active defense (invasion)
6. President Jimmy Carter on the failed military rescue of the American hostages in Iran in 1980: an “incomplete success.”
7. Central Intelligence Agency term for mercenaries hired to carry out raids in Nicaragua in 1984: “Unilaterally controlled Latino assets.”
8. President Bill Clinton, in 1993, on how his proposed health-care plan would be financed: a “wage-based premium.”
The Reagan administration had also previously avoided the word tax by substituting the term “revenue enhancement.”
9. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater in 1988, after a U.S. Navy fighter fired two missiles at an Iranian passenger jet: “At this point I will not confirm any part of the incident.” Fitzwater did say, however, that President Reagan had been informed “soon after the incident happened.” As to what incident: “The incident that I’m not confirming.”
10. Secretary of State Alexander Haig testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the 1980 rape and murder of three nuns and a religious lay worker in El Salvador: “I’d like to suggest to you that some of the investigations would lead one to believe that perhaps the vehicle that the nuns were riding in may have tried to run a roadblock, or may accidentally have been perceived to have been doing so, and there’d been an exchange of fire and then perhaps those who inflicted the casualties sought to cover it up. And this could have been at a very low level of both competence and motivation in the context of the issue itself. But the facts on this are not clear for anyone to draw a definitive conclusion.”
Haig, the next day before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when asked if his previous statement was meant to suggest that the nuns might have run a roadblock: “You mean that they tried to violate . . . ? Not at all, no, not at all. My heavens! The dear nuns who raised me in my parochial schooling would forever isolate me from their affections and respect.”
And in response to a question from Senator Claiborne Pell on whether his previous phrase “exchange of gunfire” meant to imply that the nuns had shot at the soldiers: “I haven’t met any pistol-packing nuns in my day, Senator. What I meant was that if one fellow starts shooting, then the next thing you know they all panic.”
Select Bibliography
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Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: How DNA Solved the Mystery of the Murdered Son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. New York: St. Martin’s/ Griffin, 2002.
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Acknowledgments
A number of good people contributed their ideas, time, and talent to the creation of this book. I want to thank my agent Jenny Bent, and my editor Caroline White, along with all the folks at Penguin. Also, Patterson Clark, Manus Cooney, Tom and Mollie Dodd, Nick Galifianakis, Kristin Inglesby, Regina Koehler, Ann Marie Lynch, Eileen Monahan, Kevin Murphy, Mike Pate of F.I.B.C., Boyce Rensberger, Rose Mary Sheldon of the Virginia Military Institute, Mark Smith, David Steward of Hillsdale College, Anthony Tambasco of Georgetown University, Lyndsey Tate of the National Council of Teachers of English, John Ziolkowski of George Washington University, and my colleagues at The Washington Post: Madonna Lebling, Peter Masley, Scott Moore, Eddy Palanzo, David Von Drehle, Rick Weiss, and Gene Weingarten, the generous genius to whom I owe so much.
1 An autopsy performed on Joice Heth after her death in 1836 indicated that she was at least half the age Barnum claimed she was. The New York Sun excoriated Barnum for the fraud, but his associate Levi Lyman planted a story in the New York Herald that the autopsy itself was a fraud and that Joice Heth was alive and well.
2 The two giants are still on display. The original is at the New York Historical Society’s Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and Barnum’s knockoff is at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
3 There are a number of other imposters in this collection (see Part VIII), but they all posed as royalty. Weyman, on the other hand, took on a number of different guises.
4 Gigante was infuriated by Gotti’s unsanctioned hit on a fellow don, Gambino boss Paul Castellano.
5 Shameless Plug #1: For a detailed account of the Salem witch trials, see the author’s brilliant book A Treasury of Great American Scandals: Tantalizing True Tales of Historic Misbehavior by the Founding Fathers and Others Who Let Freedom Swing.
6 Glass, an associate editor at the New Republic, was fired in 1998 for fabricating scores of stories, including “The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ,” about people who supposedly worshipped the forty-first president, and “Spring Breakdown,” about the debauchery at a conservative political conference. An excerpt: “In the get-naked room, everyone disrobes immediately, without a hint of embarrassment. One couple fondles each other in the corner. A muscular man, apparently hallucinating, prances around the room like a ballet dancer. A woman locks herself in the bathroom, crying and shouting out the name Samuel.”
7 A startling example of these drastic measures may have come in 1940. Although the evidence is inconclusive, some historians believe Churchill, from intelligence derived from Enigma, had advance knowledge that Hitler intended a fierce aerial assault on the English city of Coventry, and that he declined to give warning of the impeding attack for fear that any measures taken by the populace to defend themselves might reveal to the Germans that their secret codes had been penetrated, thus prompting them to switch to a new cipher system. As a result, Coventry became what the London Times called “a martyred city.”
8 This was before Henry VIII became the bloated tyrant of his later years; the Venetian ambassador described him early in his reign as “the handsomest sovereign” he had seen.
9 Whether he wrote it or not is uncertain.
10 In a complicated chain of events, Irving obtained Phelan’s manuscript from a fringe Hollywood “referral agent” named Stanley Meyer, who was supposed to be helping Noah Dietrich pitch the Phelan-penned book to literary agents and publishers. Irving was approached by Meyer after Phelan was dismissed from the project.
11 Perhaps a better representation of Stalin’s fatherly treatment of the Russian people can be found in his own family portrait. He bullied his second wife Nadezhda into suicide; lovingly called his mother “the old whore”; and mocked his son’s failed suicide attempt, snorting, “Ha! You missed!” And he ordered half his in-laws executed. No wonder he admired Ivan the Terrible so much.
12 Shameless Plug #2: For a more detailed account of the Wars of the Roses, see the author’s highly acclaimed A Treasury of Royal Scandals:The Shocking True Stories of History’s Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens,Tsars, Popes, and Emperors. (There’s more on Nero in there as well.)
13 After the death of his brother Edward IV, Richard III obtained the throne by falsely claiming that his late brother’s sons, the princes in the Tower, were bastards, and thus ineligible to rule. The elder boy was King Edward V, but he was never crowned. Young Edward and his brother Richard disappeared during Richard III’s reign, and were never seen again.
14 The imposter used the name Mrs. Anderson as a pseudonym when she came to the United States. She later added the first name Anna, a shortened version of Anastasia, and Anna Anderson eventually became her legal identity.
15 A successful escape out of Colditz, and then out of Germany itself, was considered a “home run.”