The Disconnected Mind of Bill Moyers
Stephens unearthed memos where Moyers requested the FBI investigate administration officials “suspected as having homosexual tendencies.” That is, he asked a government agency to look into the private lives of his own colleagues — not those accused of seeking to undermine the administration’s policies or to compromise national security, but those suspected of harboring tender feelings for the same sex.
This very Bill Moyers who, as an aide to a Democratic president wanted the FBI to root around in the private lives of his fellow White House aides as well as those of his boss’s Republican rival for the White House, has devoted a number of television broadcasts to lamenting how the policies of a Republican president infringed upon the privacy of Americans. As the editors of the Wall Street Journal put it, he routinely sermonizes “about what he claims are abuses of power by his ideological enemies. Since 9/11, he has been particularly intense in criticizing President Bush for his antiterror policies, such as warrantless wiretapping against al Qaeda.”
The operative expression here is “ideological enemies.” It links Moyers’ actions in the 1960s to his laments in the first decade of the 21st century. Back then, he snooped around in men’s private lives for political reasons. Today, he condemns policies which allow federal authorities to investigate suspected terrorists for national security reasons. In the first case, he acted on behalf of a Democratic president. In the second, he criticized the policies of a Republican.
On October 26, 2007, in one of his many programs devoted to criticizing the Republican president’s anti-terror policies, Moyers said:
Critics claim the President has used the war on terror to put himself above the law and that he has created a secret presidency of classified decisions and orders, that approve extraordinary renditions, torture, illegal detentions, and wiretapping without warrants with the collaboration of big telecom companies. This boundless secrecy and surveillance evokes images counter to American values.
By Bill Moyers’ own definition, then, he engaged in policies which ran counter to American values. He had asked the FBI to put men “suspected of having homosexual tendencies” under surveillance.
This wasn’t the first time Moyers faulted the Republican administration’s anti-terror surveillance policies. On September 7, 2007, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, appeared on his show to take issue with legislation passed by a Democratic Congress amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), giving “the government broad new powers to listen in on private communications here at home, including phone calls and e-mails to and from the country, to tap into foreign intelligence. And to do so, without court orders.”
I daresay Moyers didn’t ask J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to secure a court order before investigating the private lives of his White House colleagues.
Last December, Glenn Greenwald, a longtime critic of the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies, appeared on Bill Moyers Journal to discuss Bush’s legal legacy. Greenwald contended the then-president “ordered illegal surveillance on the American people even after his own Justice Department told him that doing that was illegal and even after they threatened to resign if it didn’t stop. So this is the kind of criminal intent, deliberate law breaking that we punish on a daily basis in this country.”
Commenting this weekend on the latest revelation about his December host’s past actions, Greenwald, who is openly gay, refused to criticize Moyers for requesting such surveillance on people suspected of having the same sexual tendencies as he. Instead, he chose to fault bloggers who have commented on the story:
They’re the same people who embraced and justified full-scale, impenetrable federal government secrecy and comprehensive domestic spying databases conducted in the dark and against the law when perpetrated by a Republican President — but have spent the last week flamboyantly pretending to be scandalized and outraged by the snooping which Bill Moyers did 45 years ago (literally) as part of a Democratic administration.
Just like Moyers, Greenwald would rather attack his ideological enemies — even as he ignores the fact that Glenn Reynolds (the one blogger he links) often criticized the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies and never embraced nor justified “full-scale, impenetrable federal government secrecy and comprehensive domestic spying databases.” Yes, Greenwald’s got a point that this happened 45 years ago. But doesn’t it bother Greenwald that Moyers never publicly acknowledged what he did, much less apologized for it?
I wouldn’t expect an apology from Moyers. My Google searches yielded no evidence of a public acknowledgment by him of error in this matter. Moyers does not readily admit his mistakes. When former Interior Secretary James Watt informed the one-time Johnson administration official that he had misquoted him, Moyers expressed “regret” for using a quote he had not confirmed. But at the same time he lambasted the man he had wronged, telling Watt that he found “his policies as secretary of the interior abysmally at odds with what I, as well as other Christians, understand to be our obligation to be stewards of the earth.”
Similarly, should he publicly address his surveillance of men suspected of having homosexual tendencies, will Moyers — as Greenwald did — use it as an occasion to bash his ideological enemies?
It seems that the driving force of Moyers’ “journalism” remains the same as that of his role as a operative for a ruthless Democratic president: undermining his political foes. Commenting on one of those foes, the Bush administration, which he frequently called a “regime,” Moyers contended its “unlimited view of authority may well be the centerpiece of his legacy.”
Moyers too seems to have an unlimited view of authority, provided of course it’s used to undermine his ideological adversaries. And sometimes even his own colleagues, if he fears their private lives could damage the politicians he favors.
What’s new about this? The Left is always guilty of what it accuses the Right of doing. They have neither shame nor scruples. That’s the value of not claiming any values. You can do anything, and people shrug their shoulders.
“The Left is always guilty of what it accuses the Right of doing.”
It also reveals the criminal-like mindset of “everybody does it” used by the left to justify their pathologies. They claim businessmen are greedy cheaters, abd we find a number of prominent leftwing politicians getting caught out as tax cheats. They cry about civil liberties violations and are the first to call for jailing and marginalizing people for having political differences and merely exercizing free speech or their voting rights, ala opposition to gay marriage. They compain about the reichwing police state and frequently call for or excuse police state tactics to be used on their political opposition, ala the illegal publishing of Joe the Plumbers child support records by the Government. They think everyone is like them.
I would not hold my breath for Moyer’s mea culpa. I remember the daisy ad and so I don’t watch Moyers.
Another sanctimonious left wing twit. It is astonishing how the left can do exactly what they accuse the right of doing, then deflect the whole issue, in this case by attacking the bloggers. My jaw drops in amazement as BHO tells baldface lies, does exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on, and goes back on promise after promise, while the MSM sits silently, looks the other way and whistles. Moyers is just a slimy weasel. He fits right in with this bunch.
Greenwald has given Moyers absolution. What else can be said about this?
Another glaring example of media malpractice — as is, propagandists masquerading as journalists! Moyers is a hypocrite.
Andrea Mackras
All that this proves is that both Republicans and Democrats have no qualms with witch hunting against gays when it is politically expedient and advantageous. As if we didn’t know this already.
“Bill Moyers took advantage of that invitation to help his boss deal with a crisis which the Democrat feared could jeopardize his reelection in 1964.”
LBJ wasn’t running for “reelection” in 1964; he was not elected President in 1960, JFK was. LBJ was running for President in his own right in 1964 and chose not to seek reelection in 1968.
Moyers is an entertainer, first and foremost.
I haven’t found him relevant in a decade.
Frankly, animal channel is more enlightening.
Bill Moyers has a brain? Thats news to me. Ive always known Moyers to have a very BROWN NOSE from sticking his nose up GEORGE SOROS FAT CAN every morning. Id be willing to bet Moyers probably brushes his teeth LEWINSKY STYLE.
9. Amy:
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Good catch. If this yahoo Blatt wants to rant about Bill Moyers he should at least get his facts straight.
“It seems that the driving force of Moyers’ ‘journalism’ remains the same as that of his role as a operative for a ruthless Democratic president: undermining his political foes.”
It seems that the influence of ex-press secretaries from Bill Moyers to George Stephanopoulos has been to corrupt television journalism.
Now they have no standards, and nobody trusts them.
Bill Moyers is about as trustworthy as Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Moyers is just one more Liberal hypocrite, I can’t understand why the so-called MSM isn’t calling him on the carpet for his outrageous, slanderous “sermons” on PBS …. just kidding, of course the media won’t mention ol’ Billy Boy. Now, if Bill O’Reilly found himself in the same position ….
“Good catch. If this yahoo Blatt wants to rant about Bill Moyers he should at least get his facts straight.”
Outside of this one mistake, Mr. Platt does have his facts straight. What Moyers did in the 1960′s for LBJ is reprehensible and a simple mistake in a column like this doesn’t absolve Moyers for what he did.
If Bill Moyers had a brain he would be dangerous. He’s the perfect leftie, a total hypocrite.
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Who is John Galt?
actually, prior to Monicagate, even heterosexual affairs opened one to blackmail…a security threat.
Bernie Ward.
The hypocrisy of Moyers is disgusting, but no surprise. The real and unconscionable damage he did to undeserving citizens remains. If he can find some other ad hominem way to undermine conservatives, he will.
What mind? I thought it was just a sack of manure.
14. Larry Miller:
“Now, if Bill O’Reilly found himself in the same position ….”
Andrea Mackris?
I would like to know if a person like me, can send a fax or mail to tell a Moyers that we know what he has done in the past, so he doesn’t have to preach on his Government subsidized Public TV. thank you, Lucy Brown
I would like to know if a person like me, can send a fax or mail to tell a Moyers that we know what he has done in the past, so he doesn’t have to preach on his Government subsidized Public TV. thank you, Lucy Brown
SORRY YOU ARE WRONG, I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN IN THIS SPACE. thank YOU, LUCY BROWN