“J. Edgar Hoover was apoplectic.”

On Monday 29 September 2014, the Frontline Club screened 1971, the incredible story of eight US citizens whose courage – both moral and physical – led them to break into an FBI office to confiscate evidence of the bureau’s grave abuses of power.

The self-incriminating documents revealed the existence of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the remit of which ranged from spying on women’s tea parties to what Noam Chomsky described as the, “Gestapo-style assassination”of Black Panther leaders.

In the post-screeening Q&A we were joined by director Johanna Hamilton via video link.

“It’s the FBI!” exclaimed a member of the audience, when the video programme experienced a slight delay in connection.

Hamilton began by outlining the two main challenges she faced in documenting a story hidden for 40 years:

“One, that they had never been found. They never revealed themselves. They were talking to Betty Medsger, The Washington Post journalist, she was writing a book and that is how I gained access to the story.

“The other real substantive thing is was that because they had never come out, we weren’t sure how the government would react. It was one of the largest FBI investigations that the bureau had ever undertaken. That’s a very little know fact, obviously because it was such a public embarrassment. . . . This was really a we did it as opposed to a whodunit.”

Hamilton then quoted the FBI’s response to reporters covering the film:

“We’re a different institution today than we were in the 70s. We’re reformed. We’ve reformed ourselves partially as a result of the revelations that happened in the 70s.”

“They didn’t reference the burglary directly,” noted Hamilton, “but obviously that was a great relief that the Citizens’ Commission was not going to go to jail.

“President Obama has become known for prosecuting whistleblowers,” she continued, “and obviously the film was coming out in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations so there was a lot of hoopla surrounding that.”

Director Johanna Hamilton

“I really did want to be able to tell the full personal story and the political aftermath of the story,” said Hamilton, on her decision to use recreations:

“I wanted it to be cinematic, and for people to really be able to put themselves in their shoes. And they’re very unconventional whistleblowers. They’re very non-traditional, they’re not insiders. They were outsiders, so they do have to do this quite extraordinary thing. It was really improbable that they would pull it off, number one, and that they would find what they were looking for, and that they would remain undetected all that time.”

A member of the audience commented that he had left the states as a student in 1967: “What I found in your film, that very few people who are not of my generation may not feel so much, is how innocent we all are. . . . The brutishness of it is still active today. I see Laura Poitras is in your production credits. She’s got an indictment against her . . . and I think the situation has got much worse.”

Future screenings and workshops can be found on the film’s official website and Twitter account.

In an article in the Washington Post on 31 October, David Broder wrote that the President could "spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the [Iranian] mullahs."

Although Broder was "not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected", he argued that challenging Iran would "help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve."

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the column attracted 35% of the news links on blogs for the week 1-5 November.

A number of bloggers raised ethical concerns with the proposition while others suggested that the economy could be improved by alternative government spending.

The PEJ, which produces weekly round ups of topics covered by bloggers, noted that "online criticism of Broder’s piece produced a kind of blogosphere bi-partisanship and unanimity rarely seen on crucial political and policy issues."

The subsequent efforts by the Pentagon to belittle or even deny the facts led to the removal of two general officers from command and then the Secretary of the Army himself suddenly had people asking if maybe the press “found its backbone again?”

Were things about to change after years of standing by uncritically recording dubious government propaganda that led the country into a war of choice and a president who assumed wartime executive power that could last indefinitely?

Obviously it’s too early to tell in this time of infectious uncertainty in the mainstream press that its economic model will keep it afloat.

Whether an aggressive press like that of the 1960s returns depends on a number of factors, the most important is regaining the public trust in the press as the mediator of information between the government and the people.

In this regard it has been standing on spongy ground for the past five years as it failed to aggressively challenge the Bush administration. Part of the reason for that failure was due to changing economic conditions. Years of declining circulation and dwindling stock prices caused even the largest newspapers to reduce staff and eliminate beats.

Developing an online capacity required shifting resources to 24/7 production. The result was fewer people to develop sources and dig out closely held information. Meanwhile a president muscled into office despite losing the popular vote with only minority support among the public was preparing to assert authority to fundamentally change public policy.

Unremarked by the press or the public President Bush was quietly adding to majority control of Congress a control of the bureaucracy of government unseen since World War II.Before the year was out career government workers in positions four, five, and often six layers deep in departmental bureaucracy had been replaced with political appointees of tested loyalty.

By the time of the attacks of 9/11, he had coupled majority support in the judicial and legislative branches of government to exert iron fisted and meticulous management of the flow of information to the public.

Strict discipline held public disputes at a minimum and dried up leaks the Washington press has come to depend on to challenge government assertions or questions plans and actions.
The first glimmers that an adversarial press might yet be rekindled was a spark struck in the summer of 2005 when Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer of the San Diego Union exposed the corruption of a local congressman by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and tied the corruption to leading Republican Congressional leaders.

Other reporters began to find similar sources outside Washington control and were able to document facts that opened administration policy decisions, including decisions related to the “war on terror,” to public scrutiny and questioning.

Then in August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans and the administration. Helpless, devastated families and anguished first responders, some of whom in this case were journalists, were in control of the flow of information. What they showed the world was a government unable, unprepared, perhaps even uninterested in responding to the catastrophe.

Events seemed to be setting the stage for the reappearance of the tradition of public interest journalism. It was at a time similar to these at the beginning of the 20th century that reporters like Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffans first introduced the concept of investigative reporting and careful documentation.

Their investigations helped end an age of corruption ushering in the progressive movement in politics and journalism. When the press became enablers of the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, reporters like Wallace Turner in Oregon and Nathan Caldwell in Nashville and George Bliss in Chicago resurrected the watchdog role that had fallen into disuse during the years of the Great Depression and World War II and compelled the stewards of the Pulitzer Prize, the country’s highest journalism award, to establish a new category called “Investigative Journalism.”

Critics and analysts in the U.S. usually describe the place of the public affairs press as seated on a three legged stool. This metaphor assumes things work best when the three legs of the stool the government, the press and the public are in equal balance. The events of 9/11 destroyed this balance when it sent the president’s public support into the 60 percent range. Public opinion surveys now indicate that showing as they do a president standing at 39 percent.

An emboldened opposition in Congress is talking of plans to rollback the emergency legislation gives us another straw in the wind. The early start to the 2008 presidential campaign in which up to two dozens candidates seem likely to open a whole range of new and unexpected new channels of debate and discussion, new sources for reporters to probe and develop.

Finally, both parties are seeking to redefine themselves in a way that should put all that has happened since 9/11 on the table for post mortem. The US watchdog press might finally find its bark again.