特朗普時代的情報機構和媒體
Donald Trump has come to office having reviled and degraded two institutions in the United States that claim to be pillars of the country’s democratic system: the news media, and the intelligence services.
The irony embedded within this deliberate denigration of fact is that journalists and spies have for decades viewed each other with suspicion, even enmity. The wariness has been especially intense in recent years amid the disclosures via WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden and the enthusiasm of much of the media to publish them. Yet now hacks and spooks find themselves unwitting bedfellows as they face the contempt of the incoming president.
這種蓄意抵賴事實的行爲的諷刺之處在於，數十年來記者和間諜這兩個羣體一直以懷疑、甚至敵意的眼光看待彼此。近年來，在維基解密(WikiLeaks)和愛德華?斯諾登(Edward Snowden)的泄密事件以及很多媒體對此積極報道的情況下，相互間的戒心格外強烈。不過，如今記者和間諜發現，面對這位新總統的蔑視，他們不知不覺地成了一條戰壕裏的戰友。Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Trump called reporters “dishonest”, “disgusting” and “scum”. Then there was that press conference last week when he refused to take a question from CNN’s senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, shouting him down — apparently enraged that CNN had been the first to report that former President Obama had been briefed on lurid allegations about him in an intelligence dossier. To adopt the style of his tweets, which oFTen end with a shocked expression and an exclamation mark — “Unprecedented!”
在競選過程中，特朗普一再稱記者“不誠實”、“令人討厭”和“人渣”。之後，在一個新聞發佈會上，他拒絕接受美國有線新聞網(CNN)的高級白宮記者吉姆?阿科斯塔(Jim Acosta)的提問，提高聲調蓋過後者——顯然是被CNN率先報道情報機構向即將卸任的奧巴馬總統報告一份情報檔案中有關他的猥瑣指控激怒了。借用他在Twitter上的發帖風格——往往以震驚的表情和驚歎號結尾——“史無前例！”
In his belief that the US intelligence agencies leaked that dossier, he likened their actions to Nazi Germany’s. This was merely the latest rhetorical attack on the intelligence agencies by their new commander-in-chief. He previously ridiculed their view that Russian hackers had broken into data held by the Democratic National Committee — and leaked a mass of material embarrassing to the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Hillary Clinton — by suggesting that, since they had wrongly believed that Saddam Hussein of Iraq held stocks of weapons of mass destruction, they could no longer be trusted.
他認爲美國情報機構向媒體爆料了該檔案，並把他相信發生的這種行爲與納粹德國相提並論。這只是這位新任總司令最近一次狠批情報機構。他之前曾暗示，由於情報機構當年錯誤地以爲伊拉克的薩達姆?侯賽因(Saddam Hussein)持有大規模殺傷性武器，因此他們不再值得信任，以此嘲弄情報機構認爲俄羅斯黑客入侵民主黨全國委員會(DNC)數據庫、並泄露大量令民主黨總統候選人希拉里?克林頓(Hillary Clinton)尷尬的材料的結論。Trust is the prize. The US news media has, more than other journalistic cultures, insisted (though now with increasing exceptions) on its commitment to neutrality and a discipline of checking: in this lies its claim to be trusted. For journalists who care about the craft, seeking and publishing as much of the truth as they can discover remains the reason for their power and privileges, and for trust to be placed in them. The intelligence services, which provide a synopsis of highly classified material to the Oval Office every day before 8am, in the form of the President’s Daily Brief, would find their work rendered meaningless if the administration dismissed it as either intrinsically flawed because of past error, or politically partial. (During his campaign, Trump declared that he had no need for such a briefing.)
信任是無價之寶。相比其他國家的新聞文化，美國新聞媒體向來在更大程度上堅守中立和嚴謹覈查的承諾（儘管如今例外行爲越來越多）：這是美國媒體自稱值得信任的依據。對於那些在乎職業操守的新聞從業人員來說，尋找和公佈他們所發現的全部真相，仍然是他們擁有威力和特權、並受到信任的理由。情報機構每天早8點前以《總統每日簡報》(President’s Daily Brief)形式向橢圓形辦公室(Oval Office)呈交高度機密的情報摘要，如果特朗普政府認爲《簡報》本質上有缺陷（因爲過去的失誤）或者帶有政治傾向，因而對它置之不理，情報機構會發現自己的工作毫無意義。（特朗普曾在競選期間宣告，他不需要這類簡報。）President Trump campaigned to destroy trust in two of the institutions most requiring it as the basis for their existence. In doing so, he has both implicitly and explicitly demanded that trust be placed only, or at least mainly, in him. The truth begins, and ends, in him. And Trump has mounted that campaign knowing that both journalism and the intelligence agencies are more fragile than they have been in the past.
特朗普總統在競選時竭力摧毀人們對這兩家最需要信任作爲存在依據的機構的信任。這樣一來，他話裏話外地要求人們只信任他，至少主要信任他。真相由他開始，並以他爲終結。而特朗普在這方面造勢時，深知新聞業和情報機構比以往更加脆弱。The secret services were strongly criticised for failing to detect the plans and activities of the 9/11 hijackers. They were excoriated, especially on the left, for wrongly maintaining that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They were damaged, again, by the CIA’s use of waterboarding on suspected jihadists, classified as torture. And they suffered once more from Snowden’s theft of documents from the National Security Agency in 2013, which revealed that US citizens’ communications were being monitored without their knowledge. The agencies are turned to now because Americans, as many others, fear the actions of Islamist terrorists — but that would dissipate overnight if they missed signs of a terrorist-inspired mass murder.
由於未能察覺9/11事件劫機分子的計劃和行動，情報部門受到了強烈批評。由於錯誤地堅稱薩達姆擁有大規模殺傷性武器，他們受到了嚴厲指責，特別是來自左翼的譴責。由於中央情報局(CIA)對聖戰嫌疑人使用水刑（被視爲酷刑），他們的形象再次受損。由於2013年斯諾登竊取國家安全局(NSA)文件——揭露了美國公民在不知情的情況下受到監視——他們遭受了又一次打擊。如今人們依賴情報機構，是因爲美國人像其他很多國家的人們一樣，擔心伊斯蘭主義恐怖分子的行動，但如果情報機構錯過了恐怖分子發起大規模屠殺行動的跡象，這種信賴會在一夜間消失殆盡。Journalism, which has never been so available, so varied and so accessible to comment, correction and argument from its audience, nevertheless suffers from the closures and cuts in one of its main institutions: the newspaper. Putting out a quality newspaper with wide coverage and high standards of fact-checking and reliability is becoming increasingly hard — as advertising rapidly deserts print for digital, which usually means Google and Facebook. All newspapers struggle to adapt to the digital age: some with present success, others with continued heavy losses.
新聞業從沒有像如今這樣易於獲得、多樣、而且受衆可以輕易進行評論、更正以及爭辯，但與此同時，新聞業的主要媒介之一報紙面對停刊和縮減規模。出版一份報道全面、在覈查事實和可信度方面達到高水準的優質報紙，正變得越來越難——廣告業正迅速拋棄紙質媒體，轉投數字化媒體，而後者往往意味着谷歌(Google)和Facebook。所有報紙都掙扎着適應數字化時代：一些報紙暫時取得了成功，而其他報紙繼續嚴重虧損。Broadcast and cable news have fared well in the past year — Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, said last spring that Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”. But the “mainstream” media are regarded with suspicion by a large majority of Americans: Gallup’s annual poll of those with a large or fair amount of trust in news media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” dropped to 32 per cent last September (14 per cent among Republicans). These were new lows.
過去一年，地面和有線電視新聞的形勢不錯——去年春天，美國哥倫比亞廣播公司(CBS)首席執行官萊斯利?穆恩夫斯(Leslie Moonves)曾表示，特朗普的競選“對美國來說或許不好，但對CBS來說簡直太好了”。但大多數美國人以懷疑的態度來看待“主流”媒體：去年9月蓋洛普(Gallup)的年度調查顯示，非常相信或比較相信新聞媒體“全面、準確和公平地報道新聞”的人下滑至32%（在共和黨人士中持這個觀點的人僅爲14%），創下了新低。Trump has been able both to capitalise on this trend, and to further it. His posture is of a piece with other populist leaders: in Italy, Beppe Grillo, leader of the Five Star Movement, presently Italy’s most popular, recently called for citizen juries to judge journalists’ accuracy, echoing Trump’s view that they were the main source of “fake news”. For all who take the populist route in politics, news media that attempt a coherent, fact-based narrative of current events are a natural enemy. The internet, with its promiscuous mixture of fact, conjecture, partisan spin and fake news deliberately constructed to gain attention and income, is a much more attractive medium within which to work. Thus Grillo has risen to challenge conventional Italian parties through his blog, and Trump to command US politics and media through Twitter.
特朗普既利用了這一趨勢，也對其推波助瀾。他的姿態與其他民粹主義領導人一致：在意大利，五星運動黨(Five Star Movement)領導人、目前意大利人氣最高的政客貝佩?格里洛(Beppe Grillo)最近呼籲設立公民陪審團來評判記者的準確性，這呼應了特朗普有關記者是“假新聞”主要源頭的觀點。對於所有在政治上走民粹主義路線的政客，試圖對時事進行以事實爲基礎的有條理的報道的新聞媒體都是天敵。相比之下，摻雜着事實、推測、黨派炒作以及爲了吸引眼球和盈利而有意捏造的假新聞的互聯網，是更加過癮的媒介。因此，格里洛通過博客挑戰意大利傳統政黨，而特朗普將通過Twitter對美國政治和媒體發號施令。It is a measure of the radicalism of Trump’s postures that he has pushed two sparring partners into the same corner. Before Trump, the largest challenge facing the intelligence agencies from the press was the culture of leaking — brought home to them by the taking of some 1.5m files from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor.
突顯特朗普過激姿態的一個跡象是，他把兩個相互爭吵的機構逼到了同一個牆角。在特朗普之前，情報機構面對來自新聞界的最大挑戰是泄密文化——NSA前合同工斯諾登從該機構竊取了約150萬份文件，使這個問題的嚴重性表露無遺。The NSA leaks, and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, erected the scaffolding for a new era of journalism. In Assange’s words, mass leaks issuing forth from the centre of power created a “new system”, a tool of liberation as powerful as Marx’s vision of the proletariat produced by 19th-century industrialisation, tearing down the oppressive and mystifying structures of capitalism and bourgeois society.
NSA文件泄露事件以及朱利安?阿桑奇(Julian Assange)的維基解密，爲新聞業的新時代搭起了腳手架。用阿桑奇的話來說，權力中心的大規模泄密事件創造了一個“新體系”，一種強大的解放工具，就像19世紀工業化催生的馬克思的願景：無產階級砸爛充滿壓迫而又故弄玄虛的資本主義體制和資產階級社會。In the hands of the American lawyer and writer Glenn Greenwald, one of the small group trusted (on no personal acquaintance) by Snowden to handle the NSA material, the leaks have been moulded into a challenge, both to the western democratic states and the journalism they produce. Leaks of huge caches of data are now routine in journalism: the most dramatic in the past year has been the estimated 11.5m files taken from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm, detailing how the rich get richer by evading taxes — a haul that chimes snugly with present anger at widening inequalities of wealth.
在美國律師兼記者格倫?格林沃爾德(Glenn Greenwald)——他是斯諾登（在個人不認識的情況下）信任並交出NSA文件的小團體的一人——手中，泄密行爲被搞成了一個挑戰：既是對西方民主國家的挑戰，也是對泄密產生的新聞報道的挑戰。如今，泄露海量數據已成了新聞業的常態：過去一年最戲劇化的事件是從巴拿馬律所莫薩克?豐塞卡(Mossack Fonseca)取走約1150萬份文件，詳細記錄了富人如何通過逃稅而變得更加富有——這種泄密與當今人們對財富不平等日益加劇的憤怒十分吻合。Greenwald believes that journalistic objectivity is a “suffocating constraint”, “self-neutering” and that “strong, highly factual, aggressive, adversarial journalism” is the only form fitting for societies in which the political power has so comprehensively lost any claim to trust or respect. In this sense, the leaking movement can make common cause with Trump and other populists: both see the mainstream news media as mendacious and part of a corrupt establishment. Trump has praised Assange for publishing the leaked DNC emails: it remains to be seen whether he will follow senior Republicans in criticising the departing President Obama’s commutation of the 35-year sentence imposed on Chelsea Manning, a soldier who leaked sensitive military and diplomatic material to WikiLeaks in 2010.
格林沃爾德認爲，新聞客觀性是一種“令人窒息的約束”，“自我閹割”，而只有“強勢、高度事實化、咄咄逼人、對抗性的新聞”形式才符合政治權力已全面失去信任和尊重的當今社會。從這層意義上講，泄密運動與特朗普和其他民粹主義者不謀而合：雙方都認爲主流新聞媒體是虛假的，是腐敗體制的一部分。特朗普因阿桑奇公佈了民主黨全國委員會的泄密郵件而讚揚了他：尚不清楚特朗普是否會像資深共和黨人士那樣批評奧巴馬在卸任前給切爾西?曼寧(Chelsea Manning)減刑的舉動。2010年，身爲軍人的曼寧把敏感的軍事和外交材料泄露給了維基解密，因此被判35年有期徒刑。The growth of the power and the reach of the intelligence agencies in all states, and their much larger ability to monitor communications, does need an active, inquiring and knowledgable journalism if the much-vaunted purpose of the trade — “to hold power to account” — is to be properly fulfilled. In the US, the intelligence-industrial complex is now a huge network of agencies and private contractors. More than 1,200 state organisations and nearly 2,000 private companies, according to an estimate by the Washington Post in 2010, work on some aspect of counter-terrorism, intelligence and homeland security. No individual, committee or agency can properly monitor that vast archipelago.
在各國情報機構的權力和觸角擴大、以及它們監聽通信的能力大幅增加的情況下，要切實履行新聞界誇耀的“向權力問責”的目的，確實需要活躍、愛刨根問底、有水平的新聞工作。在美國，如今情報/工業體系已經形成了由機構和私營承包商組成的巨大網絡。根據《華盛頓郵報》(Washington Post) 2010年的估算，超過1200個國家組織和近2000傢俬營企業在從事反恐、情報和國土安全方面的工作。任何個人、委員會和機構都無法監督如此龐大的羣體。In his sharply critical history of the CIA (Legacy of Ashes, 2007), Tim Weiner writes that its need for secrecy “would always conflict with the openness of American democracy”. In research for a book I wrote on the relationship between journalism and the intelligence agencies, based on the three largest centres in the west — France, the UK and the US — it became obvious that their much-extended ability to monitor communications and identify suspects almost everywhere, coupled with their need for secrecy, came into conflict with French and British, as well as US, democratic practice. The problem has only become more intractable.
蒂姆?韋納(Tim Weiner)在他2007年出版的尖銳批評CIA歷史的著作《監聽大國》(Legacy of Ashes)中寫道，該機構對保密的需要“總是會與美國民主制度的開放性相沖突”。我曾以西方三大中心（法國、英國和美國）新聞界和情報機構之間的關係寫了一本書，在爲該書做研究的過程中，我清楚地看到，情報機構在幾乎任何地方監聽通信和追查嫌疑人的龐大觸角範圍，加上他們對保密的需要，與法國和英國、以及美國的民主實踐都發生了衝突。這個問題近年只是變得更加棘手。To talk to spies, especially the leaders, is to grasp that they live between two strongly conflicting poles. They are conscious of the pressures on them to be more open and transparent. But for the agency heads, “transparency” and “openness”, while formally assented to in public statements, are suspect concepts, capable of endless encroachment into areas that must remain closed.
和間諜、特別是情報機構負責人交談，可以理解他們生活在兩個強烈衝突的極端的夾縫中。他們知道自己承受的壓力——要更加開放和透明。但對於情報機構負責人來說，公開聲明中已經正式納入的“透明”和“公開”是可疑的概念，會沒完沒了地侵蝕必須保密的領域。During his time as chief of MI6, from 2004-09, Sir John Scarlett decided to commission a history of the service, never before allowed on grounds of security. Against some resistance, Scarlett went ahead: the result, a detailed and readable account, began in 1909 but ended in 1949 — the closest to the present time that the agency felt it could come.
在2004年-2009年領導英國軍情六處(MI6)，約翰?斯卡利特爵士(Sir John Scarlett)決定委託編寫該機構的歷史；出於安全理由，此前這從未被批准過。儘管遭遇了一些抵制，但斯卡利特繼續推進：結果就是一部詳盡且可讀性較強的記錄，從1909年開始，但只寫到了1949年——這是該機構覺得它可以解密的最近時間點。Meta Ramsay, one of the most senior women to serve in MI6, told me she had been keen for the service to “avow” itself — admit it existed — after decades of blank denials by successive governments and reams of fictitious stories by journalists: it was avowed in 1992 by the new prime minister John Major. She changed her mind, she said, in large part because she thought parliament’s intelligence and security committee probed too deeply, and extracted from the agency heads too much. “If people are going to risk their lives in order to give information they must be assured that the services won’t leak. They won’t have that trust if they think a lot is being told to a parliamentary committee,” she said.
梅塔?拉姆齊(Meta Ramsay)是軍情六處級別最高的女性之一，她告訴我，她曾經渴望該機構能“承認”自己的存在——在幾十年期間，歷屆英國政府都矢口否認其存在，記者們則寫了大量虛構的故事：1992年，當時的新首相約翰?梅傑(John Major)承認了軍情六處的存在。她說，後來她改變了想法，很大程度上是因爲她認爲英國議會的情報和安全委員會盤問得過深，從該機構的頭頭那裏得到了太多情報。“如果人們冒着生命危險提供信息，他們必須得到軍情六處不會泄密的保證。如果他們認爲很多情報被告知了議會委員會，他們將不會有那種信任，”她說。The former chief who most fully — and mordantly — explained to me the place of the services in contemporary society was Pierre Brochand, who recalled that when he took over as head of France’s external intelligence service DGSE in 2002, “the prevailing attitude was a sort of anxious paralysis, not too dissimilar to a mongoose tetanised by a snake and waiting to be eaten”.
法國對外安全總局(DGSE)前局長皮埃爾?布羅尚(Pierre Brochand)最爲全面（也最犀利）地向我講解了情報機構在現代社會中的處境。他回憶道，當他在2002年接管這個法國對外情報機構時，“普遍的心態是一種焦慮的癱瘓，就像與一隻被蛇纏住、等着被吃掉的貓鼬”。Where others see a threat to the agencies, and to national security, in the enhanced and constantly improving abilities of hackers, Brochand takes a broader view. He believes that “the paranoia that goes with the trade of intelligence in western societies” in part stems from these societies’ transformation into “individualistic democracies [with] the motto of liberty, equality, transparency, morality”. Transparency is, he continues, “in a way, the condition for protecting liberty and equality, since information is power and if it is hidden from the people both liberty and equality are supposed to be in danger”. He thinks that realpolitik, a dispassionate and secret furthering of the aims of the state, which must be “at the core of the workings of an intelligence service”, is now seen as a menace.
別人從黑客增強且不斷提升的能力中看到了對情報機構乃至國家安全的威脅，而布羅尚的視角更寬。他認爲，“伴隨西方社會情報工作的無端恐懼”在某種程度上源自於這些社會向“個人主義民主政體的轉型，其箴言是自由、平等、透明、道義”。他接着說，透明“從某些方面說是保護自由與平等的條件，因爲信息就是力量，如果對人民隱匿信息，自由和平等會被認爲處於危險之中”。他認爲，現實政治——推進國家目標的一種冷靜、祕密的方式，它必須處於“情報機構運作的核心”——如今被視爲一種威脅。Meanwhile the state, once above civil society, “is no longer in the driver’s seat, everything it does coming under the close scrutiny of the controllers — judges, journalists, pollsters, advocacy NGOs, whistleblowers, etc — and what remains out of reach from their constant oversight being, by definition, highly suspicious”. During his six-year tenure, Brochand did open up the DGSE to briefings and, for the higher journalists, lunches — but confined what was passed on to “titbits of sexy information they could publish without inconvenience for us, but of great value for them, since it gave them an opportunity to maintain their reputation of insiders”.
與此同時，一度被置於公民社會之上的國家，“不再處於掌控位置，其所做的一切會處於控制者——法官、記者、民意調查員、非政府組織、告密者等等——的密切監視之下，而如果有什麼事情還能處於他們的持續控管之外，那些事情難免變得高度可疑”。在他任職的6年期間，布羅尚確實推動了DGSE的開放，舉行媒體吹風會，並和高級記者共進午餐，但透露的內容侷限於“他們可以發表的點點滴滴的猛料信息，既不給我們帶來不便，又對他們有巨大價值，因爲這讓他們有機會維護自己作爲‘圈內人士’的聲譽”。Though other intelligence chiefs may have been less magnificently condescending in their treatment of journalists, none would depart much from Brochand’s method. What else, they would say, can they do? John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA (and an interregnum director in 2004), told me that “the dilemma felt acutely in intelligence is that you want the world to know you’re doing a job to protect citizens?.?.?.?[but] you can’t tell them much”. Proud that the US is by some way the most open about its secret services, he nevertheless sees the price as high — perhaps too high.
雖然其他情報機構負責人對待記者或許不那麼居高臨下，但他們不會偏離布羅尚的方式太遠。他們會問，除此之外他們還能做什麼？CIA前副局長（2004年曾任過渡局長）約翰?麥克勞克林(John McLaughlin)對我說，“情報界感受最強烈的兩難困境是，你想讓世界知道自己在從事保護公民的工作……（但）你不能告訴他們太多”。雖然他以美國情報機構遙遙領先地最開放爲傲，但他認爲這樣的代價很高——或許過高了。“Any adversary studying the frequent open congressional testimonies by intelligence officials, our daily press stories, our declassified intelligence publications and our endless stream of leaks would have to be hopelessly dim not to understand our priorities?.?.?.?Foreign officials, who do not have such requirements, endlessly ask me: ‘Why, in heaven’s name, do you do this?’?” He bemoans a vastly expensive and lengthy repair job on the effects of the Snowden leaks and their publication. “We have to ask the question of the media: how hard do you want my job to be?” he concluded.
“任何對手如果研究我國情報官員頻繁而公開的國會作證、我們每天的新聞稿、我們解密的情報出版物以及我們層出不窮的泄密，只要不是白癡得不可救藥，都會掌握我們的優先事項……不面對此類要求的外國官員不斷問我：‘老天，你們爲什麼要這麼做？’”他哀嘆道，爲了消除斯諾登泄密及這些機密被公開的的影響，需要進行漫長的、花費巨大的善後工作。“我們必須問媒體愛問的一個問題：你想讓我的工作變得多麼困難？”他最後說。The secret services have long been in conflict with the mindset that sees in the activities of the agencies at least the potential for wider repression. Sir John Scarlett, former head of MI6, becomes agitated when asked about it — saying, “The talk as if we’re living in a state on the edge of authoritarianism is nonsense. And it needs to be clear that it is so. This is a liberal society. Where do you think the officers come from?”
對於認爲情報機構的活動至少有可能是更廣泛鎮壓的心態，西方情報機構一直很反感。在被問到這一問題時，MI6前負責人斯卡利特變得非常激動，他說，“說我們彷彿生活在一個處於威權主義邊緣的國家純屬無稽之談。這一點需要明確。我們生活在自由社會。你以爲情報官員們來自哪裏？”If these former directors shy away from greater transparency, they do so in part because of their steady belief that they are men and women to be trusted. “You go up to any British citizen and tell them who you are and ask them to work with you — most people will say ‘yes’,” says Scarlett. “But it does depend on a consensus that you are doing the right thing.” When pressed as to why the services should always enjoy automatic trust, Scarlett said that “our” officials have “grown up and are part of a liberal society, with a structure of civil and human rights, in which they believe.”
如果說這些前情報局長不願提高透明度，那麼他們這麼做的部分原因是他們堅定地認爲自己是一羣值得信任的人。“你隨便找一個英國公民，告訴他們你是誰，請他們配合你的工作——多數人會說‘好的’，”斯卡利特說。“但這確實取決於一項共識，即你在做正確的事情。”在被追問到爲什麼情報機構總是應該自然而然地得到信任時，斯卡利特說，“我們的”官員們“在一個自由社會長大，是這個社會的一部分，而這個社會有一套民權和人權架構，這是他們相信的。”In his book Securing the State (2010), Sir David Omand, a former head of GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent to the NSA, provides the most intellectually vivid underpinning of his trade. In an extended teasing out of the images and meanings in the 14th-century painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s vast fresco in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico — “The Allegory of Good and Bad Government” — he emphasises the dominant theme: that only security can give rise to the busy, peaceful and stable urban and agrarian society shown in the “good government” fresco. Its lack is shown, in the contrasting fresco, as cruelty, betrayal, fraud, terror and internal discord, with the figure of Tyranny lording over all. “In the allegory of Good Government, Peace and Security are twin concepts. Peace herself rests on strong defences and Security on justice firmly exercised.”
英國的政府通信總部(GCHQ)前負責人戴維?奧曼德爵士(Sir David Omand)在2010年出版的《保衛國家》(Securing the State)一書中，對自己從事的這一行做了最有理論水平的生動描述。GCHQ的職責相當於美國的NSA。在對14世紀畫家安布羅焦?洛倫採蒂(Ambrogio Lorenzetti)繪於意大利錫耶納市政廳的巨型壁畫《好政府與壞政府的諷喻》(Allegory of Good and Bad Government)中的畫面和涵義作了一番梳理後，他強調了其中占主導地位的主題：只有安全才能帶來“好政府”壁畫部分展現的繁忙、和平、穩定的城市和農村社會。與之形成鮮明對比的另一部分壁畫展現的是缺乏安全所帶來的殘酷、背叛、欺詐、恐怖和內部不和諧，還有一個高高在上的暴君人物。“這幅壁畫反映了一對孿生概念。和平本身依靠強大的防禦，而安全要建立在堅定執行的正義之上。”For Omand, as for his fellows who had commanded the west’s main institutions of intelligence, security — when tempered by justice and democracy — is the keystone of the construction of a liberal society. The news media, they insist, should hold society’s other institutions to account, but not them: “You can’t tell them much”, and so trust must be taken on trust.
對歐蒙德以及那些曾經執掌西方主要情報機構的同儕而言，安全——在受到正義和民主的制約時——是打造自由社會的基石。他們堅持認爲，新聞媒體應該追究社會其他機構的責任，但不是他們：“你不能對他們說太多”，也就是說，必須對信任本身給予信任。The relationship with journalism, stable enough if frequently combative, is now deeply disturbed by mass leaks and unpredictable whistleblowers: more than that, by an incoming commander-in-chief who, until now, has seen them as hostile to his short-term needs, and may seek the revenge of indifference. A new figure of Tyranny to come?
情報機構與新聞工作的關係——還算穩定，即便經常互鬥——如今已經被大規模泄密、不可預測的告密者，以及（這一點更嚴重）新任總司令嚴重擾亂，後者至今將情報機構和媒體視爲不利於自己的短期需要，並可能試圖以冷漠來報復。新的暴君人物即將降臨？John Lloyd is an FT contributing editor. ‘Journalism in an Age of Terror: Covering and Uncovering the Secret State’ (IB Tauris) is published now
約翰?勞埃德(John Lloyd)是英國《金融時報》特約編輯。他的新書《恐怖時代的新聞工作：報道和揭露祕密國家》(Journalism in an Age of Terror: Covering and Uncovering the Secret State)現已出版
