This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 8, 2013 - In a June 13 article (“Combating Terror with Eyes Wide Shut”), I remarked on the coincidence that whistleblower/turncoat Edward Snowden shared the same last name with a key character in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Both the real Snowden and his fictional predecessor became famous by spilling their guts, though the former did so metaphorically while the latter was quite literal about the process.
At the time, I thought the literary allusion was clever but hardly profound. The continuing real-life drama of Edward Snowden, however, has forced me to re-evaluate its significance.
Heller’s novel relates the saga of John Yossarian, an iconoclastic and charmingly paranoid bombardier in an American air wing stationed on a small island off the coast of Italy during WW II. Yossarian believes people are trying to kill him.
He faults the Germans for shooting at his aircraft while he drops bombs on them and blames his commanders for forcing him to fly an ever-escalating number of missions in which he could be killed. For his money, both sides are complicit in the plot to do him in.
Yossarian’s horrific episode with Snowden is woven piecemeal into the book’s greater narrative like a recurring nightmare. With each retelling, the reader is drawn closer to the awful revelation of Snowden’s terrible secret.
The squadron is returning from a bomb run under heavy anti-aircraft fire. As the plane bucks and rocks from the concussion of the bombardment, Yossarian hears cries for help from the rear of the craft.
Responding to investigate, he finds Snowden lying supine in a pool of blood. Choking back nausea, he tends to a gruesome, but treatable, wound on the airman’s leg. As he proceeds, he gains confidence in his ministrations and grows optimistic that his crewmate will survive.
Snowden, however, continues to moan plaintively, complaining of the cold. Yossarian, drenched in sweat, figures the kid must be in shock until he notices a small bloodstain near the armpit of Snowden’s flak jacket.
When he rips open the jacket to examine the second wound, most of Snowden’s important parts spill forth upon the deck — his torso has been nearly bisected by a piece of shrapnel, rendering the first aid Yossarian had been so proud of pointless.
After unpacking Snowden’s now useless chute, Yossarian covers the dying man and his steaming insides with the silk canopy and kneels beside him to offer what comfort he could. “There, there,” he says…
Heller explains his protagonist’s enlightenment: “Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window, and he’ll fall. Set fire to him, and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot like other garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.”
Needless to say, this grim epiphany further dampened Yossarian’s already tepid enthusiasm for the war effort. Recognizing that he was made of mortal and quite vulnerable meat, he became determined to “live forever or die trying.”
The present Snowden’s secret is less visceral but troubling nonetheless. His revelation of universal snooping by the NSA means the Fourth Amendment is merely over-ripe words written on old paper. The very government that was created by the Constitution is now apparently able to ignore whatever passages of the founding document it finds to be inconvenient.
The guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure is still in full force; however, the threat of terrorism makes all searches and seizures reasonable. Catch-22.
Of course, the terrorist danger is quite real and as Justice Robert Jackson aptly noted, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” But protective measures that destroy what we’re trying to preserve are obviously self-defeating. This place used to be known as the “Land of the Free.”
Four major terrorist incidents have been perpetrated on our soil in the last 20 years. Seven men were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, three were prosecuted for the Oklahoma City bombing, 19 more were identified posthumously in the 9/11 attacks and two others are credited with the Boston Marathon bombings. (The Feds consider the Fort Hood shootings to be workplace violence.)
For readers keeping score at home, that’s 31 acknowledged terrorists. Of that cohort, three were born in the United States. More than 90 percent of our domestic terrorism from the last two decades was imported.
Ramzi Yousef, for instance, was born in Kuwait. He arrived on our shores Sept. 1, 1992, with a false Israeli passport. After his papers were discovered to be bogus, he claimed to be a political refugee and requested asylum. He was subsequently admitted to the U.S., pending a hearing on his case. He repaid that kindness the following year by placing a bomb in the basement of the WTC.
Meanwhile, those of us who actually live and work here are reduced to civic nudists, stripped of any pretense of privacy so clueless authorities can continue to admit mortal enemies into our midst. The Department of Homeland Security often reminds me of Yossarian administering first aid to Snowden’s leg because it spends most of its time diligently treating the wrong problem.