Media events have a life of their own.
Consider the launch of the so-called Tiananmen Papers. On
January 7, Mike Wallace interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes
an anonymous person in disguise who claimed, at some undisclosed
time and place, to have hand-copied a massive number of
Chinese secret documents that included transcripts of meetings,
telephone conversations and other communications that the
top leaders of China had with one another at the time of
the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He said he smuggled
out transcriptions of a portion of this data on computer
disks. He has assumed a disguise so he would have the option
of returning to Beijing. A portion of this material has
been published in a book, The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese
Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People
(Public Affairs), edited by Andrew Nathan, professor of
political science at Columbia University, and Perry Link,
professor of Chinese language and literature at Princeton
University, with an afterword by Orville Schell, an author
and former consultant to 60 Minutes. The material also appeared
in Foreign Affairs with an introduction by Nathan. Completing
the circle, CBS Evening News quoted 60 Minutes' statement
that the documents had been "authenticated" by
experts.
Authentication is a defined procedure
in which a questioned document, or a part of it, is compared
with the original or to an authenticated copy of it. In
this case, however, the experts cited by CBS had no opportunity
for matching documents with the originals. They did not
even possess the questioned hand-copied documents, only
the putative transcriptions of parts of them downloaded
from a computer disk. And they acknowledged that they did
not have proof that the originals existed.
The editors were able to verify bits
of information contained in questioned documents from other
sources. Much of the chronology of meetings, for example,
could be found in Nicholas Kristof's authoritative November
12, 1989, article, "How the Hard-Liners Won" in
the New York Times Magazine. But such verification does
not demonstrate that the documents are authentic. Bogus
documents may contain accurate information (for example,
facts in Clifford Irving's bogus Howard Hughes autobiography
were verified by both Time-Life and McGraw-Hill, and information
in the bogus "Hitler Diaries" was verified by
the eminent Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper). Indeed,
invented documents frequently involve peppering the text
with verifiable information. The credibility of documents
therefore rests on their provenance-- the traceable chain
of custody. By what means did these classified documents
get from the files of the Chinese Politburo and Chinese
security services into the hands of the media in America?
How were they copied without detection, transcribed onto
tape and transported to this country?
Hand-copying such massive files from
secret archives, which would constitute espionage of the
highest order, would involve care and time to evade security.
According to the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press,
some 15,000 pages were copied and, from them, a small fraction
were selected for the book. This would be a tall order.
If the copier managed to transcribe one page an hour, and
worked (in addition to his regular job) six hours a day,
five days a week, it would take him ten years to copy 15,000
pages (not counting the time to enter them into a computer).
Whoever copied such documents would have to have had access
to classified material in different secure areas. So, to
establish a provenance, it would be necessary to determine
the copier's position, rank, level of access to classified
documents and tenure in office. Those connected with the
book did not provide this provenance. Orville Schell told
me that he "is not at liberty to say from whom, or
how, the documents were obtained." James Hoge Jr.,
the editor of Foreign Affairs, wrote regarding the problem
of the time needed to transcribe these files, "The
work was done by a number of persons at the behest of high
level reformers." He explained further that the anonymous
person who appeared on 60 Minutes and whom the experts debriefed
was merely their designated deliverer. If so, a deliveryman
might himself not know who provided the documents to the
group of transcribers. So, what remains missing is the chain
of custody between the putative copier(s) and the deliverer.
Tiananmen Papers co-editor Nathan says
the computer disk he printed out contained 516 pages of
Chinese text. He suggested that reports in the Wall Street
Journal and Associated Press that it was drawn from 15,000
pages of purloined documents were in error. He reasoned
that the stories didn't come from me or Perry [Link], the
only authoritative sources on this question-- and were therefore
inaccurate. For his part, he says he cannot reveal the size
of the underlying archive the transcribers had access to
because it would endanger their safety.
Maybe so. But by asserting that he and
his co-editor are the only "authoritative sources,"
he is excluding all the others-- including the deliverer
(who gave his own press interviews), the group of transcribers
who boiled down the documents to 516 pages and the members
of the faction that purportedly directed them and who copied
the documents. Certainly, if such a treasure trove of documents
exists, there would be a great number of people in a position
to know its approximate size. Moreover, Nathan himself does
not claim to have firsthand knowledge of those involved,
other than the deliveryman. At best, from his work editing
them, he has, as he puts it, "my views about the identities
of the persons involved." He may be intuitively right--
or wrong-- but views do not make a provenance.
Finally, there is the question of motive.
Schell said in the Wall Street Journal that he was convinced
that the work was legitimate, both because of the deliverer's
apparent knowledge of the inner workings of the Chinese
government and the clarity of his motive in releasing documents.
His motive, Schell explains, was to help reformers gain
power in the Communist Party in Beijing. But the same clarity
of motive, a desire for power, might also lead a group to
arrange to publish bogus documents. The authors have, of
course, every right to publish a book they intuitively believe
is truthful. But we do not know who, if anyone, took and
copied these documents-- or how many documents there are
in the archive. We do not know why they were transcribed
or who transcribed them. We do not know who directed this
process-- or why-- and who selected, or wrote, the 516 pages
delivered for publication. All we know for sure is that
some anonymous person from China delivered for publication
in America a computer file that cannot be authenticated.
Responses:
To The Nation:
Mr. Epstein retails a story about 15,000
pages being hand-copied even though I told him it is false,
and justifies doing so by mentioning two newspaper articles
whose sources he hasn't checked. His other statements about
how the material reached me, and how my colleagues and I
verified it, are imaginary. (Andrew J. Nathan, Co-Editor
Of THE TIANANMEN PAPERS)
My Reply:
In fact, I did include in my article
not only Mr. Nathan's assertion that reports in the Wall
Street Journal and Associated Press but also his claim that
he and his co-editor were the only "authoritative sources
on this question." For my part, I do not know how many authentic
documents, if any at all, were ever copied in China or anywhere
else. The problem that concerns me is not the number of
pages, but if the provenance of what purports to be transcripts
of secret verbatim conversation of the leadership of China
in 1989, and which the publisher compares with the Pentagon
Papers, is real or imaginary.
In the case of the Pentagon Papers, the
New York Times, which published them, clearly established
that 1) the existence of authentic documents— The Secretary
of Defense had commissioned them in the late nineteen-sixties;
2) the existence of a bona fide copy at the Rand Corporation
3) and that the copier of them, Daniel Ellsberg, had the
necessary access and opportunity at the Rand Corporation.
In the case of the Tiananmen Papers,
the publisher has not established 2) that any of the putative
documents ever existed, or even that the Chinese leadership
ever made verbatim transcripts of their secret conversations
in 1989 2) that any such documents were ever copied or 3)
or who transcribed the supposed documents. It has even kept
secret the identity of the man who delivered to America
electronic data, which is no more verifiable than an anonymious
email. Under such circumstances, how can one verify that
copies of documents that one does not possess match original
documents that one does not know ever existed?
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