If there is one book you don't want to read this year it is BOTTOMS UP AND THE DEVIL LAUGHS (2023) by Kerry Howley. Why shouldn't you read it? If you want to believe that you are safe in your country, and the people protecting you are competent, don't read it. If you want to believe that you are protected by our government's effective security system, don't read it. If you want to believe that all the leaks and reports on the government are junk, don't believe it. If you want to believe that a patriotic young woman who wants to serve her country will be honored, don't read it. For everyone else, who is disillusioned about the current state of the nation, this book provides additional data on certain problems. It is journalistic and provocative, but it is hard to place it clearly in Red or Blue. It is more like "a pox on all your houses".
The book is an expansion of a biographical article Howley wrote for the New Yorker on Reality Winner (her real name) a young woman who served in the air force and was later jailed for revealing top secret information. This narrative is the guiding thread of the book, but it is put in the context of the "leaks" of Assange, Snowden, and Kiriakou, only the last of whom has been prosecuted. The narrative is also augmented by the John Lindh story, a young man who wandered off the reservation to Afghanistan, too late to support the US effort, and unwanted by the Taliban. Unfortunately he was labeled a traitor by the USA and became a CIA success story for capturing and jailing a traitor American, who conveniently hailed from Marin County CA, far from the Texas heroes Bush and Cheney.
The narrative takes many unexpected digressions, which introduce characters who play a significant role in the Winner story, or try to. The narrative is simple: 1) A naive young woman from rural Texas decides to go in the Air Force, after 911, and learn a language to go and fight the Taliban. 2) She joins the Air Force, is taught Pashto, serves her enlistment at a desk at an NSA site translating intelligence messages for information that might involve national security. She has Top Security clearance for this. She is never involved in any major intelligence discovery. 3) During this service, she becomes bored, reads other documents and copies one reporting on Russian hacking of the US election of Trump. She thinks this is important for the public to know, and copies it against Top Secret regulations taking it with her off site. 4) Soon after her discharge, while searching around for a new job, she decides to "leak" this information to INTERCEPT, a site that claims to publish important documents on line, anonymously, a clear violation of her Top Secret clearance. 5) Instead of releasing the information anonymously, INTERCEPT "by mistake" leaves markers that clearly lead back to Reality and her printer. 6) Reality is arrested on espionage charges, and spends 6 years in jail, mostly shuffled around pre-trial, and eventually pleads out to avoid further incarceration. She is one of a handful of persons ever successfully prosecuted for leaking documents, in this case documents that had significant public interest and no danger to espionage.
The story of John Lindh provides an example of a total "naife" who is labeled a dangerous traitor despite the reality that he had no real contact with Taliban, and despite the fact that the Taliban had little to do with 911. He is tortured despite having no useful information (and other examples, and the controversy about waterboarding are included for good measure). He is held up as a symbol of traitors to America by a government who is betraying the country with lies about nuclear weapons and fails to manage its military efforts. This same government institutes the TSA, integrates Homeland Security, and vastly increases the labeling of documents as Top Secret to avoid public disclosures. Howley's point is that Lindh is a tool for misinformation by the government's propaganda system, and had no significance as a terrorist or a source of useful information.
The subsequent "leaks" of more sensitive information by Assange and Snowden are examples of important disclosures of how extensively the governments around the world are spying on their citizens, including the "democratic" government of the US of A. Are these "leakers" heroes trying to reveal the collapse of democracy and free speech that is underway? Or are they traitors revealing information that may compromise the lives of loyal spies out in the field? Who decides? Since the information is Top Secret, it is impossible for the "average citizen" to evaluate the leaks in the context of the information being gathered. Howley describes reports that drone attacks kill the wrong person because the data is based on incorrect phone info and other sources. Is all this information gathering making us safer? or killing the wrong people and supressing individual freedoms? The simple answer is that we must trust our government to do the right thing. This is where Reality comes in.
Yes, Reality Winner did leak some Top Secret information to INTERCEPT, but it was about other countries attacking America. Why was that secret? And if it is, why is her trial so secret, and her attorney never able to get access to the claims against her? And why is this confused little woman being presented as if she is a major danger to national security? Don't we have bigger fish to catch? Maybe not. Did they publicize her trial to send a message to other "confused kids" not to mess with this? No. Another "confused kid" Jack Teixeira recently did similar things as a member of, not NSA, but the Massachusetts Air National Guard where he had access to Top Secret documents. Doesn't anybody pay attention to who has access? Do they let just anybody have access to Top Secret documents? Then why are they TS? Or are they not that important and nobody really wants to decide? (That is Howley's view.) An especially quirky story is about Kiriakou who wrote a paper that was submitted to a different agency, and distributed it even though he did not have clearance for that agency, and became the first CIA officer convicted for leak as a result. This sounds like somebody doesn't know what's going on. These are the agencies that protect our country from others, in secret, to keep us safe. Don't read this book unless you want to have nightmares.
Where does the title come from? (Spoiler alert: don't read on if you want to read the book) The penultimate chapter described a legal battle between an energy drink company and a fundamental Christian who believed the symbols on the can meant the drink was demonic. (I told you not to read this.) Her chant is "Bottoms up, and the Devil laughs". This chapter describes the chaos of the Jan 6th situation, including a Realtor storming congress who stops to promote her company. Folks, you can't make this stuff up.
