"Lincoln's Surveillance State" Op-Ed NYTimes July 6, 2013

[David Lockmiller]

I am hoping that someone will be able to help me to locate a purported letter written by Secretary of War Stanton to Abraham Lincoln in 1862. The letter (allegedly found in the 1990’s in the Library of Congress) is referenced in the NY Times Op-Ed Published July 5 and appearing in the NY Times July 6 (Saturday) electronic edition.

I do not believe that such a letter as described in the Op-Ed piece actually exists in the papers of the Library of Congress. I have already sent a “question” request to the librarian at the Library of Congress, since I could not find the item in an online search of the site.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Lincoln's Surveillance State
By DAVID T. Z. MINDICH

"The N.S.A.'s data-mining has a historical precedent in the federal government's monitoring of the telegraphs in 1862."

[The highlights of the Op-Ed piece are as follows:]

“Many commentators have deemed the government’s activities alarming and unprecedented. The N.S.A.’s program is indeed alarming – but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented.”

"In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton's letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: 'The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.'"

Professor Mindich added: "I came across this letter in the 1990's in the Library of Congress while researching Stanton's wartime efforts to control the press . . . ."

I did some of my own research to find a reference to such a letter and came up blank.

1. "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" Vol II, by Professor Michael Burlingame, The Jonh Hopkins University Press, 2008

2. "Mr. Lincoln's White House" at http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org (telegraph)

3. Smithsonian Civil War Studies: Article - "In the Original Situation Room - Abraham Lincoln and the Telegraph" The Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter, Volume 8, Number 8. (2006)

I think that this is some sort of bizarre hoax. In the first place, to think that it was technologically possible to “reroute” at that time all the telegraph lines in the United States through to the office of Secretary of War Stanton is an absolute ABSURDITY.

In fact, according to the referenced article immediately above - "In the Original Situation Room - Abraham Lincoln and the Telegraph" -

“When Lincoln arrived for his inauguration in 1861 there was not even a telegraph line to the War Department, much less the White House. Storm clouds were brewing, but when the US Army wanted to send a telegram they did like everyone else: sending a clerk with a hand written message to stand in line at Washington’s central telegraph office.”

In the reference above labeled “2” ( "Mr. Lincoln's White House"), the subsequent centralization of telegraphic communication for the war at Stanton’s office and Mr. Lincoln’s routine for checking telegraphs are laid out. There is no mention in this article of any journalistic or any other non-governmental communications being “monitored” in the telegraph office.

“In March 1862 Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton insisted in centralizing all telegraph communication for the war at the War Department's old library next to his office. The President therefore had to go to the telegraph office there to read war dispatches and send his own. (The telegraph office had previously been located in two other locations in the same building, but General George McClellan had his own telegraph service at his headquarters in 1861-1862.)

“The office gave Mr. Lincoln an opportunity to write and think in peace as he waited for telegrams to arrive and be deciphered - as well to socialize in a way that was impossible elsewhere in Washington. Telegraph operator Albert B. Chandler reported the President said: ‘I come here to escape my persecutors. Hundreds of people come in and say they want to see me for only a minute. That means if I can hear their story and grant their request in a minute, it will be enough.’

“One telegraph operator, Homer Bates, later recorded Mr. Lincoln's routine:

“When in the telegraph office, Lincoln was most easy of access. He often talked with the cipher-operators, asking questions regarding the dispatches which we were translating from or into cipher, or which were filed in the order of receipt in the little drawer in our cipher-desk.Lincoln's habit was to go immediately to the drawer each time he came into our room, and read over the telegrams, beginning at the top, until he came to the one he had seen at his last previous visit.”

In fact, according to this article, President Lincoln used the peace and quiet of his time at the telegraph office to write the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in the summer of 1862. Major Thomas Eckert, head of the telegraph office, reported:

“I became much interested in the matter and was impressed with the idea that he was engaged upon something of great importance, but did not know what it was until he had finished the document and then for the first time he told me that he had been writing an order giving freedom to the slaves in the South, for the purpose of hastening the end of the war. He said he had been able to work at my desk more quietly and command his thoughts better than at the White House, where he was frequently interrupted. I still have in my possession the ink-stand which he used at that time and which, as you know, stood on my desk until after Lee's surrender. The pen he used was a small barrel-pen by Gillott - such as were supplied to the cipher-operators."

If anyone can find a copy of this letter written by Stanton to Lincoln, please post a location reference in reply.

In the meantime, I shall send an email to the editors of the New York Times and request that they also check thoroughly as to whether a hoax has been perpetrated upon them in this manner. If so, the NY Times should retract this Op-Ed on page one of their paper as soon as possible with a complete explanation as to how the NY Times was so easily bamboozled into providing to its millions of dedicated and trusting readers a false representation of “Lincoln” history as a “precedent” to justify the National Security Agency’s data-mining programs in the United States and the rest of the world. Having the governmental “means” to an “end” do not, in and of themselves, justify governmental “ends.”