Rand Paul's Bilderberg “No Comment” and The Logan Act

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Rand Paul has been under intense scrutiny, not from usual suspects, but from his father’s national base of fervent libertarians and constitutionalists.  Since his controversial endorsement of Mitt Romney last week it has been all-hands-on-deck in the liberty movement.  People are beginning to know a little bit more about Rand and they do not like what they see – the honeymoon is over.

While some speculate his endorsement was a way to neutralize opposition from establishment GOP, laying down goodwill for his anticipated presidential run in 2016, others wonder whether he may be positioning himself as Lady Liberty’s double agent.  Ruminations aside, antennas are up and ready to analyze Rand’s next utterance.

This is one of the latest:

The secretive Bilderberg meeting concluded its most recent controversial confab earlier this month in Chantilly, Virginia.  The conference welcomed its typical shadowy constellation of global elite including many from all corners of American government: NSA chief General Keith Alexander; Thomas Donilon, Obama’s National Security Adviser; former U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger; failed GOP Presidential hopeful and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman; Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.); World Bank boss Robert Zoellick; Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Co-Chair and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and reportedly, among others, one - Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

The “reporter” from WGCN Radio Chicago was unable to confront Sen. Paul about his endorsee’s participation in Bilderberg, but his “no comment” on whether Kerry (and by extension his new found political pal) was in violation of the Logan Act speaks volumes; specifically he didn’t say “no.”  This reinforces Sen. Paul’s purported political gambit – sacrificing for a moment philosophical purity for the larger more pragmatic prize of the Presidency down the line.

Sen. Paul is no doubt familiar with his father’s position on members of the U.S. government meeting behind closed doors and discussing policy.  Rep. Paul has called for investigations into public officials and their Bilderberg attendance.  On talk radio he questioned Gov. Rick Perry for his participation:

“This information about him going over there and violating the Logan Act and getting involved, I’m just impressed that that’s in the ordinary media — I think that’s encouraging, too...”

While it is clear by now the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree it is also evident that Sen. Paul is not his father and may not be as eager to work outside the system as libertarian ideologues would wish him to be.

The Senator’s political nolo contendre with regard to the Logan Act thus exposes many things: his misgivings with the secretive annual meetings, his refusal to abandon a tenuous political alliance with the political establishment, but most of all his realism.

If Sen. Paul can keep his cards close, even from a once adoring alternative media and if he can weather reactionary Paulistas his options remain aplenty moving forward.  To delve into an obscure and evidently toothless piece of legislation isn’t good politics and hurts him more than it would bring violators to justice.

To be sure, the Logan Act has barely seen the inside of a court room and the only times it has been mentioned is in the congressional record and referenced within Justice Sutherland’s 1936 Supreme Court opinion affirming the President as constitutional representative of the U.S. with regard to foreign nations.

The Logan Act reads, in part, as follows:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

When Sen. George McGovern was accused of its violation in 1975 the U.S. State Department issued this statement:

“The clear intent of this provision [Logan Act] is to prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. Nothing in section 953 [Logan Act], however, would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution…”

Nowhere in the act does it say that members of our government can’t meet with other government agents “in secret” as so many activists assert.  Meeting in secret or at least without record, in and of itself, is not illegal and in fact happens regularly even outside the twenty or so elite summits that occur every year around the world.

It is interesting to note that Dr. George Logan, from whom the bill derives its name, was a pacifist who helped quell tensions when the U.S. and France fought an essentially undeclared war at sea – the Quasi War – at the end of the 1700s.  When Logan returned successful partisan Federalists were unhappy he received undue adulation from the media and sought through law to “curb the temerity and impudence” of such individuals. 

The question arises then: when are we to apply and not apply the Logan Act?  Are we to merely call for its enforcement when it offends our egalitarian and conspicuous sensibilities?  That wasn’t its intent.  The Logan Act has been used in the past to threaten those who want to continue dialogue when our government has ended diplomacy.  Think Jesse Jackson and his Cuban negotiations, Sen. McGovern and Stokely Carmichael in protest to Vietnam.

There is as much an opportunity for enemies of peace to use this act (if it ever saw the light of day) against those who would choose to open a back channel and avert open war, say with Iran, Syria, China, North Korea, Pakistan, or Russia as it is for those to use it against the world’s enigmatic power brokers seeking to influence our elected representatives.  Something lobbyists do on a daily basis.

But, how many undeclared wars do we currently fight?  If Rand Paul, or Ron Paul for that matter, were prosecuted under the Logan Act attempting to quell one of these many dubious interventions – undeclared wars – we now find ourselves apart, the irony would be overwhelming.

What activists and concerned citizens should continue to do is scrutinize and expose where the rubber meets the road, where ideas are put into action – political reform, legislation, executive orders, court decisions, administrative rules and regulations, etc.

While every decision our leaders make should be thoroughly investigated, vetted and debated, for now Rand Paul should be allotted some breathing room.  He has set himself on the path for the presidency and while many wish he’d just take off where Ron left off, the princeling may not be – his thing.  Rand has yet, as far as his voting record is concerned, to fall to the dark side, until then we should reserve judgment.