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A Culture of Lies

By John Wheeler


The rigors of cadet life at West Point are an acid test of character. In time of war, the stories of two extraordinary men in the class of 1966, Tom Hayes and Wes Clark, can provide all Americans with insight into the core values that cadets are taught: the imperative for truth and the banishment of lies.
     Tom Hayes chaired the honor committee and so was the leader in teaching the ideal that cadets do not lie, cheat or steal nor tolerate those who do. He was killed in Vietnam on April 17, 1968, while pulling his wounded men to safety.
     Wes Clark ranked first in our class. He left a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford to lead troops in Vietnam. Badly wounded, he recalls wondering if he would ever meet his newborn son. He now commands NATO.
     As cadets we chose these men to lead us because they had the qualities of friendliness, competence and complete honesty that we wanted to be true of ourselves as well.
     In 1965 Tom was selected to explain the values of West Point to a citizens' group in New York. "Well, Mr. Hayes," one man asked, "what's the most difficult thing about being chairman of the honor committee?" Tom said without hesitation, "Sir, it's trying to explain the honor code to a group of men who can't possibly understand it."
     Tom was referring not just to his immediate audience, but to the whole government and business culture. He was prophetic. This was the time of the official lies that launched the Vietnam War: for example, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's falsified 1966 budget.
     Senior generals were ordered to go along with the lies, and, to West Point's shame, they buckled. West Point teaches honor because lying leaders destroy armies.
     But if things were bad in 1965, they are worse in 1999. We live in a culture of lies. Bill Clinton is a perjurer. On policy matters since 1992 he has lied to so many members of Congress that few rely on his word. The military is saddled with teaching soldiers the core value of truthfulness which the president, like Tommy's audience in 1965, cannot possibly understand.
     When today's leaders were young, lies poisoned American efforts in Vietnam. The poison has endangered our efforts in Serbia. The lieutenants of the Vietnam War are the generals who run the Pentagon and so control resources NATO needs. Will they buckle to lies from the White House about plans for troop deployments, about replacing expended cruise missiles, about fuel, ammunition and spare parts for U.S. forces -- and about the president's purported concern that thousands of enlisted troops have to rely on food stamps to feed their families? Will they buckle to White House entreaties to spin for the president instead of telling the plain truth?
     The spirit of the honor code in the academies and of training in core values in the services is that the duty to live up to those values increases with rank. But in practice the duty decreases with rank. Generals get off light, while sergeants suffer. Generals punish soldiers for simply saying the president is a liar, forcing troops to live a great lie of worthy leadership.
     Wes Clark's job will be easier, fewer people will be killed on the battlefield and the families of soldiers will suffer less if Washington's policymakers make even a modest effort to practice the truthfulness held dear by America's troops in the field.
     In Tom's memory, here are the tenets of truthfulness as taught to new cadets:
  • Cadets violate the honor code by lying if they deliberately deceive another by communicating an untruth through any form of communication to include the telling of a partial truth and using partial information or ambiguous language with the intent to deceive or mislead.
  • The honor code encompasses all aspects of a cadet's life, extending beyond the professional and academic realms into the personal realm.
  • An individual's nonverbal communications that create an impression or convey a message to someone else in lieu of an oral or written statement must be truthful.
  • Equivocation is the intentional use of vague, misleading or ambiguous language. Equivocation is a subset of lying.
  • Cadets are expected to exercise tact in social situations. Social tact is designed to spare the feelings of others. However, the cadet must not gain an advantage in exercising social tact.
  • Three rules of thumb: (1) Does this action attempt to deceive anyone or allow anyone to be deceived? (2) Does this action gain or allow the gain of a privilege or advantage to which I or someone else would not otherwise be entitled? (3) Would I be satisfied with this outcome if I were on the receiving end of this action?
 John Wheeler chaired the group that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

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Copyright (c) 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission from The Washington Times.
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