Book review: White House’s layers of deceit

No US president or politician emerges from this book with any credit. According to the author, it is impossible to get elected to power in the US without becoming totally compromised

Writer Andrew Cockburn is currently the Washington editor of 'Harper’s Magazine'. File picture: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

• Washington Is Burning: Corruption and Lies in the Age of Trump
• Andrew Cockburn
• Verso, £22.00

Some 250 years ago, the US declared independence from Britain. Forty years later, the US and Britain were still at war. 

In 1814, British forces made it to Washington and burned down the White House. Admiral Sir George Cockburn was part of the British force that attacked and burned Washington.

Admiral Cockburn’s descendant, Andrew Cockburn, is currently the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine. 

His new book Washington Is Burning: Corruption and Lies in the Age of Trump takes its title from the 1814 sacking of Washington. The fact that the title remains relevant today is more than a coincidence: It is the point.

Washington Is Burning is a wide-ranging collection of Cockburn’s writings as published in Harper’s Magazine, The London Book Review, and other periodicals. 

There is a common theme running through every essay. That the US is, and has been, governed by Republican and Democratic politicians whose driving force has always been self-interest and self-preservation.

US presidents given emergency powers to deal with various crises

Early in this book, in a chapter titled ‘The Enemies Briefcase’, we learn that since the early 20th century, many presidents were given emergency powers to deal with various crises. 

The crises included the First World War, the 1930s Depression, the Second World War, Korea, etc. Giving the president emergency powers during crisis is understandable. 

What is incomprehensible, however, is that none of these powers have ever been revoked.

This suggests that when Richard Nixon told David Frost in his 1977 interview, “when the president does it, it is not illegal”, he was probably correct. 

Only the president in situ and a few senior officials know what these powers are.

It makes you wonder if the US Supreme Court was correct to declare Trump’s tariffs to be illegal last month. 

Or does Trump already hold a secret emergency power from a previous emergency that entitles him to impose tariffs?

Several essays deal with the US military and how It has squandered billions of dollars over the years. Incidents of corruption abound throughout these essays.

For almost 70 years, the US air force has had the ability to fuel fighter jets in mid-flight. 

This operation is carried out by a human who uses line-of-sight and finely honed skills to insert a fuel line from the fuelling plane to the fighter jet. 

Twenty years ago, the US air force decided to automate the process. To date, all efforts have failed.

Cockburn alleges that several large tech corporations and many of the air force personnel, who commissioned the work, have profited from the continuing failure. 

Cockburn quotes an army general whose philosophy was “don’t stop the flow of money, add to it”.

No US president or politician emerges from this book with any credit. According to Cockburn, it is impossible to get elected to power in the US without becoming totally compromised. 

The method of raising funds through political action committees, which in theory have nothing to do with a candidate, ensures every candidate will be beholden to the large corporations and ethnic groups that contribute millions.

Trump does not feature very often in this book. By re-publishing these essays from the last 15 years, Cockburn seems to be saying to the reader, “this is what the previous guys were doing, and I will leave it up to your imagination to figure out what is going on right now”.

Washington Is Burning is a challenging book that digs deeper than the US political headlines of the day. Cockburn is alleging that layers of deceit and corruption lie beneath these headlines.

The fact these allegations have been published before and have gone unchallenged makes them seem incredulous. 

This calls to mind the Verbal Kint line from the film, The Usual Suspects. 

A film that asks viewers to reconsider everything they thought they knew about the plot: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”