Anas Aremeyaw Anas is a Ghanaian investigative journalist and attorney who’s work has garnered him a lot of praise and acclaim. Recently, his investigative work ,has exposed massive corruption in the Ghanaian Judicial system. His modus operandi is however what worries me.
His way of doing business brings to mind a very powerful man from another country and another era – J. Edgar Hoover.
J Edgar Hover ran the FBI for 48 years – from 1924 till he died in 1972. He built the Bureau into a world-class law enforcement organization.
In his formative years, before he ascended to the leadership of the FBI, he had come to believe that communists were trying to subvert the US. In the ‘30s, he was instrumental in the Red Raids where about 6000 people, mostly foreigners, were arrested on suspicion of being Communists. The majority were later released. The experience made him decide to conduct such investigations secretly and thus began his collection of information on anyone or any organization he found or thought was subversive. Soon, this ballooned into the collection of information on most public and influential figures. He kept secret files on more than 20000 people! Using the information in these files, he was able to control presidents, senators and the very influential.
One of his targets was the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King (MLK). He bugged MLK bedroom, hotel rooms and offices. Among other things, he found out about MLK’s infidelity. He tried to use the tapes to discredit him and knock him down as a moral authority. He sent the tapes to friends and colleagues of MLK. He sent one with a poison pen letter to MLK’s home where his wife opened it. The letter read:
“King, look into your heart,” the letter read. The American people soon would “know you for what you are—an evil, abnormal beast…There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
He was trying to get MLK to commit suicide.
He found out JFK was having an affair with a divorcee who was also having affair with a mob boss in Chicago. He had a file on Robert Kennedy. He even had the band the Kingsmen investigated for their song “Louie Louie”, because he thought the lyrics were obscene. Recently, those files have been made public and the information in them is astonishing. No wonder he survived 8 presidents!
This was a man who used his office to amass embarrassing information about this fellow countrymen and used this information to control them.
So again if Anas may be watching you, who is watching Anas?
I am not saying Anas is going to be a Hoover but the opportunity is there. What stops him from amassing information on all public figures? What stops him from using this information, if embarrassing enough, to blackmail or even control these men and women? If these figures are in government, what stops him from influencing policy? What stops those who work with and for him to do the same? Who controls what Anas ultimately sees as right and wrong? How do we know if his moral compass changes? At the moment, he is amassing power and influence. How do we know if that won’t corrupt him? And if it does, WHO IS WATCHING ANAS?
Remember what the British historian, Lord Acton once said “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
There are many things wrong with Ghana. Corruption ranks up there. A corrupt Judiciary is rather demoralizing for a country and makes a mockery of the Rule of Law. In our bid to rid our dear nation of this cancer, let us be careful what we sacrifice. The willingness to accept the taping of private conversation without the consent of those involved is a very slippery slope that the nation does not want to get on. It is a civil liberty that should be near and dear to everyone’s heart. Imagine a country where what you say and do in private is not scared anymore. Anyone can record it and make it public, without your consent. Imagine a government that is able to do that to it’s people. After all, Anas does it and it’s fine. Do we want a 1984?
To end, I’ll leave you with a quote form Nietzche:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”