"Rectifying" Big Brother's embarrassing words.(Insider Report)

In Orwell's classic precautionary tale 1984, the hapless central character, Winston Smith, was employed by the totalitarian state's "Ministry of Truth." Smith's job was to scour the public statements made by Big Brother and "rectify" those that subsequently proved to be in error; he did this by excising the offending words from the database, reworking the public record to fit the current party line, and casting the offending comments down the "memory hole." In this way the Party and its embodiment, Big Brother, were always right.

Every government, when allowed to, acts in the fashion Orwell described, and U.S. presidential administrations are certainly no different. Bill Clinton's compulsive mendacity was a national shame and a running joke. But things have not improved under his successor as the White House has, at least in cyberspace, literally followed Orwell's prescription for wiping its records clean of embarrassing public statements.

"It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history," observed the December 18th Washington Post. "Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information." This includes deleting or revising statements by the president and other officials that have been proven incorrect:

* Last spring, Andrew S. Natsios, ...