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April 06, 2004
Fog of War
It's worthwhile to read Daniel Schacter's Fog of War. (backup)
Such errors are sometimes associated with the memory sin of misattribution, where we remember aspects of an experience correctly but attribute them to the wrong source. For instance, a college student recalled that she first learned of the Challenger explosion in 1986 from television, when the actual source was a group of friends. Misattribution errors can occur for traumatic experiences, as in the case of a rape victim who accused a psychologist of assault based on her vivid memory of his face. In reality, she had seen the psychologist on television just before she was raped.
Because parts of misattributed memories are accurate, people can maintain high confidence in such mistaken recollections. Both Mr. Clarke's and Mr. Miller's accounts are probably correct in some respects, but either one may have fallen victim to misattribution, leading to different claims about who said what to whom.
Bias, a third memory sin, occurs when current knowledge, beliefs or feelings distort the past. For example, studies have shown that we often inaccurately recall political attitudes we held in the past. Our recollection ends up reflecting our current attitudes instead. Research also reveals an egocentric bias, meaning we remember the past in ways that reflect positively our current self — a bias from which government officials are not likely to be immune.
Transience, misattribution and bias occur even when we do our best to recollect the past accurately. Without external corroboration, we cannot know for certain which aspects of Mr. Clarke's or Mr. Miller's account are off the mark — but we do know enough about memory's sins to implicate the likely culprits. It's something the commission, and the country, should keep in mind when Ms. Rice testifies as well.
cf) Dick Clarke on Larry King Live
KING: President Clinton on this program said he was in Australia on 9/11, and he said as soon as he heard of the incident he said, bin Laden. Does that surprise you?
CLARKE: Well, no, Bill Clinton was obsessed with getting bin Laden. Bill Clinton ordered bin Laden assassinated. He ordered not only bin Laden assassinated but all of his lieutenants. The CIA failed him. The CIA couldn't do it, and now the CIA is trying to say, well, the orders were ambiguous. Let me tell you, Larry, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and myself both talked to George Tenet and talked to his chief lieutenants and said, are you very clear what this order is? This is an order to kill bin Laden. They said, yes, they were very clear.
KING: Is somebody lying?
CLARKE: No, you know, people in this town are too smart to lie, especially under oath.
KING: So what do you call it?
CLARKE: I call it creative memory sometimes. I call it interpretation and emphasis sometimes. I think the American people need to know the truth about what happened, so that we can make sure it doesn't happen again. And I think heaven for the family members of the victims who caused this commission to come into existence over the objections of the White House and who have now been able to get it extended over the objections of the White House.
Posted by gatorlog at April 6, 2004 02:07 AM
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