speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Imperative of State Regulation
In its role as publisher, government also controls private speakers.
Taking Care of Your Child: A Parent's Guide to Medical Care, which
had sold a million copies, was distributed free to 275,000 federal
employees but only after the deletion of six pages about contraception
and adolescent sexuality, including such "controversial" passages
as this:
While a variety of techniques prevent pregnancy, the growing list
and seriousness of sexual diseases serves as a reminder that other
than abstinence only condoms used in combination with a spermicide
can prevent infection. Your adolescent should discuss with
his or her doctor the full range of contraceptive/disease prevention
options.
Curt Smith, director of the Retirement and Insurance Group of the
Office of Personnel Management, justified the cuts: "I wasn't going
to allow a book like this to go to homes where some people would be
offended. You know, these are issues that alarm people [like Catholics]
very quickly. I felt silence would be best." 27
During J. Edgar Hoover's long directorship, the F.B.I, often sought
to limit the circulation and impact of critical books by discouraging
bookstores from stocking them and planting unattributed derogatory
reviews. Recently the Bureau sought to persuade judges to accept
DNA "fingerprinting." When a British scientist testified as an expert
witness for the defence, he was interrogated about his visa status,
charged with fraudulent billing practices, and ordered to produce all
his scientific papers—successfully deterring further courtroom
appearances. A prosecutor warned a sceptical University of California
professor to get a driver's license because the Oakland jail was
not a good place to spend the night. After the prestigious journal
Science accepted an article criticising DNA identification the editor
forced the authors to soften their conclusions and took the highly
unusual step of delaying publication until a rebuttal was prepared.
While the manuscript was being considered, an official in the
Department of Justice Criminal Division Strike Force asked the
authors to withdraw it. One of their strongest critics received a
$200,000 grant from the Justice Department to study DNA investigation
and licensed his method to prosecutors. A government panel
subsequently acknowledged concerns about the procedure. 28 Soon
after the Gulf war Dr. Theodore A. Postal, professor of national
security policy at MIT and former Pentagon science adviser, published
a 52-page article in International Security, a Harvard peer-
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