Full Disclosure on Full Disclosure

Last week Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed his desire for greater openness in politics. "We need to throw open the doors and windows of government," he said. At the same time, however, Mr. Schwarzenegger has forced his campaign staff to sign strict confidentiality agreements. Under threat of termination, staff members must agree not to disclose information about "Arnold Schwarzenegger and his family, friends, associates and employees." The policy, first described in The Los Angeles Times, stipulates that Mr. Schwarzenegger can obtain an injunction against anyone trying to break it and a fine of $50,000 per violation.

A campaign aide later promised that if elected, Mr. Schwarzenegger would abandon the policy. In the meantime, his use of confidentiality agreements shows how, as celebrity candidates are becoming more common in politics, so too are the dubious mechanisms of celebrity image control.

Confidentiality agreements were once primarily used to protect commercial secrets. More recently, celebrities have adopted these contracts to protect themselves against checkbook journalism and embittered assistants. This isn't such a big deal. But increasingly, confidentiality agreements ban their signers from revealing information that furthers more meritorious public debate. The Catholic Church, for example, used them to silence victims of sexual abuse by priests, possibly allowing that crime to continue longer than it otherwise might have.

These agreements aren't made merely out of a concern for privacy. Confidentiality agreements have become a tool used by the rich and powerful against people who can't afford to turn down a job, as a way to stifle public discussion of embarrassing issues, and as a means of ensuring that a whistle-blower can't throw a wrench into the image-making machinery of a public figure.

They're also something I have firsthand experience with. After the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., I decided to write a book about him and his magazine, where I had been executive editor. Some of the staff members, including me, had signed confidentiality agreements. But could that prohibit me from writing about a man who was no longer alive?

It very possibly could have. When a well-known First Amendment lawyer told one magazine that the document was enforceable, my publisher hastily backed out of an agreement to publish the book. Fearing a legal morass, no other house would touch it.

Stunned, I paid a series of short visits to $500-an-hour lawyers I couldn't possibly afford. No one had ever litigated a case asking whether a confidentiality agreement survived the death of a celebrity journalist. For a sum in the mid-five figures, these lawyers would write a brief arguing my position — but they could guarantee nothing.

That wasn't very promising. So I abandoned the legal route and spent a year writing without a contract, falling deeply into debt. When the manuscript was done, I managed to find a publisher certain that no one would sue over my laudatory book. But in a way, I was lucky: if the project had been less commercially viable, it would have been killed before a word was written.

However one regards the import of a memoir about John F. Kennedy Jr., the implications of my experience should be disturbing. What if Lyndon Johnson had required his staff to sign confidentiality agreements — and after his death, Lady Bird chose to enforce them? Or if Senator Hillary Clinton ran for president and compelled the silence of her staff in perpetuity? These are not far-fetched possibilities. (Mrs. Clinton, for instance, required the ghostwriters of her autobiography to sign such documents.) How much valuable information would be lost to history? And how much more easily could political candidates project an image of themselves that covered up a less-flattering reality?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for governor of a state with 34 million people and the world's fifth-largest economy. Whether he is qualified is for the state's voters to decide. But they won't be able to judge his fitness for the job if he uses legal intimidation to suppress information about himself.

Confidentiality agreements allow Mr. Schwarzenegger to enter the public arena with very little of the risk that every other noncelebrity politician must live with: that the public will learn unfortunate truths about him. If a candidate isn't willing to take that chance, perhaps he shouldn't be running in the first place.

Freedom of contract includes confidentiality agreements. No one is being forced to sign these agreements. The author simply has his panties in a bunch, probably at the thought that a Republican might win.

As for the author's beloved JFK, let's not forget that his popularity was in the toilet prior to achieving secular sainthood through his untimely death. JFK would never have been re-elected. I bet the author's book never touched on that subject. The truth, and the ability to tell it, is quite selective regardless of the existence of confidentiality agreements.

Sheeesh. It's the New York Times, what do you expect?
They can't all be like those Drippy Dowd pieces... Ooooh Arnie!

Regardless, confidentiality agreements are being abused in many cases. They were rampant in the stock market boom (and dotcom blaze), and while they protected trade secrets, they also protected criminals from prosecution, in my opinion.

Arnold is asking to become the chief public servant of the state and proposing 'open government'. Those concepts do appear in conflict with his actions.

Nobody forced him to sign this contract, he could have turned down the job. What a whiner!

By the way, check out the journalist's name, that about says it all.

"So I abandoned the legal route and spent a year writing without a contract, falling deeply into debt. When the manuscript was done, I managed to find a publisher certain that no one would sue over my laudatory book. But in a way, I was lucky: if the project had been less commercially viable, it would have been killed before a word was written."

YR, JFK JUNIOR! That was the subject of this fellow's book, not the murdered pres. And I think "laudatory" is an overstatement, isn't this the disgusting book that said Carolyn Bisset Kennedy was basically a coke-addled floozy?

Freepers, correct me if I am wrong. But if I am correct Blow's got no place to write nothing, no time. As if his own name wasn't disgrace enough. Blow. Sheesh!

Thanks for the correction. Much appreciated.

The Kennedy Klan all kind of runs together for me. I lump them together as crooks...then occasionally try distinguish between the dead ones and the living murderers and rapists.

and as a means of ensuring that a whistle-blower can't throw a wrench into the image-making machinery of a public figure

So, this guy thinks that the maid who reveals a celebrity's living conditions is a "whistle-blower"? Image making is part of being a public figure, be it politician or movie star. The press does it as much as the individuals do. Richard, Blow.

I lump them together as crooks...then occasionally try distinguish between the dead ones and the living murderers and rapists.

ROFL... how do you keep them all straight? ;-)

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