þótt satt sé (again with the information)

News of the shakeup at the CIA has escaped upwards out of the blogosphere and into for example Salon, where Spencer Ackerman expresses some of the same concerns I had here two days ago. Sidney Blumenthal has continued on a related thread, one tied to the replacement of Colin Powell with Condi Rice, an event with its own implications for the use and abuse of intelligence in the years to come. Read Blumenthal for yourself; I note merely that it is always a bit chilling to see someone else use a phrase like night of the long knives only twelve hours after it has floated through one's own head and been rejected as potentially too inflammatory.

Today I find myself reflecting on this administration's apparent views on information flow and good versus bad intelligence in light of a passage from the Middle Saga of Bishop Guðmundr of Iceland. The passage in question directly addresses credibility and belief, understandably so, as the saga contains numerous miracles:

... því at þat vita allir menn at þat er allt satt er gott er sagt frá guði og hans helgum mönnum, ok er því gott góðu at trúa, en illt er at trúa illu, þótt satt sé, ok allra verst því, er illt er logit, ok verðr þat þó mörgum góðum mönnum at trúa því er logit er, ok verðr þá eigi rétt um skipt er menn tortryggja þat er gott er ok satt, en trúa því er illt er ok logit.

... for all people know that all good things said of God and His Saints are true, and for that reason it is good to believe good things, but it is bad to believe bad things, even if they are true, and worst of all is when bad things are lies, and yet it befalls many good people that they believe things that are lies, and it is not a good state of affairs when people doubt what is good and true but believe that which is bad and a lie.

Text cited from Miðsaga af Guðmundi byskupi in Biskupa sögur (1858), eds. Guðbrandur Vigfússon & Jón Sigurðsson, Copenhagen, vol. I, 592. Translation mine.

One cannot dispute the idea that giving credence to slander (bad things that are also lies) is undesirable. Belief in good and true things seems similarly beyond reproach. However the other two propositions could worry a modern mind.

The notion that "all good things said of God and His Saints are true" is probably not so bizarre as it appears at first glance. It may rely on a medieval notion of figurative or allegorical truth. That is, a story about, say, a saint performing a virtuous deed or even a miracle need not have been historically accurate in all details to contain this sort of truth, either about the holiness of the saint in question or the virtuousness of the deed in question. Since the saga of Bishop Guðmundr is heavily concerned with miracles, events which by their nature strain the credulity of the audience, this is a kind of truth value of great importance to the compiler or author.

(Though we are not medievals, we also have this notion of allegorical truth. The tale of George Washington and the cherry tree is not one we tend to take seriously as historical truth, but rather as expressive of a truth about George Washington's character as an honest man.)

More arresting is the remaining proposition, that "it is bad to believe bad things, even if they are true." Within the context of a religion in which salvation depended in part or in whole on faith (here I will sidestep countless theological complications and the whole matter of the Reformation), this idea might be necessary. But in the context of an earthly government and its take on promulgating and disseminating information, gathering and using intelligence, this proposition would be quite distressing.

Not that the compiler of the Middle Saga had this administration in mind when penning that line. He most certainly did not. But I, reading it, do. I am unavoidably conditioned by my own historical horizon, recent events that reveal an administration that condemns criticism even if it is justified and seems to be poised to cut itself off from any incoming information that might be categorized as illt, þó satt, that is: bad, yet true.