Hilary Mantel on National Security Threats, Detention, Prosecution, Conspiracy, and State Secrets

Hilary Mantel is justly famous for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (Wolf Hall, Book 2), a pair of extraordinary books observing the kingship of Henry VIII through the lens of a richly-conceived version of Thomas Cromwell.  But as much as I enjoyed those books, I’m still more taken with her much earlier novel A Place of Greater Safety.  And not just because of the quality of the writing; I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mantel took the occasion to offer insightful observations on a security-related dilemma that already was familiar to the British when she wrote in the early 1990s and that became familiar to Americans a decade later. Published in 1992, A Place of Greater Safety follows/imagines the lives of key figures including Camilles Desmoulins, Georges-Jacques Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre, following them from their respective provincial roots to Paris and then on to the Revolution, and, ultimately, the Terror.  It is a sensitive account, rendering those three (and numerous other) historical figures in sympathetic—yet unsparing—detail.  And it’s just a joy to read, like most everything else Mantel has written.  But none of this, standing alone, would have led me to mention the book on this blog (even though the details of Revolution and the Terror are certainly of interest at a general level for anyone concerned with national security, authoritarianism, state stability, etc.).  No, I’m mentioning it because I found a particular passage in the book quite striking from the perspective of post-9/11 debates. The passage arises at a key point in the narrative.  Some leaders of the Montagnard faction within the Convention were growing frustrated by their repeated clashes with the Girondist faction (the Girondists were men who had certainly been fellow revolutionaries yet were considerably more moderate than the Montagnards, and thus constituted the political “right” in terms of the narrow political spectrum of the Convention at that stage).  Other Montagnards were less sure about using revolutionary methods against fellow revolutionaries.  Against this backdrop, Mantel imagines a fascinating colloquy between two key Montagnards, Robespierre and Danton:

Danton:                What about all these conspirators? Robespierre:       They are the ones who should be suffering. Danton:                How do you tell a conspirator? Robespierre:       Put them on trial. Danton:                What if you know they’re conspirators, but you haven’t enough evidence to convict them?  What if you as a patriot just know? Robespierre:       You ought to be able to make it stand up in court. Danton:                Suppose you can’t? You might not be able to use your strongest evidence.  It might be state secrets. Robespierre:       You’d have to let them go, in that case.  But it would be unfortunate. Danton:                It would, wouldn’t it?  If the Austrians were at the gates?  And you were delivering the city over to them out of respect for the judicial process? Robespierre:       Well, I suppose you’d…you’d have to alter the standard of proof in court.  Or widen the definition of conspiracy. Danton:                You would, would you? Robespierre:       Would that be an example of a lesser evil averting a greater one?  I am not usually taken in by this simple, very comforting very infantile notion—but I know that a successful conspiracy against the French people could lead to genocide. Danton:                Perverting justice is a very great evil in itself. It leaves no hope of amendment. Robespierre:       Look, Danton, I don’t know, I’m not a theorist. Danton:                I know that.  You’re  a practitioner.  I know all about the sneaky little slaughters you try to fix up behind my back. Robespierre:       Why do you condone the death of a thousand, but balk at two politicians? Danton:                Because I know them, I suppose, Roland and Brissot.  I don’t know the thousand.  Call it a failure of imagination. Robespierre:       If you couldn’t prove things in court, I suppose you could detain your suspects without trial. Danton:                Could you indeed?  It’s you idealists who make the best tyrants. Robespierre:       It seems a bit late to be having this conversation.  I’ve had to take up violence now, and so much else.  We should have discussed it last year.

pp. 498-99 (Picador paperback ed.) How very interesting for a book published in 1992.  Of course, these issues were well-known in the UK by that time thanks to the troubles associated with counterterrorism efforts relating to the IRA.  At any rate, Mantel plainly understood a number of keys issues well.  She knew that one can make criminal prosecution more convenient either by expanding the substantive scope of criminal law or by loosening procedural safeguards, a point that Jack and I wrote about years ago (albeit much later than Mantel) in our piece on the convergence of military and criminal detention models.  Equally interesting is Mantel’s observation that the demands of secrecy might prevent the state from making use of its strongest evidence, and her concluding point that absent a viable prosecution option it might be attractive to simply detain without trial.  And it is quite bracing to read Mantel/Danton’s assessment of such steps.  Of course, it does not follow that every alteration of criminal law is “perverting justice,” and just as clearly not all uses of non-criminal detention are problematic in this sense, but still…bracing.