“Who or What Is Bugging Gilmar Mendes?”

Your correspondent, laid up with a busted flipper, has nothing better to do than keep his eyes on the skies, the lies, and the spies, like Jimmy Stewart in Janela Indisreta.

Ricardo Noblat of the Rio de Janeiro metrosexual daily O Globo asks today: Who bugged the Chief Justice of the Brazilian Supreme Court?

The controversy has all the soap-operatic low drama of the question: Who shot J.R. Ewing?

But it also assumes a fact not in evidence.

Because the answer may be: Nobody.

Maybe nobody bugged the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The Chief Justice may not have been bugged at all, although he he was captured on what was putatively a bug. Veja magazine (Editorial Abril) has stated categorically, citing an anonymous source it will not reveal, and repeated ad nauseam, that this was a bug conducted by ABIN. Then again, Veja also says it does not have the audio of the alleged recording.

Veja, it should be borne in mind, is an eternal font of gibbering bullshit.

The target of the wiretap — if any — may have been Sen. Torres, the Chief Justice’s interlocutor in a brief and innocuous phone call in which the ex-PFLista commiserates with Justice Mendes and says he finds calls for the Chief Justice’s impeachment “absurd.”

(Or not. Who knows?)

That seemed like both a logical and a very real possibility from the beginning of the flap, but of the vats of ink spilled on content churn made up almost of exclusively of idle conjecture about the case, very little has been dedicated to this hypothesis.

And why do I care?

Well, I am still laid up with this busted flipper, and so have plenty of time on my hands to let rivers of gibbering gossip flow through my brain. Kind of like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.

O Ministério Público Federal investiga a possibilidade de a conversa entre o presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), Gilmar Mendes, e o senador Demóstenes Torres (DEM-GO) ter sido grampeada a partir da central telefônica do Senado. A tese ganhou força depois da conclusão de perícias nos equipamentos de Polícia Federal, Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin) e Senado. Está praticamente descartada a possibilidade de o grampo ter sido feito com maletas de gravação.

The federal prosecutor is investigating the possibility that the conversation between Chief Justice Mendes and Sen. Demosthenes Torres (PFL-Goiás) was intercepted through the telephone switchboard of the Senate. The theory gained momentum after technical audits of equipment owned by the Federal Police, the Brazilian National Intelligence Agency, and the Senate.

Os autos do inquérito sobre o grampo, conduzido pelos delegados Rômulo Berredo e William Morad, devem chegar hoje à Justiça Federal. Os dois delegados pediram a prorrogação das investigações. Segundo o diretor da PF, Luiz Fernando Corrêa, será necessário aprofundar a apuração. A outra possibilidade é que o grampo tenha sido feito na operadora de celular de Gilmar Mendes.

The case file of the investigation into the alleged bugging, led by Berredo and Morad of the Brazilian federal police, are scheduled to be turned in to a federal court today. The two investigators asked for an extension of the probe. According to federal police director Corrêa, the probe needs to be widened. The other possibility is that the intercept was conducted through the Chief Justice’s cellular carrier.

Mas, pelas informações obtidas até agora, o Ministério Público considera mais provável que o grampo tenha surgido a partir de uma guerra entre empresas interessadas na disputa pela presidência do Senado. A briga pelo comando da Casa mexe com o milionário mercado de prestação de serviços no Congresso.

Still, judging from information obtained so far, the federal prosecutor thinks it more likely that the intercept occurred as part of a war among private firms interested in the dispute to elect the president of the Senate. The dispute for the Senate leadership affects the million-dollar market for outsourced services to Congress.

If this turns out to be true, the Chief Justice’s astonishing media campaign of recent weeks — according which Brazil is being turned into a police state by a “politicized Gestapo” or “legal militia” operating through special organized crime and anticorruption courts — will fall apart and the gentleman will, I expect, be roundly mocked and excoriated.

This guy makes Antonin Scalia look like Learned Hand, in terms of judicious behavior and regard for the integrity of his office.

Veja magazine has fed the frenzy with cover stories about “spies gone wild” and cover copy telling ordinary Brazilians that “if the Chief Justice is not safe, then no one is safe — not even you!”

Literally.

This is a classic moral panic campaign or “moral crusade.”

Moral crusades advance claims about both the gravity and incidence of a particular problem. They typically rely on horror stories and “atrocity tales” about victims in which the most shocking exemplars of victimization are described and typified. Casting the problem in highly dramatic terms by recounting the plight of highly traumatized victims is intended to alarm the public and policy makers and justify draconian solutions. At the same time, inflated claims are made about the magnitude of the problem. A key feature of many moral crusades is that the imputed scale of a problem … far exceeds what is warranted by the available evidence. — Ronald Weitzer, “The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade,” Politics Society 2007; 35; 447

That sort of thing. I have been building a bibliography on the subject. You could write a book on “moral panic” journalism in Brazil (and elsewhere in the world, of course.)

Uma varredura foi feita pela Polícia do Senado no sistema de telefonia da Casa, não indicando a existência de grampos nos telefones dos gabinetes dos senadores. Mas a PF decidiu fazer laudos próprios. 

A sweep by the Senate Police of the Senate phone system found no intercepts on the phones in the offices of federal senators. But the federal police decided to do its own testing.

Last year, a private contractor claimed to have found bugs in the federal elections tribunal, I think it was. Hysteria ruled the day!

The federal police checked up on them, found there were no signs of bugs, and charged the contractor with making a phony police report. Whatever happened to that case?

TERROR AT THE SUPREME COURT. Veja, August 2007. “It is intolerable, this atmosphere we live in, with the abusive conduct of federal agents or agencies deeply enmeshed with the machinery of the State. Generalized wiretapping is an indicator of, and an exercise in, authoritarian politics,” says Justice Celso de Mello. “Supreme Court justices react to the suspicion of wiretaps in the highest court in the land.” The story was immediately discounted by its principal source at the court, who said the only concrete indication he had of this was proven to be a hoax. Ecce Veja.

See also

Nassif on Veja and the Leaky Police

"What do you think of publishing conversations caught on illegal wiretaps? Approve, disapprove, don't know." This sort of gabbling leak journalism is the trademark of Globo under Ali Kamel, note. Also note: It is very, very easy, if you will just go ahead and clear your cookies, to vote early and also vote very, very often in Globo Web surveys.