"We found what we could at that time - the truth. If somebody else can find something else which we didn't find, that, of course, is a duty on their part, as is the truth. It will be the truth"
About this Quote
Cooper’s line is a politician’s rare attempt to drain heat from a fight over facts by treating “truth” as provisional, procedural, and ultimately impersonal. He’s not claiming omniscience; he’s claiming good faith under constraint: “at that time” signals the limits of evidence, access, and political reality. The sentence is built like a committee report that wants to outlive the committee.
The intent is defensive, but not evasive. Cooper stakes out legitimacy for an investigation or finding without pretending it’s the last word. That matters in the mid-century Washington ecosystem he helped define, where inquiries (from foreign-policy blunders to domestic scandal) often become proxies for tribal victory. By saying, essentially, we did the best available work, he asks to be judged on method rather than outcome.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to partisan absolutism. “If somebody else can find something else” reads generous on the surface, but it also shifts responsibility: don’t just heckle the record; do the labor of improving it. Calling that effort a “duty” frames truth-seeking as civic service, not ideological combat. He’s trying to normalize revision not as a gotcha but as governance.
Contextually, this sounds like postwar, Cold War-era institutionalism: faith in hearings, documentation, and incremental correction. The final repetition - “It will be the truth” - functions as a rhetorical lock. Not “my truth” or “their truth,” but a single standard that stands apart from careers and headlines. In a profession built on controlling narratives, Cooper’s wager is that the only durable political capital is a process that can survive being corrected.
The intent is defensive, but not evasive. Cooper stakes out legitimacy for an investigation or finding without pretending it’s the last word. That matters in the mid-century Washington ecosystem he helped define, where inquiries (from foreign-policy blunders to domestic scandal) often become proxies for tribal victory. By saying, essentially, we did the best available work, he asks to be judged on method rather than outcome.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to partisan absolutism. “If somebody else can find something else” reads generous on the surface, but it also shifts responsibility: don’t just heckle the record; do the labor of improving it. Calling that effort a “duty” frames truth-seeking as civic service, not ideological combat. He’s trying to normalize revision not as a gotcha but as governance.
Contextually, this sounds like postwar, Cold War-era institutionalism: faith in hearings, documentation, and incremental correction. The final repetition - “It will be the truth” - functions as a rhetorical lock. Not “my truth” or “their truth,” but a single standard that stands apart from careers and headlines. In a profession built on controlling narratives, Cooper’s wager is that the only durable political capital is a process that can survive being corrected.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|
More Quotes by John
Add to List
